Public Accounts Committee on March 30th, 2010

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to talk about the way you make decisions. I would like clarifications about the way that you plan procurement.

With regard to planning military procurement, if we refer to the budget, we are talking about $490 billion over the next 20 years. Is this plan based on a foreign affairs and defence policy?

[Robert Fonberg]

With $490 billion over 20 years, just to clarify, roughly I believe half of that, a little bit less, probably, Mr. Chairman, is actually capital procurement. If you look at the Canada First defence strategy, the overall kind of objective of that, which includes the $490 billion, is to ensure the Canadian Forces have the right equipment, the right training, the right infrastructure, and are manned properly to get out the door to deal with three core roles, and I believe enduring roles. One is excellence at home to deal with issues and challenges at home. The second one is partnership on the continent and demonstrating excellence in that partnership. The third one is projecting global leadership.

How precisely the government frames those issues in terms of a specific foreign policy I think is open to the government of the day. The challenge and the express intended objective of the Canada First defence strategy and the $490 billion is really to ensure that whatever the foreign policy happens to be, for a wide range--

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I understand what...

[Robert Fonberg]

Just to finish, for a wide range of explicit commitments, the Canadian Forces are ready to go. We cannot do everything, but clearly we will be ready to do many things.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I understand, but there really does not exist an official document where everything is set out.

[Robert Fonberg]

I'm not sure I understand the question, Mr. Chairman. We have the Canada First defence strategy, which lays out a 20-year plan and $490 billion of proposed spending.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Since my colleague sits on the Standing Committee on National Defence, perhaps he would like to ask you this question. So I will set that issue aside. You have provided a response which will probably allow him to ask his question.

I will address the issue from a different angle.

I would like to know what steps led you to ultimately make the decision not to follow the guide on military equipment procurement with regard to the contracts identified by the Auditor General.

[Robert Fonberg]

Let me put an answer and clarify whether I've understood the question.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

In fact, I would like to know how this happened.

[Robert Fonberg]

I think it comes back to the point the general made, which was that something happened in the field. There was a decision made by the senior commanders working with the ADM Materiel that equipment was actually needed. It was needed more quickly than the actual project approval guide would have allowed, in order to go through the four phases of procurement, so the decision was made to manage the risks associated with the procurement process and to get on with it faster than what the project approval guide actually would have set out.

I don't know if that answers your question, but that's kind of how it happened. There was an urgent requirement. There were risks in the field. Decisions were made to manage those risks, recognizing that we did not have the time to do the full documentation for those acquisitions.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Could you provide us with the briefing note that came out following the incident? It would explain the proposed decisions and what ultimately led to the military equipment procurement. It seems that this was the trigger.

[Robert Fonberg]

I think we can probably write it down.

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I do not need clarifications. I would simply ask that the committee be provided with the briefing note prepared by the department. Whenever such an event occurs, the department prepares a briefing note.

Could you provide us with this note, so that we can understand the decision-making mechanism and also understand which department intervened and when? Thank you.

My colleague would like to ask a question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Is the request understood?

[LGen A. Leslie]

The member is asking for a copy of the briefing notes in order to determine, with regard to the four projects, what led to the outcome we are discussing today. The notes were sent to the minister through the chain of command.

Is that correct, Madam?

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Yes, thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Is two weeks' time fine?

[Robert Fonberg]

Yes, I think two weeks would be fine.

I would just like to clarify precisely what is being asked for. The member has asked for an understanding or an explanation of how the decision was actually made and what went into it. It's not clear to me that there's a briefing note that actually explains it and says, “We have decided that we need this equipment, Mr. Minister, and please decide”.

My understanding of what the member was asking for was an explanation of how we go through this process, from the time an issue is identified to how it works its way through the department, to how it works through the ADM Materiel, and finally, to how the minister is kept informed. I would suggest there's not a single moment when the minister gets a briefing note that says, “Please approve this”. There is a dialogue that goes on over a period of time, and the minister is informed throughout that whole period of time.

In two weeks we could probably put together a decent explanation of how a scenario would work.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Is that fine?

[Meili Faille, Bloc, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

If two weeks is insufficient for the documents to be collected, we could grant additional time. However, I really do want to obtain the documents and not a text.

[Robert Fonberg]

It is more than possible.

[The Chair, Liberal, Shawn Murphy]

Thank you very much. We may have time after, Madame Faille, but we're moving now to Mr. Shipley.

Mr. Shipley, five minutes.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you, and thank you, witnesses, for being a part of today's review of the Auditor General.

First of all, I want to say to the lieutenant-general, to your troops, and to the troops over there another thank you, not just from me but I think from all Canadians, for putting forward the Canada First defence strategy. I think someone mentioned earlier that over the years we've been involved in many countries. Most of those countries have not been as it is in Afghanistan, where it is actually a full war, but they have been peacekeeping missions, even though they maybe were not, and maybe our people were not as fully trained and equipped and what have you as they should have been.

I want to recognize everyone for having their feet on the ground. The complexities...the incredible responsibility that individuals must have when they see things that need to be enhanced, processes that likely need to be improved, and yet the time to protect our men and women, in my mind, falls a little behind the process. It's really about getting the job done. I think you've done some of that. I believe now there may have been some processes that were not in place or followed. I can't speak to why they weren't in place, but the reality is, the important part is, that you took action. The action is about protecting our people who are over there protecting Canada.

It makes it interesting. When you see something happening...we've got equipment, and you're finding that changes need to be made to the equipment in terms of making it safer. How do you go about that? Is it because you know there's the equipment or the addition of the protective materials or whatever? It's out there, you don't have it, and you've got to find it because somebody else has it. Or is there a time when our minds say they're not sure we've got the research from the manufacturers to build it yet? How does that work? When you say we need this or we need to do better with it, how do you get it and get some of it in place so quickly?

[Dan Ross]

Thank you, sir, for that question.

That's not an easy question to answer. A large part of that comes from the commanders on the ground and the troops on the ground: the commander of the Expeditionary Command; the commander of the Special Operations Command; the Forces Command. General Leslie, who visits every one of the rotations of his troops into Afghanistan--and I've accompanied him several times--went from top to bottom and talked to soldiers, to understand what's working, what isn't working. So there's a huge feedback loop there.

The other area I would mention specifically is testing. We're working with our science and technology organization, Defence Research and Development Canada. We have destructively tested all our equipment. For example, we acquired the Nyala, the RG-31. We destructively destroyed a Nyala because we wanted to understand specifically what protection levels it would deliver against a roadside bomb, a mine, or a large IED. We did find vulnerabilities and we made changes to the Nyala to make it even better. Those Nyalas have performed precisely in a parallel way to our test parameters. We knew how much TNT with high velocity fragments it took to penetrate a Nyala. There's an enormous amount of work.

Ten years ago, National Defence wasn't doing actual technical destructive testing on armoured vehicles. We started that aggressively in January 2006, when Glyn Berry was killed in a G-wagon. At that point, we said we need to know what happens to our LAVs, our Coyotes, our Bisons, our G-wagons, all logistics vehicles. The only one that we didn't destructive test was the existing heavy logistics vehicle that's in service because we felt it would just be vaporized by a large IED, so there was no point in wasting a vehicle. We proceeded immediately with the AHSVS project that was part of the Auditor General's audit.

I don't know if that helps.

[Bev Shipley, Conservative, Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, ON]

Thank you, sir.