National Defence Committee on Sept. 26th, 2023

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mrs. Kramp-Neuman.

We have Mr. Fillmore for the final five minutes for this round.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Tremendous thanks to the panellists for being here today.

I would like to ask questions of Mr. Foster and Mr. Fadden.

If I could, I'll start with you, General Foster. We've talked today about the fact that we're in a constantly evolving security landscape or threat landscape globally. Technology is rapidly evolving. We've seen this with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Ukraine's reliance on very current and leading-edge technologies that have helped it keep its toehold. As well, we heard from Mr. Fadden that advanced IT procurement needs to be very agile, because it's changing all the time.

I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on what the impacts of this rapidly changing landscape are on our procurement process now. What does it mean for our familiar defence procurement processes?

[Richard Foster]

I can give you an example. The tactical radios that we're exporting into Ukraine are better than what the current Canadian army is using in their vehicles, to the point where I think it starts to put our Canadian soldiers at risk in terms of their operational capability. I can't speak to exactly that, but that's my understanding.

I think the institution holds on to programs that are taking a long time to get through and are degrading our capability, because programs are five years behind where they were supposed to be, and they're not necessarily changing that paradigm or finding a faster solution to get the current equipment that they actually need.

I hope that answers your question.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you.

That leads into this question: What changes would you recommend to our procurement processes to accommodate the rapidly changing realities?

[Richard Foster]

I think they need to sit down with industry and identify the requirements they actually need to operate in a theatre and to look for off-the-shelf solutions. A lot of the other countries have already solved that problem. For example, the U.K. has moved quickly on procuring some of those tactical radios. I think aligning yourself with our western nations to make sure we're interoperable would help, as would letting go of legacy systems, taking that risk and saying that it's time to let that old capability go. It's time to rapidly adopt something new.

In terms of communication equipment, software changes happen probably every two to four years. Working with industry to keep current and to understand how that service and those software changes are going to happen so rapidly is important. Our traditional procurement of five to 10 years is just not going to keep up.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

It sounds like the advice is to not reinvent the wheel. Existing technologies already have the benefit of interoperability and so forth. That's good advice.

How should a country like Canada be finding that balance between solutions made in Canada, designed and built here, versus the off-the-shelf often foreign solutions?

[Richard Foster]

I'd like to address the ITB question a little bit, because I wrestle with that all the time. The problem with procurement is predictability and scope. If I go to my CEO and say, “You need to invest x million dollars in this country to start developing assembly lines for night vision equipment or radios”, he's going to ask, “What program am I supporting? When is it going to happen? How big is that program going to be?” If I tell him that I don't know, he's going to say, “Well, if you don't know, then I can't invest.”

The ITB program is designed to put an obligation on a company after they win a program, rather than incentivizing a company like mine to come in and start building assembly lines for night vision goggles. We're competing now with all the other countries—Australia, the U.K., Singapore, South Korea—that want us to put that same assembly capability for local content in their countries. Canada should get ahead and start to incentivize large companies like mine to invest in Canada ahead of a program, rather than after the fact.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Halifax, NS]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, MP Fillmore.

Colleagues, I want to thank you for your co-operation and your discipline. We have 25 minutes left to get in a 25-minute round, so if we maintain our co-operation and discipline, we should be able to do it.

Mr. Kelly, you have five minutes, please.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Thank you.

General Foster, in your opening remarks you said that Canada should not water down criteria in order to create competition where none would otherwise exist. Does this practice happen currently?

[Richard Foster]

It is my belief that it does, yes.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Do you have some examples that you could share with the committee so that we would be able to comment on that in our report?

If another witness has an example that they could share, that would be fine too.

Go ahead.

[Richard Shimooka]

There's the future fighter capability project. It was clear right from the start, from 2010, that this should not have been a contract by DND and, at the time, PWGSC. Coming into a new government, obviously there were political issues with it, but the same outcome happened, and you saw a sort of reweighting in order to have a competition. If you look at every single one of our allies, at Finland and all the other countries that bought the F-35, it's clear that it was a one-off.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

That actually goes to the point that Mr. Fadden made about politics and opposition politics and how this is weighed in elections. There's a decades-long history of this. I was in my early formative years of political activism when a government opposed a helicopter contract. Canadians, though, have become used to this over the decades.

To the point that you made, is there now more risk, maybe, in the dithering that goes on over years and years and years, sometimes decades, to produce equipment? Is there even more political risk or embarrassment risk around that than just getting on with something and maybe making a mistake and taking a hit in the short term politically?

[Richard Fadden]

I was going to try, as well, but I'll let you go first.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Go ahead, either of you.

[Richard Foster]

In my remarks, I talked about avoiding developmental programs. Often they will make a competition by introducing a program that is more developmental than, perhaps, another program, not understanding what risks and costs would be associated with it. They end up choosing, perhaps, a program that requires more development after the fact and does not deliver. You can think of many of those types of programs. The MHP, the maritime helicopter program, was clearly a developmental program paid for in a fixed-price contract. That was asking for trouble right from the beginning—when you look at it in retrospect.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay.

Mr. Shimooka, you said in your opening remarks that many 1980s systems that are still in use are rusting out. Can you identify some of the specific ones, identify where we have systems that have been in place for decades that most urgently need to be replaced?

[Richard Shimooka]

Certainly. I always look at the CF-18s. These aircraft are—

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay, we talked about that.

[Richard Shimooka]

Yes, absolutely. There are the CF-18s. You can look at the CP-140. You can look at our frigates. There are now reports that one of them is unable to operate. It's across the board. Our systems basically....

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

It's the big-ticket ones you're talking about, then.

[Richard Shimooka]

Yes, absolutely, but it's also at the lower levels too. We can talk about radios, trucks, everything. Across the forces, you can see it.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay.

In your remarks, you also talked about the UAV project 17 years in. Could you explain why this particular project has been problematic? Could you describe what the...?