Evidence of meeting #11 for Government Operations and Estimates in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was williams.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
Thank you, all, for your testimony.
We know Canada's men and women in the armed forces deserve the best equipment and support possible to carry out the difficult and dangerous work we continue to ask them to do.
Maybe Mr. Perry can start. Can you talk about how the choice of the F-35 ensures the safety of our men and women?
President, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, As an Individual
I'll start by saying that buying any new airplane that was built this century would have been an improvement over the ones we're flying now, given the age of the systems and everything that goes into them. Again, I hope that we move quickly to start acquiring airplanes.
The F-35 is the most advanced fighter jet that's been available to us on the market. It's operated by many of our close allies, so we'll be able to benefit from their experience flying that airplane. We'll be able to work with them in as seamless a way as we could operating a fighter aircraft, and that plane will come with a whole range of very advanced, very modern technology for sensing, as well as communicating between different platforms.
All of those are going to have it provide to us a significant increase in our aerial firepower.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
Given that only 55% of our jets are serviceable right now, according to the department, 45% are currently grounded, and the advancing age of the fleet obviously comes with higher maintenance costs....
The Minister of Defence stated that the first delivery of jets will happen in 2025. Can you speak about the delay and how the government is asking our men and women to put themselves in greater danger? How much longer can we expect our men and women to do this work without significant and potentially deadly consequences?
President, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, As an Individual
The first thing to keep in mind is that one of the key things that our air force focuses on is flight safety. We try to minimize the risk and ensure that we're only putting safe airplanes into the sky.
However, I think the basic point you're getting at is that when you have aircraft that are trending towards 50, it takes a lot more effort to keep them serviceable. You can do it. Canada has, unfortunately, shown that we can keep very old pieces of equipment serviceable for decades past their appropriate service life. It's a function of how much time, effort and money you have to put in to keep doing that, and we'll have to put more in as they get older.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
The Liberals, in 2015, campaigned against the F-35 to find a solution to better match the country's defence needs. Now that the F-35 is a front-runner again—it's been now chosen—what's changed?
President, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, As an Individual
It went through a competitive process, which I think has changed some of the trust and confidence we can have in the selection of the aircraft. I think what happened between 2010 and 2014 with the F-35, fundamentally, was a significant loss of trust in that procurement, as well as in defence procurement writ large. Depending on how this current iteration of the process plays out, I hope that it restores significant trust in the process.
That's different, and it's a different airplane. It's had 12 years to mature and evolve.
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
What about the measurable economic benefits of being a level-three partner all these years? Can you speak about that and what the benefit will be in the future?
President, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, As an Individual
As part of the bid, we have arrangements that are unique, because we are in a partnership agreement. It came with certain rules that precluded us from buying that aircraft through the partnership agreement. We could have made a decision to leave it and ask for bids in that mechanism, but we didn't. That set parameters around how the economic benefits could be realized, so we basically have opportunity to win work over the long term.
I think we missed out on an opportunity for more work, had we decided to buy it earlier, because a lot of the decisions about fleet-wide sustainment were made years ago by the partners that had actually, at that point, decided to purchase the aircraft, which we still do not have to this day.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
You've heard us speak out, calling on the government to use a made-in-Canada approach to replace our aging jets and ensure that those jets are secured and have the ability to operate across Canada's geography, especially the Arctic, which you touched on. Any procurement really needs to have much-needed jobs in the Canadian aerospace industry, especially in Winnipeg and Montreal.
Can you see what kind of jobs might be created with this bid?
President, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, As an Individual
All of the three original entrants—certainly the final two—had a large package of potential economic benefits distributed across the country, which was going to provide different types of specific programs and incentives. I think that, had we gone any particular route, we would have received a massive injection of economic benefits from this procurement.
The one with the F-35 is particularly unique, because it emphasizes participation in a global fleet of defence products. The other options would also have had huge employment and economic growth potential, just distributed in different ways.
NDP
Gord Johns NDP Courtenay—Alberni, BC
They have announced a fighter jet that doesn't have Arctic capability. What are the capabilities of the F-35 in the Arctic?
President, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, As an Individual
I think there are several Arctic nations that have already purchased this aircraft. In the United States, they're flown in Alaska, and they're based in Alaska. Norway flies them. Finland is purchasing them. They are operated by other countries that operate them in Arctic environments, so we will definitely not be alone in that.
NDP
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Robert Gordon Kitchen
Thank you.
We'll now go to our second round, starting with Mr. McCauley for five minutes.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
Welcome, gentlemen.
Mr. Leuprecht, I just want to chat with you a bit. You commented that the government seems to focus too much on transparency and accountability at the expense of getting stuff done. I think in this committee, over the last six and a half years, we have seen kind of the opposite of that. We've had to fight for transparency. Even just last week, we had PSPC in and the Coast Guard, and we could not get a straight answer on a wide range of issues.
Do you really think the government is sacrificing productivity to be overly transparent and accountable, or did I misread your comments?
Professor, Royal Military College, Queen’s University, As an Individual
We live in a democracy, so inherently transparency and accountability of governance are critical components of the legitimacy of the institutions that we have.
Whether you can get the answers you're looking for out of departments is a very different conversation than the rules that Parliament in particular imposes effectively on various government entities, and in particular the Department of National Defence, given that it has basically a quarter of direct government spending in terms of.... Those rules are imposed by central agencies, in particular by—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
How many of the problems that we have with procurement go back to risk management? There seems to be a lot more focus on a CYA attitude than getting stuff done and being accountable to taxpayers or to the military to get equipment purchased.
Professor, Royal Military College, Queen’s University, As an Individual
The more Parliament and government focus, as central agencies, on having careful, very super-onerous transparency and accountability mechanisms, the more it also discourages decision-making at lower levels within the department, because nobody wants to take a risk, so they push up that risk.
That means you also necessarily bureaucratize the entire decision-making process through the entire hierarchy of the department, precisely because civil servants will become significantly risk-averse. There are trade-offs that government needs to make. Government needs to ask whether, for instance, we have the trade-offs right with the effects that government is looking for versus what it is actually receiving—
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I don't think that government is asking those questions. I think it's the bureaucrats who are making the decisions on the trade-offs.
Mr. Perry, would you like to comment on the transparency and accountability part?
President, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, As an Individual
I'd have to disagree significantly with my colleague about the transparency aspect. I think we're at a low point in recent years in terms of transparency around procurement, and committees like this remain one of the few venues by which government and government officials communicate about what's happening with multiple tens of billions of dollars' worth of taxpayer investments.
During the pandemic, I've seen things like updates to the defence capabilities blueprint, which have been touted as a transparency exercise, effectively stopped for reasons that I don't really understand, because you can do web editing from home, as far as I can understand.
Conservative
Kelly McCauley Conservative Edmonton West, AB
I would tend to agree. In this committee, we've been trying to get this study done for six and a half years now, and we're finally getting it done. When we had the Coast Guard and PSPC, every question was met with “It was COVID”, when asked about the delay and so on.
I have a question for Mr. Perry, and then Mr. Williams, about the issue of the offsets or the ITB. How much is that costing Canadians, perhaps taxpayers? How much less equipment are we getting to our military because we seem to have much more of a focus on ITB and perhaps votes in the area than delivering the best equipment to our military at the best price for our taxpayers?
President, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, As an Individual
I think the short answer is that we don't really know. Basically, officially, we assume the answer is that there's no cost. I don't think that's a valid representation of what's involved in providing that kind of benefit. I do think we should probably look at it from a net benefit point of view: if there are costs, you also get a benefit in terms of economic productivity and weigh that against whatever it might cost in terms of the aircraft, to provide a full assessment about what we get out of that program, instead of just looking at the potential percentage points that you lose by requiring those types of investments.