National Defence committee  I'm not entirely sure about the infrastructure side. I know the government has certainly put forward several programs to build out the infrastructure of Bagotville and Cold Lake. I think the bigger issue with a transition toward the F-35 is the personnel side. As we see, the RC

National Defence committee  Certainly. I always look at the CF-18s. These aircraft are—

National Defence committee  Yes, absolutely. There are the CF-18s. You can look at the CP-140. You can look at our frigates. There are now reports that one of them is unable to operate. It's across the board. Our systems basically....

National Defence committee  Yes, absolutely, but it's also at the lower levels too. We can talk about radios, trucks, everything. Across the forces, you can see it.

National Defence committee  Certainly there have been differing changes in its requirements. It started, basically, at the cusp of Afghanistan. There was a requirement then. Then we needed an urgent operational request, so we brought in two temporary systems to operate there. Since then, there have been dif

National Defence committee  There's the future fighter capability project. It was clear right from the start, from 2010, that this should not have been a contract by DND and, at the time, PWGSC. Coming into a new government, obviously there were political issues with it, but the same outcome happened, and y

National Defence committee  It's both. Certainly, compared to all of our allies, the ITB program is a bit of an anachronism. None has maintained such a requirement to have 100% offsets, partly because they've found, especially in Australia's case and for several European allies, that these do slow down the

National Defence committee  I think it depends on the case and what program you're talking about. There is certainly an argument to be made that there's an opportunity cost when you look at these programs. It's that if we invested the same amount of money, the extra costs that we're spending on a program, a

National Defence committee  Certainly every program that has bought above a certain threshold has the ITB value proposition element and requires a 100% offset. In any case, that is going to occur for all of these programs. I think we need to have a very clear understanding of what's required for the future

National Defence committee  Thank you for allowing me to speak to the committee today. For my remarks, I would like to focus a bit on defence procurement in the past, the present and the future. Looking back, one of the most difficult periods for the Canadian Armed Forces in recent history was the late 1

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think it depends on the topic. I definitely believe that in some areas incremental change isn't sufficient, and in some areas it is. It's much more extensive than the time I have here to start discussing. Certainly, in many areas incremental change is not, and we must go much f

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I really appreciate it, especially coming after the discussion on emergency preparedness, because I think that flows really well from the comments of the grand chief. Certainly I think they're all cut from the same cloth in the sense that the local, indigenous communities have th

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. In 2004, there was a process to replace the Buffalo. There was only one aircraft identified by the Royal Canadian Air Force to replace the Buffalo at the time, and that was the C-27J. It was basically scrapped at the time, because they wanted a competition. The revised com

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Absolutely. Many of them are specific to the north. There are icing system issues and issues with power to weight. The likeliest problems have to do with its rough field-handling capabilities, which really restrict its ability to operate in the north from unprepared strips, grave

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Absolutely. I think this is probably one of the areas where there should be little disagreement. You can have disagreements over the security risks posed by Russia, China or whatever, but providing search and rescue is probably one of the most common public goods that everybody w