National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, I think I understand your question. In terms of the requirements for the new icebreakers when they eventually come—and the government does intend to fund them—we would look at it with our partners. So as part of that, when we develop our requirements, like the navy doe

National Defence committee  I do remember the number now off the top of my head. Certainly with the polar, it has a capacity for approximately 100 personnel on board. In fact, the crew is only about half of that. That extra berth availability on board is meant for a variety of missions, whether it's for sci

National Defence committee  Certainly what I would say is that we've committed to ensure that the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent and the rest of the fleet is in...and we put money into it in order to extend their lives until they're renewed. I don't have the number with me, but I think we can commit to getting th

National Defence committee  The AOPS project is obviously a project on which we've been working closely with the Royal Canadian Navy. I would say in particular that we've had recent exchanges in the Arctic, where we have Royal Canadian Navy navigation officers who come on board our vessels and work with our

National Defence committee  Certainly with respect to the current light helicopter contract that was announced earlier on in the year, we are currently in a contract with Bell Helicopter in Montreal to produce the 15 light helicopters that we contracted for. They're in production. They absolutely meet our r

National Defence committee  No, I think you would have seen that, following the contracting, there was a separate process to look at our medium helicopters. That process is ongoing, and that announcement has not yet been made.

National Defence committee  Further to that, in order to get that longer season, both at the start of the season and at the end of the season...and we're talking about three months in total, about a month and a half at either end. That's the time period we're looking at in terms of a mission for that partic

National Defence committee  Essentially it provides us with exactly what you would think. It provides us with a refuelling capability in the Arctic. Normally we have done it in the past through barges, through ship-to-ship transfers. This provides just another capability or a solution for the Arctic in term

National Defence committee  I could compare it with our present fleet, which might give you a good sense of what we're comparing it with. There are comparisons with a number of other icebreakers around the world, but sometimes, because of the age of the vessels and when they were built, some of the classifi

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for the question. Yes, the Auditor General, through the Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, did note those particular statistics that you outlined there. I think it's very important though to say that we are meeting our level of servi

National Defence committee  Yes. Without getting into the details of all the actual interdictions that have occurred, I would say that most of the interdictions with personnel, vessels on the water, and so on, have primarily been around Criminal Code actions. I certainly don't have all the details of those

National Defence committee  It could be something like that. Certainly smuggling is something—

National Defence committee  With respect to interoperability.... We can take them one at a time, but they all have very similar themes in terms of what we're working on. I would say that one of the best examples with respect to the Canadian Armed Forces in terms of interoperability is one of the systems th

National Defence committee  I think I would add to what Madame Bouffard has said. Certainly in the search and rescue area, our key area where we actually work together is in the joint rescue coordination centres in Halifax, Trenton, and Victoria, where we are actually co-located with Canadian Armed Forces p

National Defence committee  It's a 50-calibre machine gun as well as nine-millimetre handguns.