This is a preliminary record, please consult the linked accessions.
From its title, the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development (CESD) sounds as if it were some sort of semi-autonomous entity within the Office of the Auditor General. In fact, the title is a legislative anomaly in that the officer named in the legislation of 1995 is clearly under the terms of the Act creating the office, a regular senior manager under the direct authority of the Auditor General with no special privileges different from any other Assistant Deputy Minister. This status was confirmed in 2007 by the summary termination of the incumbent Commissioner on the authority of the incumbent Auditor General. (For this reason, there is no administrative history for this sub-series.) The real significance of the legislation of 1995 was not to create a new office (despite the name) but the symbolic effort by Parliament to codify and expand the mandate of the Office of the Auditor General to perform annual performance audits of federal government programs explicitly in relation to their environmental impact and sustainability arising from explicit concerns over pollution, public health and the new complications of "Global warming" and "green house gas" effects on climate and the environment. The legislation also provided for certain additional responsibilities around the legislative mandate for "environmental petitions". In fact the Office of the Auditor General had been performing performance audits with a view of assessing environmental impact for many years before 1996. The sub-series is attached to one single accession composed of legacy audit files and a very few related "start up" files deriving from the set up of the program. The predominant audit files constitute the first two years of performance audits conducted under the rubric of the new "Commissioner" whose findings are published in a separate Report to Parliament. While thematically focused on the environment, the audit methodology employed through the Commissioner of Environment and Sustainable Development is identical to the refined performance audit standards developed by the Office of the Auditor General since 1978. Part of the reason for preserving this series of audit files, is to provide documentary evidence of how these audit projects relate to the methodology of other OAG performance audits. Further accruals of CESD performance audits are not anticipated, as the methodology, findings, and follow-up are all efficiently and transparently published in the annual Report submitted to Parliament. Further accruals of executive records and program development files, which may document the evolution of this office and program as long it is sustained in its present form, may be anticipated but most likely only where there was a major legislative change in mandate and/or constitution of the Commissioner's status. In such circumstances a further one time accrual of select audit files may be acquired if the circumstances warrant.
