The work that the member asked us to do was relative to Canada Post, and our response was that we have a special examination of Canada Post scheduled, as per normal. We will be able to start that work some time later in 2016, so it fit within our normal process. We are required under the Financial Administration Act to do a special examination of the crown corporations once every 10 years, so that would fit within our schedule. We had a scheduled special examination of Canada Post in the works. I just want to make sure you understand what that whole conversation was about.
In terms of how we select audits, we do what we refer to as a strategic audit planning process. During that process we have a lot of conversations with departments and organizations, and we try to identify the risks that those organizations face and assess those risks to determine if there is something we should audit, relative to those risks, and bring to the attention of Parliament.
We will from time to time, as mentioned in the previous conversation about flexibility, react or try to react if there is a particular topic we feel needs to be audited and needs to be audited quickly. The problem with that is that we can't drop everything we are doing. We always have work under way, work that we have to finish. It takes some time to prepare an audit. The other thing is that for us to do a performance audit or a special exam from start to finish usually takes about 18 months. So if people are looking for a particular issue to be looked at right now to try to get to that fulsome understanding within a short period of time, we're not geared up to do that.
We will react from time to time, but we will react within our normal process for selecting and conducting audits. When we select something, even if we've decided to put it on our schedule, we still have to do the planning, execution, and reporting on it, and that whole process will usually take us 18 months.