Thanks, Mr. Chair.
Gentlemen, thanks for joining us.
We're very, very short of time, so I'm going to ask you to provide some information to the committee and email it back to us.
To start with, I'd like to hear from all of you regarding our design costs—basic design, function design, production design—for these projects, especially for the icebreakers, compared to benchmarking to international standards. I'd also like to get information from you on our productivity at the two main shipyards versus international benchmarking, please.
Please provide that to the committee, especially on the productivity.
Mr. Smith stated that costs will come down on long series ships.
I want to follow up on Mr. Paul-Hus' comments. We know that as we build more and more of a specific type of ship, the productivity is supposed to increase quite dramatically, exponentially, as the crew learns more. We've seen that with the AOPS. Despite the fact that they added a sixth ship, the cost has gone up. Now, with the Coast Guard ships going up massively, instead of being perhaps around the $200-million mark, it's going up to $750 million.
Mr. Smith commented that it's a different design. Heavy, heavy costs are being taken off of the AOPS, which is the weapon system.
I'd like a straightforward answer as to why the cost is probably tripling, not just doubling but tripling, because the productivity and knowledge on building those ships will be so high by the time you get to the seventh and eighth ships. Why is the cost basically tripling?
I think it was South Africa or Spain that built a similar ship this year for just $170 million.
Are we just sticking with...? As Mr. Smith said, it's basically just the hull that's the same. Have we made a mistake in picking a bad design and then building around it that is costing us so much money?