Obviously the maintenance of our ships is really important. As a country, we're very fortunate to have our fleet maintenance facilities because of the second- and third-line maintenance activities that they're able to provide to us in terms of delivering readiness.
Three years ago we had a paper commissioned by Captain Don Smith, who was a commanding officer at one of the fleet maintenance facilities. He basically took a look at these four broad options that you articulated and put forth a number of recommendations that we, the navy, needed to consider to ensure that we had the best maintenance framework to look after our platforms.
Working with the chief engineer of the navy, Commodore Simon Page, who also works for assistant deputy minister Pat Finn, the team has done a great amount of analysis to come up with the right model and the pros and cons of the various aspects. In doing their analysis, they've taken a look at other models used by some of our allies in order to understand their best practices and what was successful and what was not.
I've also had conversations with a number of my peers about what has worked well for them, or not, in terms of going forward. I think, as I signed my name to, that the best model is one in which we leverage the strengths of both, putting us in a win-win situation going forward.
Simon Page and the commanding officers of our maintenance facilities are working very hard with our maintenance facilities to assure them that there is a future in terms of what the fleet maintenance facilities deliver from a strategic capability. I don't think that contracting out all of that maintenance is in our best interest. There are definitely strategic capabilities that we need to retain, particularly on those systems that are unique to warships.
Some of those aspects, in terms of a marinized diesel engine...I think everyone here would be comfortable in recognizing that those competencies exist elsewhere.
What we're trying to do is make sure that we're as effective as possible where we need to be and as efficient as possible where we need to be. We also have to recognize that there's a difference, so we're trying to leverage those efficiencies to make sure we get the most out of every dollar we're given.
Many of you have heard me say that we're trying to run the navy like a business now, but rather than measuring our profits in dollars and cents, we're trying to measure our profits in materiel, technical, personnel, and combat readiness.
We are working hard to find out what that best model is. I think what you will see as we go forward is that we'll have higher levels of serviceability because we're leveraging the strengths of what industry can provide and the strategic asset that those maintenance facilities represent.