National Defence Committee on Feb. 15th, 2007

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Where is that?

[Terry Williston]

Specifically, it's the originating department. In our case, it's Mr. Ross, ADM Materiel, who would determine the justification for requesting that exception. He sends it over to our department. It's reviewed by trade agreement lawyers to ensure that the exception required is applicable or allowed for within the trade agreements to which we've signed, and then it's formally and officially approved by the ADM of acquisitions--

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

But what was the rationale for it? I understand the process you're talking about, but what was the rationale for asking for that exemption?

[Terry Williston]

I don't have the specific letter from Mr. Ross in front of me, but as I understand it, it was to ensure that we could control in-service support activities within Canada, and that theme is apparent for most of the fleets that are being bought right now.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

But in fact it allows for a third of the maintenance to be done in the U.S., instead of according to the internal trade agreement we have in Canada.

[Terry Williston]

There is a fairly significant amount of the maintenance on the C-17, once it arrives, that will be done actually in Canada, in Trenton. All the first-level maintenance will be done, and in fact, as I understand it, and I'm not an aircraft maintainer, it's only once every five years that the aircraft will be returning to one of the Boeing facilities for the large rehabilitation that occurs at that five-year period.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

My next question has to do with the search and rescue aircraft. This has been going on a very long time. One of the witnesses who came and testified at committee said it's been 27 years. I'm wondering why it's taking so long.

The other question I had concerns search and rescue. I come from British Columbia, where this is a big issue, but it is also a big issue in other parts of Canada as well. There seems to be some appetite, I would say, for using transport planes, the Hercules, for search and rescue, and I'm wondering why.

[LGen J. S. Lucas]

We have in fact been using a combination of C-130 Hercules aircraft and Buffalo aircraft for search and rescue for as long as I've been in the military, which is coming on 38 years now. Essentially, we had the aircraft, therefore we used them.

Certainly the project that was initiated a while back, to come up with a unique fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft, was designed in fact to give us perhaps a more efficient way of doing that.

The issue of why the project has not moved forward I guess is one of prioritization. There are an awful lot of things on our plate right now, and we will be receiving direction out of the defence policy discussions on exactly where the resources we have are going to go. Certainly I'm enthusiastic about getting that new capability at some point in the future.

As someone who has been involved in the search and rescue business for quite some time, I know it's a capability we need, but it's a question of prioritization, where it fits, and whether or not the mitigation measures we can put in place are reasonable. Therefore, all of those things are being factored into the decision on how quickly we're going to actually proceed with that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you, sir.

Moving on, Mr. Hiebert.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here. I'm going to follow the line of questioning you've been experiencing in the last couple of minutes. I have a number of questions, so the answers don't need to be lengthy because we've already touched on some of this material.

I'll start with the question for General Lucas and for Colonel Burt. In determining the high-level mandatory capabilities of both the strategic and tactical airlift requirements, was there any political influence in determining these requirements under the current government?

[LGen J. S. Lucas]

Absolutely not.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Do you swear it?

[LGen J. S. Lucas]

Absolutely. As a requirement, the requirements as set...the government involvement is in the priority setting. If they hadn't brought the money for the C-17 we probably wouldn't have bought it, but because the resources were made available.... But when it comes to the requirement, the requirement is ours, completely 100% ours. These are the needs of the Canadian Forces.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

That's great.

In determining the performance requirements, these ones we're talking about for strategic and tactical airlift, are you looking at the specific performances of an individual aircraft, or are you looking at the capability needs of the Canadian Forces?

[LGen J. S. Lucas]

Without doubt, the process begins with identifying the capability requirements. I can't say we don't look at aircraft, because if we identify a requirement and then we look over the fence and see there's absolutely nothing out there that can get the job done, that causes us to go back and look at our requirements again. But fundamentally we start with the requirement. The requirement--you pick one. I can go through and talk about any of the pieces of equipment we set on a single page, a set of high-level mandatory requirements that we believe make perfect sense with respect to the missions we're going to be conducting. I spoke briefly here about the requirements for strategic lift. The tactical lift ones essentially are different because tactical strategic lift is about moving lots of stuff long distances quickly. Tactical is about flexibility; therefore the requirements set there are slightly different.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Is it fair to say you're buying a capability, not buying an aircraft?

[LGen J. S. Lucas]

The requirements business is focused on capability right from the outset.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

Okay.

In determining the statement of requirements for the strategic airlift, would it be correct to say those requirements significantly exceeded the demands of the C-130 Hercules in terms of airlift and performance capabilities, and that they also exceeded the CC-150 Polaris in terms of airlift capability?

[LGen J. S. Lucas]

Absolutely. Neither of these two aircraft perform the strategic mission we're looking for. The Polaris does three things for us reasonably well: it moves people; it very shortly will become a strategic air-to-air refueler for us; and it also moves palletized cargo of certain sizes, but it does not have a roll-on roll-off capability and it cannot take loads into.... For instance, we've never landed one at Kandahar and don't propose to because of self-protection on the aircraft.

All of these items render it.... There's a big Delta there and the new strategic lifter will fill that Delta very nicely.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

In terms of the range and the payload, which are key components to strategic airlift, how did the Canadian Forces come up with the distance of 3,500 nautical miles and nearly 90,000 pounds?

[LGen J. S. Lucas]

I spoke a few minutes ago about representative loads and representative distances. We look at places in the world we're likely to be over the next 15 to 20 years. Africa, Asia, and southwest Asia are certainly among those. That caused us to say, if we're going to operate into those areas, what makes sense from our perspective? Hopping our way from here to Greenland, to Iceland, to...that doesn't make a lot of sense for a strategic lifter. Where would we likely want to go? We chose Ramstein because it looks to be about the right distance for us. You could probably pick another place in that area, but that 3,500 miles looked like a pretty reasonable distance for us.

Similarly, on the weights, I mentioned the fact that we discussed with the army what representative loads would be. What are the kinds of things they're going to need to take in early? Of course, a strategic lift and the reason for owning your own lift is that you're going to need to do something and you need to do it with very little notice. So we talked to the army about the kind of stuff they're going to need to get in there first. The two LAVs, if you will, were a representative load of what the army suggested they might want to move in early.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

On that note—and I'm conscious of the fact that my time is about to run out—you talk about these needs being urgent needs. Was the option of leasing considered, or how do you view the option of leasing, in terms of choosing between it and purchasing?

[LGen J. S. Lucas]

Leasing gives you certain things, but it also leaves you with some deficiencies. There are some things that leasing will not do for you.

One of the missions we want to be able to use this aircraft for is the non-combatant evacuation operation to evacuate Canadians from parts of the world where we have large numbers of them. When things start to go south, we need to be able to look at getting there quickly to withdraw people.

[Russ Hiebert, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale, BC]

During the time of the tsunami, for example, instead of having to wait two weeks to find equipment that would be available to lease to get our DART team to Southeast Asia, if we had had our own capability, we could have done so—

[LGen J. S. Lucas]

DART is another mission, absolutely. Essentially, it allows the Government of Canada the flexibility and the responsiveness to be able to say, “We want to be among the first countries to get our aid in, as opposed to among the last.”