Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We try to take into account the interest of parliamentarians when choosing our audit topics, but we especially consider requests that come from committees rather than individual members of Parliament because often—and I'm going to say this fairly directly—requests may have certain political objectives. As a rule, requests issued by committees are less political.
For example, let's look at the procurement of military equipment. The Standing Committee on National Defence asked us to do some work, and we are currently performing an audit. There is even an audit program planned for the next four or five years concerning different purchases. An audit takes about 18 months so if we choose an audit topic today, it has to still be relevant in two years' time. Currently, we are studying the procurement of trucks and other military purchases.
We have not audited compliance with the Canada Health Act because we are focusing on other topics. For example, the team working on health issues is currently auditing electronic registry systems. We are even working with legislative auditors from six provinces on this topic.
We conduct between 25 and 30 audits each year. We could address a multitude of subjects and it is sometimes difficult to make a decision.