Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to our witnesses for coming today.
A recent article said, “Canadian Army says new military sleeping bags not suitable for 'typical Canadian winter'”. Rob Huebert, an Arctic expert, said, “I wonder if they should have just gone to Canadian Tire.”
The defence department spent more than $34.8 million on 55,000 sleeping bags. This is from the article:
Troops who had used the recently issued General Purpose Sleeping Bag System...late last fall in a preparatory exercise found “several critical issues”....
Temperatures during the deployment ranged from -5C during the day to -20C at night.
Those are hardly harsh conditions in the Canadian winter or north. It continued:
The “critical issues” discovered by the soldiers “related to a lack of warmth with the new GPSBS”—