The only thing I could envision is the minister would call me into his office and say he wanted to sole-source these things. I'd say there was no need, that wasn't the intent, we have no reason or rationale to do it. He'd say he wanted to do it anyway. I'd say if he wanted to do it anyway I couldn't stop him. I'd have two choices, either go along or resign. The fact is, he's not doing anything illegal. There is nothing at all outside his authority to do it this way.
I think it's a stupid way of doing business, and I would have advised him that way. In fact, I would point out that I would have said to him, if you're going to do it this way, you're going to undermine all the good. The government would look great if you simply said you're authorizing the Department of National Defence to replace their F-18s. That's a great news story. You get all the kudos and everybody is very proud of what you're doing. I said you're undermining all of that by stepping into a procurement process and predetermining the winner, for which there is no validity. I would have advised him or her strongly against it, depending on who the minister was.
In terms of the statement of requirements, it is typically the basic document for which the military and the military alone is accountable. Certainly when I was there the military in any major procurement had to produce a statement of requirements that would be reviewed and vetted and challenged within the department, get the sign-off of the senior military officials and the Chief of the Defence Staff before it was then made public as part of the overall defence procurement process provided to industry, have discussions, start the whole requirements process with industry in terms of product availability, develop the contractual terms and that kind of stuff. It is fundamentally at the base of any procurement process and nothing typically should proceed without it. Whether it's open to this committee is something I wouldn't be able to comment on factually.