National Defence committee  In fact the minister announced that it would not be looked upon with favour this year.

National Defence committee  Of course. I don't know what the answer to that is. I don't know whether we will see significant things come up in the supplementary (C) that would allow the third-quarter financials and the fourth-quarter financials to show that the gap between availability and actual is going to continue.

National Defence committee  There is, of course, the response that has been made, which is accurate. Some of the lapsed funds in fact are not lost to the department; they are re-profiled into a future year. That money in fact still stays available, but you don't get it now. Of course that means you're running into inflation in the general economy, in that a dollar now is worth more than a dollar five years from now.

National Defence committee  It can work. There have been the allowable budgetary carry-forwards, but certainly there is still what is permanently lapsed in this past period, and that was a clear $1 billion that went down the tubes.

National Defence committee  Let me give you one instance from my own experience. Earlier this summer I was invited by the Department of National Defence to attend Operation Nanook, which at that point was going on in Resolute Bay in the high Arctic. I arrived at Trenton, boarded the C-17, and off we went to Resolute.

National Defence committee  I think that you really require somebody from the ADM finance side of the department to give you a comprehensive answer to that. It's all part of the government budgetary cycle where you start, basically, in the previous summer. You call for, then, the responses to the Department of Finance as to what various departments will want.

National Defence committee  I would agree with that. I would add that during the period of the Cold War, certainly at the front end of the Cold War, the Canadian reputation continued at a very high standard. Even later on, when the capital equipment was beginning to erode, the European forces viewed the Canadian Forces as particularly well trained and effective and posed the question: isn't it too bad they are not better equipped?

National Defence committee  The increase in funding started with the Martin administration. Since then, it's been continued by the present government. The ability to access capital investment money has made an enormous difference. We've had the acquisition of the C–17s—the magnificent, heavy, long-range transport—the acquisition of medium-lift helicopters, the acquisition of modern lightweight titanium howitzers for the army.

National Defence committee  Let me refer to two scenarios. One is our involvement in Afghanistan, where the Canadian Forces earned a high reputation. It is a view expressed by our partners or other members of our alliances that Canada can now be counted on to deploy well-trained, effective troops who will go in and do the job as well as or better than anybody else.

National Defence committee  The question is always what is meant by the term “more nimble”. In my experience, “more nimble” is usually the phrase used for “weakly armed and not very effective”. If you are looking at, then, withdrawing, essentially, from the world and withdrawing our expeditionary activities, this leads you to a change in the overall strategy, which can perhaps be dealt with through the limited and decreased amount of capital funding.

National Defence committee  Our concern is that the price of that aircraft is still unknown. We have no more access to the internal documents than anybody else in the industry has, but the numbers that are thrown around are ones that give some discomfort to us, in that we may again be looking at a sticker-shock case.

National Defence committee  If you examine the pattern of defence expenditure growth during the period of the Canada First defence strategy, we've seen some very substantial increases that were made through the supplementary estimates rather than through the main estimates. So they were not immediately as apparent as main estimates figures.

National Defence committee  Thank you, General Evraire. Recent RAND Corporation studies done for the United States Navy and United States Air Force have suggested that increases in combat systems capabilities have led to defence cost increases in the order of 9% to 12% annually. On the air side, these increases in costs have generated new capabilities, such as those found in fifth-generation fighter aircraft—for example, the F-22 and F-35 in the United States; the Russian T-5O, sometimes referred as the PAK FA; and finally the F-20, which is a Chinese aircraft.

Foreign Affairs committee  There is certainly no question that a critical problem in Afghanistan is the corruption of public officials. And the reason you have the corruption of public officials is the availability of money to corrupt them. That money is coming predominantly from the drug traffickers. These are large quantities of money that could be used to buy off an official, and as a consequence create a situation in which the local populace sees quite clearly that officials who should be working on their behalf are working on their own behalf.

Foreign Affairs committee  Perhaps I could respond first of all to your comment about the lack of media attention. Since I have occasional contact with the media, I think perhaps I could comment on this. I covered the first Gulf War with CTV, and I also then covered with CTV the Balkan crisis. One thing that was really interesting to me was the way in which the attention span of the media had shortened in that period of time.