National Defence Committee on Feb. 14th, 2011

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

While I note this is a technical report, I want to say to you, as president of the National Research Council, Mr. McDougall, that I have to congratulate your team on an extremely thorough and valuable report to this committee. It's a real eye-opener in many respects.

You basically suggested that the government, or DND, is saying that we're going to keep the bases where they are, that we're going to keep the standby posture exactly the way it is, that we're going to deliver a level of service equal to what we have now, and that these three assumptions now put constraints on the possibilities of action.

Would it also be fair to say that they foreclose the possibility of change? We had evidence before our committee in St. John's last week from someone who had done an international study on response times, and it seems that some countries like Norway have 15 minutes wheels up, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all hours of the day and night. Australia has 30 minutes. The United States coast guard has 30 minutes. Other countries, like the U.K. and Ireland, have 15 minutes up to 8 o'clock at night and then 45 minutes thereafter. So it almost forecloses any possibility of meeting world standards.

I think your report says that because of maintaining the posture of 120 minutes from 8 to 4, when 83% of the incidents occur, we have to have faster and more expensive planes. Because we're keeping the bases in the same place, we can't consider adjusting those bases, even if a small adjustment would decrease the minimum speed required and the maximum range, which could allow money to pay for the increased costs of shortening the response times. Is that a fair statement?

[John McDougall]

Well, that was a long statement, so if I could pick and choose, maybe that would help.

I guess I would say we're fans of what you might think of in the jargon of design and standards as “performance based”. So with that--

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

You mean “here's what we'd like you to do”?

[John McDougall]

It would be “this is what we're trying to achieve”, and we'd leave open the capacity to be innovative in terms of how it is achieved. But the ability to be innovative depends to some degree on political decisions, not on technical decisions, so you have to ultimately bring that together.

So in broad terms, I think what I'm saying is, yes, if you impose enough constraints and they basically define what you do today, you'll get what you do today.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

In terms of costs of going to a 30-minute standby posture, you do make reference to that, and you agree that it's expensive. But with regard to the sensitivity of the standby posture, you say:

consideration should be given to analyzing in detail the cost...and such an investigation should be core to the mandate of the project as any changes in standby...have significant impact on project costs, personnel levels, aircraft required...infrastructure, and the SAR level of service.

That seems to me to be a very powerful statement, especially when I see some of the costs.

Maybe you can comment on this. The chief of review services, who is, I guess, the internal auditor for DND, said in a January 2008 report that the federal SAR costs were $102 million annually. Yet one of the research studies that you refer to here, which is dated January 2008, says the costs are $339 million annually for DND. What does that kind of discrepancy tell you as an objective observer from the National Research Council?

[John McDougall]

In fairness, I'm not familiar with this. I was just asking if my colleagues were.

I think the challenge it comes down to again is that, as we know, sometimes we can measure things in different ways. I think in the end, from our point of view, what we're trying to be cognizant of is the fact that the constraints you apply will ultimately influence the cost of delivery. That's the fundamental behind the report.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

What you seem to be saying is that if you decrease the response time, you could actually spend less on your aircraft, but you'd have an offsetting cost of we don't know how much. There would be some extra cost involved in having crews that were available for longer than 8 o'clock to 4 o'clock on a 30-minute standby.

[John McDougall]

There would be costs that we have not been charged with looking at. We looked at the constraints, not at the impact of the costs, and there is a difference there. That's why I say that to some degree we're talking about decisions that others have to make about the viability of various actions. But by pointing out at least where to look, we can hopefully help that process.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

It seems to me what you're saying is that some of these analyses ought to be made before we put this out to tender. Is that correct?

[John McDougall]

Again, that's a decision regarding how much people want to move in particular ways. If they want to move significantly, then they would need to do the analysis, presumably, to justify it.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

Now I will give the floor to Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here.

Before we move on, I just want to correct something. I don't think he really meant to...but we aren't just genning up a plan to use Hercs in fixed-wing SAR. We've been using Hercs in fixed-wing SAR for years, so this is nothing new.

Now, Mr. McDougall, we talked about cost and so on, and you made some statements in your report, which is very good and very thorough, about basing a mixed fleet and so on. I'd just like to confirm that cost consideration was not part of anything you looked at. Yours was strictly technical, and the cost decisions and the cost implications are to be borne by decision-makers. Is that correct?

[John McDougall]

I confirmed that with my team.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Regarding some of the other points in your study, all of which were good and have validity, we talked about the design and the dimensions of the back end of the airplane and so on, and you made some valid points about studying what SAR techs do and where and how they move and so on. That was useful discussion; however, in terms of its usefulness to the challenge that we have for buying a relatively off-the-shelf fixed-wing SAR airplane, we're probably not going to redesign existing airplanes that will be contenders to meet those things. Obviously we'll go with what it is and make an assessment of how good it is.

[John McDougall]

I think it's fairly reasonable to assume that nobody is going to design an aircraft for the specific Canadian requirement.

What we're trying to say is that there are going to be things that need to be done to fit the aircraft to the Canadian requirement. So there will be some work done to fit it up appropriately.

Those costs should definitely be taken into account.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

But we're clearly not going to redesign the back end of the airplane to make it bigger or better or whatever.

[John McDougall]

Exactly. You're going to have an airframe, and that's what it's going to be.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

You talked about service currently provided, and one of the big points you made was that it's not a valid statement, mainly because we're referencing that to the C-130, which obviously has some capability that a lot of other airplanes don't.

That's the genesis of saying that this comparison is invalid simply because we are currently operating a very highly capable airplane. We may not be able to afford to buy more of those for that role.

[Jerzy Komorowski]

If I may, Mr. Chairman, comment on this, we were advocating in our report to develop a capability-based requirement, which would not refer to an existing platform. It was simply what is the level of service expected, what the aircraft needs to carry, how far, and so forth.

It was our intention not to refer to any existing aircraft. In this case, you are mentioning CC-130.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I understand, but you referred to that in saying that was a shortcoming of the SOR because it did refer to this.

[Jerzy Komorowski]

Exactly.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Yes, that's fine.

There's a lot of talk about mandate. I think some suggestion or maybe implication of why didn't you look at this or why didn't you look at that.... I mean, you were given a mandate that was very clear, that was in relation to the SOR, to validate or comment on the SOR. So there was no way you would branch off into other things because that's not what you were asked to do.

Is that a fair statement?

[Jerzy Komorowski]

Specifically, we were to avoid providing solutions.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Right.

We've talked about if there was interaction between the government and NRC on the final report. As you said, there was some back and forth. Is it fair to say that once they've filed a report like this, it's done and presented to the government, the final report, your job is done and it's over to the government to make whatever use of the report they want to?

How did you find the cooperation of the government with DND or Public Works, once you got into your mandate or once you got into the job?

Was that a good working relationship, or how would you characterize that?