6. The Court of Auditors and the Authorising Officer of the European Parliament , or any other external body authorised by the Authorising Officer, may carry out the necessary checks and verifications on the spot in order to verify the legality of expenditure and the proper implementation of the provisions of the contribution and grant decision or agreement, and, in the case of European political foundations, the proper implementation of the work programme or action .

(Return tabled) Question No. 129 Mr. Alex Atamanenko: With regard to the horse slaughter industry in Canada: (a) what is the government’s policy on requiring medical history on equine identity documents (EID) only for the last six months of a horse’s life, and not for an entire lifespan; (b) does the government have information on what happened to the meat from the racehorse Backstreet Bully, who had been administered several courses of a variety of banned medications throughout its lifetime, prior to being sold into the slaughter pipeline, and what are the details of Backstreet Bully’s EID and all other traceability documents and recor ...[+++]ds; (c) does the government have information on what happened to the meat from the racehorse Silky Shark, who had been administered the drug phenylbutazone prior to being sold into the slaughter pipeline, and what are the details of Silky Shark’s EID and all other traceability documents and records; (d) what system is in place for owners to report the history of banned drugs they have administered to a horse that they previously owned, when they discover that a subsequent owner has sold that horse into the slaughter pipeline; (e) when such instances as mentioned in (d) are reported, and it is found that the meat was sold as human food, what system is in place to recall that meat from domestic and international retailers, (i) how many such instances have been reported, (ii) what were the results of the government’s investigations into these reports; (f) how does the government keep count of the number of horses being imported from the United States (U.S) for slaughter; (g) how does the government explain the discrepancy between the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA)/Agriculture Canada and U.S. Department of Agriculture figures; (h) what were the findings of the government’s investigation into the large numbers of emaciated horses arriving from the U.S. in 2011 destined for Les Viandes de la Petite-Nation slaughter plant, and ...

16. Notes and deplores the Court of Auditors' observations mainly in the Cohesion area such as excessive endowments to FEIs resulting in circumventing the n+2 rule (Annual Report, example 4.4 (a)), delays and slow implementation of the FEIs (Annual Report, example 4.4 (b)), irregular winding-up requirements (Annual Report, example 4.4 (c)), financial contributions paid as advances as soon as the legal structure ...[+++] of the FEI has been set up (Annual Report, point 4.34) and problems in performing adequate audits on FEIs (Annual Report, points 4.35 and 4.36);

16. Notes and deplores the Court of Auditors' observations mainly in the Cohesion area such as excessive endowments to FEIs resulting in circumventing the n+2 rule (Annual Report, example 4.4 (a)), delays and slow implementation of the FEIs (Annual Report, example 4.4 (b)), irregular winding-up requirements (Annual Report, example 4.4 (c)), financial contributions paid as advances as soon as the legal structure ...[+++] of the FEI has been set up (Annual Report, point 4.34) and problems in performing adequate audits on FEIs (Annual Report, points 4.35 and 4.36);

N. welcoming, in this respect, the joint British-Norwegian initiative aimed at assessing the feasibility of, and establishing clear procedural steps for, the eventual dismantling of nuclear weapons and the related verification procedures relating thereto, which is a concrete contribution in the right direction,

He should realize that the section of grants and contributions that was audited, and which had a very serious result that all of us took seriously, the audit covered an audit universe that represents less than 1% of the Government of Canada's budget.