How Did It End?

How Did It End?

That’s an important question we ask at the end of every year since all municipalities are required to provide audited financial statements to the provincial government by May 1st.

Now I know what you are thinking: “Why am I reading a post about audited financial statements?” It’s true that I haven’t written about this annual requirement over the last 10 years as it’s always uneventful but I felt it was important to do it this year because unfortunately, the provincial government was unfairly casting aspersions about our financial position.

People can and should have opinions about the budget decisions of their elected representatives. That is different from the financial position of a municipality. Why it was particularly troublesome is because it is disrespectful to our dedicated team in the Financial and Corporate Services Department who follow strict regulations to create our financial statements every year.

Although I hope you read this entire post, if you want a quick summary, please listen to this 4 minute and 30 second section of our Audit Committee meeting on Monday, April 15th. I have a chance to ask some very direct questions to our City Administration about the legal reporting requirement and if the City of Edmonton has ever been non-compliant with our financial reporting and records based on the provincial government’s criteria.

Spoiler Alert: The answer is no.

The City of Edmonton has always been compliant with the provincial financial reporting requirements under the Municipal Government Act since the provincial government introduced their public dashboard in 2017. Here is a list of all the municipalities that have ever been flagged since the dashboard was created:

Beyond the provincial government’s own legal requirements, the City of Edmonton also has an external auditor review our annual financial statements for accuracy. Another element of the external audit is to look into what is referred to as ‘going concerns’. At a high level level ‘going concerns’ are material uncertainties related to events or conditions that may cast significant doubt upon the Entity’s ability to continue as a going concern. In their written audit report they provided the following:

Going concern:

We have provided you with all information relevant to the use of the going concern assumption in the financial statements.

We confirm that we are not aware of material uncertainties related to events or conditions that may cast significant doubt upon the Entity’s ability to continue as a going concern.

As shown above, our external auditor is not aware of any going concerns. That has been the case for decades.

I started this post noting that I haven’t written about this before because there have never been any issues and that continues with our 2023 financial statements. This is a great news story that I probably should have been telling every year but I wasn’t sure people would care. Now when someone in a leadership position tries to suggest that we are not doing what is legally required, even though they are the ones that set the legislative requirements and have access to all of this information, I believe it is critical to make sure all Edmontonians are aware of this.

I’ll close with a link to my colleague’s recent blog post on the City of Edmonton’s audit process. Councillor Erin Rutherford wrote a great post on how the City of Edmonton has robust independent audit practices. It’s a great 2 minute read with links to other information for those who want to learn even more.

Thanks for taking the time to learn more about our audited financial statements in the City of Edmonton.