National Defence committee  I think a partial answer, Mr. Chairman, is that it is a standard management technique to set objectives that you then prod your people to try to meet. Certainly, my colleagues and I at this table use these objectives in order to poke and prod away at our colleagues in the departm

National Defence committee  Mr. Chairman, as the government did announce in the recent Speech from the Throne, consideration has been given to developing a revised Canada First defence strategy. The department has pulled together some recommendations to the government. Again, Mr. Chairman, in long-standing

National Defence committee  I'm sorry.

National Defence committee  Thank you. I think in order to understand why we haven't met our target, it's important to understand that DND is one of a significant number of other players that operate on the procurement side. We work with Public Works. Industry Canada has a role. Treasury Board often has a

National Defence committee  Mr. Chairman, could I ask Mr. Lindsey to answer?

National Defence committee  By way of a bit of background, Mr. Chair, you'll be aware that it was decided some time ago that the non-secure, beneath the top secret level communications capacity of the Government of Canada, will be centralized in Shared Services Canada. We have an ongoing program, beyond wha

National Defence committee  Can Mr. Pitfield answer, Mr. Chairman?

National Defence committee  Admiral Finn.

National Defence committee  Fundamentally, I don't think so, Mr. Chairman. What we're trying to do, and as I think Admiral Norman said, is that we are using the assets that we have now and we're prioritizing their tasking. The frigates are coming off-line now, as the minister intimated earlier. We now have

National Defence committee  Mr. Chairman, I wonder if I could ask Mr. Pitfield to answer. He's the assistant deputy minister responsible for this area.

National Defence committee  Let me start, Mr. Chairman. You're quite right that the Canadian Armed Forces is one of the largest holders of infrastructure in the country. Quite honestly, we could probably allocate more money on an ongoing basis to this function. There are limited capabilities and there's a l

National Defence committee  Mr. Chairman, I understand the House and its committees have a long-standing tradition whereby officials aren't asked to contradict their ministers.

National Defence committee  I think if the chief operating officer of any institution, including I bet the chair, were given the opportunity to acquire more money, be it for travel, research. or whatever, he or she would be delighted. Could we use more? We absolutely could, but with the adjustments that w

National Defence committee  —Arctic patrol ships. When the government made the initial announcement they said they would try to obtain up to a certain amount. In order to provide for increased costs and whatnot, our current planning, in working with our industry counterparts, is to get as many of these vess

National Defence committee  Mr. Chairman, forgive me for correcting you, but I don't think you're referring to the frigates. The frigates are the modernization program. You were probably referring to the—