The assistant deputy minister for materiel is a former general. The person who is in charge at the end of the day, of course, which is normal, is the CDS, who is General Hillier. The Minister of Defence is a general.
When you develop that SOR there is no civilian oversight, so it's among themselves.
It seems we need a few more civilians in the process. Your role on the procurement is to make sure you're asking the right questions, but we've noticed since the beginning that at the end of the day you're just applying what they've asked for. So there's a line in the sand, that's it, that's all, and thank you, voilà, and I'll give you what you want.
For the sake of governance, that's an important question. Don't you believe that you should be in the process, not when the requirements are settled, but during the process so you can ask all the questions?
It seems, especially with the C-17, when you look at some of the requirements, and if you take the ones on tactical, they're talking about the delivery and the certification. They had to change their minds in only a few weeks on the capacity, on the payload, meaning that they learned their lesson well--talking about trucks--but they moved from 43,000 pounds to 86,000 pounds.
If you had been there in the beginning of the process, when they were asking questions, at least you could see what was going on, and that's why General Lucas agreed to provide us with the correspondence, because within two weeks everything seemed to have changed.
Don't you believe the best way to have a true--and you spoke about transparency--procurement process...that you as the Minister of Public Works should get involved also in the statement of requirement so you can challenge a bit more as a civilian? As a military you have your needs, and it's normal, but your role, also, is to make sure that they not only have their equipment but also that at the end of the day it's the taxpayers' money. So don't you believe you should be in the process before everything has been settled?