Thank you, Chair. This was really provoked because of the economic situation. If it had not been for the economic crisis, we would have come to Parliament to ask for additional funds. When we did our initial budget, if we had kept the level of work that had been initially planned and given new mandates and new responsibilities, we would have come back to Parliament to ask for somewhere between $3 million and $4 million extra. We made the decision not to do that. Because so much of our work is statutory, the only way we could manage that was to reduce the number of performance audits. We had very long discussions about whether we should do that or not, and we believe that the level of activity is still appropriate, that we're not at the point where we are not fulfilling our mandate. At 25 audits in two reports...because then to go to three, we aren't getting all the savings we could get, because to do tablings is an expensive process as well. To be quite honest, given elections and prorogations and disruptions that occurred in the parliamentary calendar, I'm sure the chair will tell you, and other members know, that there has been a period of time when we've had a backlog of reports that have not had hearings. So we're hopeful that this will kind of resolve a few issues going forward.
The planning is for two years. We are planning now the audits out. We're starting to look at November 2011. My mandate ends May 2011, so I really can't commit. We'll plan, but the next auditor general will have to decide whether this is the model that he or she wishes to maintain or whether he or she wishes to augment the number of reports. It will depend as well on the reaction from this committee: does this committee want more audits, which would then require us to go to more tablings, back to the three tablings a year?