L. Denis Desautels

Desautels, L. Denis

L. Denis Desautels, accountant, Auditor General of Canada (b at St Bruno, Qué 14 May 1943). Following his education at McGill Desautels joined the accounting firm Clarkson Gordon (now Caron, Belanger, Ernst & Young) in 1964 in Montréal. While spending 9 years with the firm's Ottawa office in the late 60s and early 70s, he twice participated in the executive exchange program with the office of the AUDITOR GENERAL OF CANADA. He returned to the Montréal office in the late 70s and was made a senior partner of the firm. His solid reputation as an auditor and acute nonpartisanship were instrumental in his being selected to serve advisory roles on a number of federal and provincial commissions.

In 1991 he was chosen to succeed Ken Dye as Auditor General of Canada. A soft-spoken individual, Desautels was a sharp contrast to the outspoken Dye and quickly placed his stamp on the office. With the deficit as his priority Desautels engineered changes to the office that enabled it to report to Parliament more effectively and often than in the past, and with little of the controversy that was so often associated with his predecessor's reports.