National Defence committee  Correct.

National Defence committee  It's a member of NATO.

National Defence committee  It was a mistake on my part.

National Defence committee  The European Union is moving toward rebuilding the offsets.

National Defence committee  What I've referred to is not quite wish lists, but the structure of the procurement.

National Defence committee  My picture has four boxes. There are other bodies, of course, but the main bodies are Treasury Board, Defence, Industry, and PWGSC. You are coordinating, and that's an improvement, but the fundamental problem is there. Some of our allies removed the dividing boxes and said, “Ok

National Defence committee  With somebody; one body is responsible.

National Defence committee  We can at least have a discussion. We're not having the discussion. It's the first time in a major forum that I'm able to say we have to have a discussion. The Brits, the Australians, and many other Europeans moved in that direction. The Americans pretty much do it, but they have

National Defence committee  For national champions, it matters a great deal in the case of Great Britain. What they did in the procurement of some items.... The big British company—remind me—the huge one, the second-biggest company in world....

National Defence committee  Yes, BAE Systems. For example, they have.... I recently wrote a report on that. We have the munitions supply program. It's an utterly inefficient program that we have. What the Brits did was to say, “BAE Systems, you manage this”, because there you trade off security, security of

National Defence committee  The first batch of acquisitions was bought during the Afghanistan war. We used the national security exception. That means we removed the checks and balances provided by Industry Canada. Are there possibilities we can do it in the country? We just bypass. In fact, in the case of

National Defence committee  We were just talking about that before the meeting. The major defence projects—as was mentioned, there were 10 or 12—are very important projects. We are not talking about buying computers or soap, we are buying major things. If Public Works and Government Services Canada staff ar

National Defence committee  Is it the same question?

National Defence committee  The secretariat, which will have to look after procurement, will certainly improve things slightly because we are talking about a new coordinating institution that was not there before. In that sense, there will be an improvement, but the fundamental issue remains the same. If yo

National Defence committee  I am disputing that. Similarly, if somebody tells us that Australia is spending 2% and we're spending 1%, is it another dark age? The argument is that the amount of money we have to spend on defence is determined by various factors, two of which, the most important, are the threa