National Defence committee  As you might expect Mr. Chair, because of our capital acquisitions and the sources of those acquisitions, many of them are foreign. Moreover, because of foreign military arrangements, when we collaborate with allies we have a significant number of transactions every year denomina

National Defence committee  I would add there is a downside, because sometimes the dollar depreciates against the U.S. dollar. So we bear the downside risk as well.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, with respect to the figures, I can't comment on the RCMP data. I would say that the administrative expenses associated with the reserve force pension plan are in fact a function of the remedial efforts we're making to process this backlog. And when the plan reaches a s

Public Accounts committee  Not a problem. I was simply suggesting that as you were reading the data from the public accounts and referring to the plan's income, I also heard you refer to contributions. I did not hear you refer to the investment income as well. So I was simply pointing out that as you wer

Public Accounts committee  The figures I gave you earlier referred to the investment income. The administrative fees incurred by PSPIB are included in the administrative fees that you cited.

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I'll have to take the question on notice. I believe, sir, you said that pertains to the 2007-08 fiscal year. Frankly, I don't have the ability to respond to your question as I sit here. But we will certainly look into it and provide you with a response.

Public Accounts committee  As Admiral Smith alluded to earlier, the original plan was to resume financial audits by the Auditor General at the end of this fiscal year. In discussing the issue with the Office of the Auditor General, as there remains sufficient doubt around the liability associated with the

Public Accounts committee  Very quickly, Mr. Chair, there is a very high attrition rate among this staff. They're at relatively low classifications, and the work, as you can imagine, is highly labour intensive. People tend to move on quickly, so there is a very high attrition rate. We are fully confident

National Defence committee  I'm not sure I could in fact add anything to the minister's comments. I would say 2010-11 was an extraordinary year. Of that $2.4 billion in appropriations that went unspent, about $1.5 billion was reprofiled to future years for DND's use. Most of that was attributable to the fa

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Deputy. Mr. Chair, as the deputy has pointed out, the PBO used this parametric modelling, which is normally reserved for projects in the conceptual stage of development where there's very little cost data available to do a bottom-up analysis. In doing so, the PBO es

Public Accounts committee  No, Mr. Chair. In this case the PBO's estimate was based on the variant that Canada is going to buy but on a point on the production and learning curve far behind where we actually are today. As a consequence, that number was significantly overstated from the SAR 2009 acquisition

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, there is a fair amount of historical data that demonstrates that at the very early conceptual stages of an aircraft there is a correlation between the anticipated weight of the aircraft and a rough order-of-magnitude estimate of its cost. That is the basis upon which t

Public Accounts committee  No, sir, I don't have that figure for the F-18. What I could affirm, though, is that the combination of those cost factors you've just identified are those costs that form the costs in this $10 billion in operating costs.

Public Accounts committee  Sir, I wouldn't characterize them as sunk costs. I would categorize them as ongoing operating costs—a cost of operating a fighter fleet.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Minister. Mr. Chair, this severance payment really has nothing to do with members of the military coming and leaving. As you may recall, the government announced it would retire its severance liability for civilians by offering civilians the opportunity to take cash