Defence procurement is not easy. I don't care which political party you come from and your best desires and intent, it is not easy. It is especially not easy in the Canadian parliamentary system of government. In the end, and Admiral Robertson alluded to it, it is about political will, and it is about political leadership.
As a former military man, I have always been of the opinion that where there is a will, there is a way; if you want something badly, you can get it. I take solace in the apparent recent decision to elevate defence procurement issues to a special or cabinet committee level endeavour. I think that's a very good first step in moving a lot of the procurement issues along.
Part of the problem stems from our typically Canadian desire to want to do things perfectly, and to be guided by reasonable, understandable principles, including value for money. However, I am not sure we collectively share the same understanding of what value for money truly means. We often get into situations and circumstances where in our search for ideal value for money, we are actually wasting money.
The last point I will make is that many other western governments make the necessary difficult decisions and often don't bat an eyelash about upsetting this concept of free, fair, open, industrial competition. If you look at some of the defence procurement activities that people like to hold out as being examples of how we can do things, many of them have been sole sourced.
I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong, but it goes against the underlying desires to want to be open, free, transparent, and to seek the ultimate value for taxpayers' dollars. In these instances, you get push-back that it wasn't free, open, and transparent, but in my opinion, you're getting bang for buck much more quickly.
I'll leave it at that. Thank you.