National Defence committee  I think the answer to that is yes, because it is a matter of degree, and as long as there is balance and risk and reward, fine. Industry has to be very accountable for its performance. I don't think there is any question about that. We simply ask for balance on the risk managemen

National Defence committee  I think it is important from two perspectives. From the procureal perspective, I think it is obvious, we can plan our head count, employment levels, we can plan our investments, people and technology, and then because we are prudent we discount it a little bit so that we don't ha

National Defence committee  I'd like to start by commenting on what you referred to in the U.S., which is the community of industrial capacity outside the bases. The Communications-Electronics Command in the U.S. is a good example, because it buys for many different parts of the U.S. military. It has spawne

National Defence committee  I think so.

National Defence committee  I'll start and then Tim can jump in. Nowhere have we advocated that we'd try to be everything our domestic customer needs. We don't build fighter airplanes in this country, for example; nor should we. In my view, we can't afford it. With the exception of the land vehicle capabil

National Defence committee  Obviously, this is something that we discuss at great length in the boardrooms, not just in terms of the Canadian market, but those of us who are exporters also look at similar settings in the U.S., the U.K., and elsewhere. At the end of the day, we have to make a judgment becaus

National Defence committee  It's true; and again, it's not unique to Canada. In the simplest of forms, time is money. Not every company has a bankroll sitting there to invest. There is a cost of money, the same as there would be if we went to mortgage our house. If you have a cost of money extended over a

National Defence committee  I'd try not to.

National Defence committee  Perhaps I may start and my colleagues will jump in. Again, I don't think there's a single answer. It depends on a set of circumstances. You talked earlier about the situation where you may have competition very early on in the process. Pick your R and D partner, if you will, gov

National Defence committee  It's never good enough, I think is the answer. We take responsibility for that as well. That's not something we can just throw back to our government colleagues. There is a body called DIAC, the Defence Industry Advisory Council. It's at the senior official level. It does meet

National Defence committee  My colleague here is asking me whether I want to repeat a black box story that I shared last night as an example of a response to your question. I'm not sure it's the right one, but I'll do it very briefly. It goes back to Mr. Hawn's earlier remarks that we have had an IRB polic

National Defence committee  I think the short answer to the question is yes. We anxiously await the emergence of the shipbuilding policy. We did contribute, in part, to a very detailed study and analysis that we did on the maritime industry. On the second part of your question, there is a relationship betw

National Defence committee  Yes, we're certainly aware of that, and would argue that it's a good thing to do. Any time we--

National Defence committee  Any time we can measure performance, either on the customer side or the supplier side, it can only benefit the system as a whole. So yes, it's a--

National Defence committee  We have been asked from time to time, through various venues, to comment on the process and the parameters for measuring progress, and so on. One of the challenges is where do you start to measure--before you start the program, when you're complete, when you have a problem, after