Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Madam Fraser, Mr. McRoberts, and Ms. Loschiuk, thank you very much for being here.
I have a lot of questions, but I'll just stick to a couple.
First, I sincerely hope you look at the strategic airlift, because we moved our reduction capabilities from six planes to four, with a loss of over $440 million to the Canadian taxpayer, by virtue of the fact that we chose to purchase rather than lease, which would have given us larger capabilities at a better price.
My question to you is on defence acquisition. Mr. Williams gave us an intriguing proposal. He said we should have a “Defence Procurement Canada”. From your perspective, which is unusual and unique, would that work to facilitate and streamline the defence acquisition cycle you mentioned? How would that work with other procurement abilities in the government at large?
Second, do you think service contracts should be rolled into the purchase of the particular assets? For example, if we purchase more submarines, the group we purchase them from would also be responsible for the service contract, which they could hive off somewhere else. That way we would connect the responsibility for the functioning of that asset to the group that actually made the asset.
Thank you.