I think there are a couple of things. Trying to understand how we can add more value is something that we are very much focused on. I think Monsieur Deltell rightly pointed out the cost of each of our audits. The way I keep putting it to people is that if departments had to pay for our audits, and if I went to a deputy minister in a department and said, “Here's your invoice for $1.4 million”, how many deputy ministers would say, “Wait a minute, I'll get my cheque book”? How many deputy ministers would say, “Well, wait a minute, I don't think I got $1.4 million worth of value out of that.” I think that's a question that we need to ask ourselves on every one of the audits we do.
In terms of getting more efficiency and more value on our performance audits, it's very much about being able to identify where things need to be improved in an organization, and helping other organizations make those improvements. I think in our financial audit, we need to find ways of spending less time on getting the audit opinion out, while still respecting auditing standards. The only financial statement audit that you people are probably aware of is the one that we do of the Government of Canada. As I said in my opening statement, we do 89 financial statement audits.
We need to reduce the amount of time we spend on just getting to that two-page audit opinion on financial statements, and we need to find ways to spend more time on internal controls or other ways to add value in our financial audit.
I think there are still lots of opportunities for us to be able to increase our value proposition.