When we are determining our work plan, we start with the financial statement audits that we do, because we have to do those and we have to do them every year. They are regular work, so the first part of our budget is carved out to complete those financial statement audits.
Then we also have a mandate that requires us to do the special exams on crown corporations. For most crown corporations, we have to do a special exam at least once every 10 years. We have a schedule that looks out over a 10-year period for each crown corporation as to when we have to do the special examination. That's the second piece that would come into our budget.
Meeting those legislative requirements to do financial audits and special examinations would be the first things we take into account. With regard to the balance that's left over, that's what we can devote to our performance audits.
When we are deciding what we can do in terms of performance audits, we do risk assessments of various government-type activities. We do risk assessments to decide what areas we should be doing performance audits in, and we settle on that. For planning purposes, we try to do that over about a three-year period. We look out over three years to say maybe not exactly what the subject of the performance audit will be in each of those three years but in what area it will be. We do that type of planning.
Very much, our planning is focused on those three activities: financial statement audits, special examinations, and then the performance audits.