National Defence committee  Thank you again for the question. My sense is that the ongoing defence capability plan discussions that are proceeding at this point in time are going to examine the needs of the Canadian Forces to determine where the remaining moneys we have are going to be spent. Essentially, unlike some programs—for instance, the C-17 program, which came with dollars specifically identified for it—search and rescue did not.

National Defence committee  DART is another mission, absolutely. Essentially, it allows the Government of Canada the flexibility and the responsiveness to be able to say, “We want to be among the first countries to get our aid in, as opposed to among the last.”

National Defence committee  In the case of the non-combatant evacuation operations, absolutely, or not to have to depend on another country, because that is also something we've done. Possibly, in some parts of the world, we would do that as well. If it's close to Australia, the Australians would help and have helped us out.

National Defence committee  You could characterize it that way.

National Defence committee  It's about three times as many as you could bring in using a C-130. In fact, this is one of the uses we are likely going to make of this aircraft, especially as we go through the transition. As the older C-130s die and the new C-130s come on line, there is going to be a period of time of some fragility.

National Defence committee  Without doubt, the process begins with identifying the capability requirements. I can't say we don't look at aircraft, because if we identify a requirement and then we look over the fence and see there's absolutely nothing out there that can get the job done, that causes us to go back and look at our requirements again.

National Defence committee  The requirements business is focused on capability right from the outset.

National Defence committee  Absolutely. Neither of these two aircraft perform the strategic mission we're looking for. The Polaris does three things for us reasonably well: it moves people; it very shortly will become a strategic air-to-air refueler for us; and it also moves palletized cargo of certain sizes, but it does not have a roll-on roll-off capability and it cannot take loads into....

National Defence committee  I spoke a few minutes ago about representative loads and representative distances. We look at places in the world we're likely to be over the next 15 to 20 years. Africa, Asia, and southwest Asia are certainly among those. That caused us to say, if we're going to operate into those areas, what makes sense from our perspective?

National Defence committee  Leasing gives you certain things, but it also leaves you with some deficiencies. There are some things that leasing will not do for you. One of the missions we want to be able to use this aircraft for is the non-combatant evacuation operation to evacuate Canadians from parts of the world where we have large numbers of them.

National Defence committee  Absolutely not.

National Defence committee  We have in fact been using a combination of C-130 Hercules aircraft and Buffalo aircraft for search and rescue for as long as I've been in the military, which is coming on 38 years now. Essentially, we had the aircraft, therefore we used them. Certainly the project that was initiated a while back, to come up with a unique fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft, was designed in fact to give us perhaps a more efficient way of doing that.

National Defence committee  Absolutely. As a requirement, the requirements as set...the government involvement is in the priority setting. If they hadn't brought the money for the C-17 we probably wouldn't have bought it, but because the resources were made available.... But when it comes to the requirement, the requirement is ours, completely 100% ours.

National Defence committee  I can probably give you information on the first two questions. On the last one, unfortunately, I don't have the expertise in that particular area. When it comes to the process whereby we set requirements, there is an ongoing process. It starts at certain levels, and over time, it bubbles its way up to the top.

National Defence committee  That's a good question. In fact, as I said, requirements are built into the system and they come up, but they're not really completed until they get to the top. In fact, it was before it got to me that we began to challenge the idea that it made a lot of sense for us to buy a strategic lifter that could only lift one LAV III.