Public Accounts committee  First of all—and we've had those discussions before—our audit process for performance audits is very rigorous and risk based. We're trying to select the audits that will have the most impact on people. I just referred a few minutes ago to a concrete example that we just did, and

Public Accounts committee  We are talking about the economic increases of the past few years.

Public Accounts committee  I mentioned that, in 2011, when we reduced our budget, our computer platforms and tools were stable. However, since that time, the entire industry and all the suppliers' ways of doing things have evolved exponentially. For example, cloud computing did not exist in 2011. We could

Public Accounts committee  We needed to invest in all this. We have no choice but to carry out financial audits or mandates. The legislation requires us to do so. We don't have any flexibility in this area.

Public Accounts committee  It's difficult for me to speak of why. Mr. Ferguson, the former Auditor General, put forward his fully detailed business case. I think it's 15 pages long, or something like that. All of the details are there; the breakdown is there. They speak of the additional mandates we have.

Public Accounts committee  Again, I can't speak for others.

Public Accounts committee  We filed a convincing case. We filed a business case that is fully aligned and structured. I was there many times when the Auditor General got a bunch of people in his boardroom to have a fulsome discussion, challenging us, the same way he is challenging departments. A very rigor

Public Accounts committee  I would not say that we had not predicted it. All technology must eventually be updated. So it was predictable over a multi-year period.

Public Accounts committee  It would not have been responsible for us to keep the funding for all those years. We should have rather asked for it in a timely manner.

Public Accounts committee  I would say no. That was not really the amount we thought we would have to request. Technological equipment has a normal life cycle, but we are being asked to carry out additional mandates without additional funding being allocated to us. When it comes to the acceleration of tech

Public Accounts committee  If I understood your question correctly, we had done, on a voluntary basis, an exercise back in 2011 that led us to reduce our vote 1 by $6.7 million. Along with that, to be able to reduce the funding, we suggested that certain audit work was not needed anymore because it was the

Public Accounts committee  Yes. With the challenges we're facing, we can't keep doing 24 to 25 audits a year. Those will be reduced to 14—

Public Accounts committee  —for performance audits, because a significant part of our business is mandatory work. On the financial audit, the special exams, we have no choice. That's along with the fact, as we were talking earlier, that the IT aspect accelerated the challenge because of the new technology

Public Accounts committee  We're now facing that. Our colleagues in the rest of the industry reinvest and add to all of that. We can't. We don't have the money, unless we reduce the performance audits.

Public Accounts committee  During the 2011 strategic review—I think the committee had access to the letter that was submitted by the auditor general then—