Thank you, Chair, and my thanks to the minister and our witnesses for being here.
I have three series of questions relating to three fiscal years. I don't anticipate that you'll be able to answer all of them, so please feel free to respond in writing.
The first series of questions has to do with the final fiscal year 2010-11. The Public Accounts of Canada show that the Department of Defence walked away from $2.4 billion in lapsed money. You can imagine something like that happening occasionally, but cumulatively, over the last four or five years, it's amounted to a significant sum of money, somewhere in the order of $5 billion or $6 billion that the department has secured through budgetary processes and then had to give back at the end of the fiscal year. I'd be interested in your comments. I don't know whether this is an inability to manage contracts. I don't know whether this is a problem with forecasting. It leads one to be concerned about announcements running way ahead of delivery. Out of that $2.4 billion, can you, in some detail, tell the committee what was left on the table when the department walked away?
The second series of questions has to do with the supplementary estimates (C). I suppose in a perfect world we wouldn't have to be looking at March madness, but it is March madness and what is curious is that you're taking $214 million out of capital, and you're profiling $151 million into operations in Afghanistan. This begs the question: why didn't you know at this time last year that the operation in Afghanistan was going to require $151 million, given that you had a decent track record of expenditures in Afghanistan over the last 10 years? There is a lot of moving around within the capital envelope, so some are up and some are down. The overall question here is if, in fact, we didn't have this $214 million in supplementary estimates (C), what would we be getting? What is it that we are actually walking away from in capital expenditures? The secondary question has to do with the $733 million in the reduced area. Is that going to be, in effect, lapsed money, or is that, in effect, just the first installment on lapsed money? That is my second series of questions.
My third series of questions has to do with the main estimates. If we've learned anything on this readiness study, it's that the whole business of cyber-security is extraordinarily important given that the Russians and the Chinese seem to have a fondness for Canadian intelligence. Some of the witnesses have said they're not sure that this security operation should be housed within National Defence. What does this transfer to the Communications Security Establishment mean? What does it mean in money, in operations, in the contribution Defence will make to this intelligence information, and in the improved access that Defence would have to that intelligence information? My sense of it is that there is something buried in there. I just don't know what it is. Maybe ministers can enlighten us on what it will mean. The second question on the main estimates has to do with the transfer of $305 million to Shared Services Canada, which is essentially a transfer of money from one department to another and to Public Works.
I wonder what that means for the purposes of procurement. Is this an acknowledgement that the procurement process out of Defence has not been handled as well as it could have been? Given the history of moneys lapsed, maybe the government is addressing that issue. I'd be interested in your thoughts on that.
Then the final question has to do with the $232 million of major capital equipment in infrastructure projects, which are being walked away from. What does that mean? What are we walking away from when we knock $232 million off the budget?
The other thing that jumps out at me is on page 248, and that is the reprofiling of money with respect to NATO. On one line you're down $5.3 million; on another line you're up $12 million. On the third line it's straight-lined, so to speak. So what does that mean in terms of our obligations and ongoing commitments to NATO? I appreciate that those are a whole series of questions. It's entirely intentional on my part, because I get one shot at this—that's it—and I'd be more interested in factual responses than political, if I may.
Thank you.