National Defence Committee on Nov. 29th, 2016

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you for being with us today.

Here's my question.

In addition to the contributions of the Halifax Shipyard and Vancouver Shipyards, which are the two naval shipyards chosen by the federal government to deal with the national shipbuilding strategy for large vessels, what is the contribution of other companies and shipyards within the framework of this strategy?

[Christyn Cianfarani]

Apart from the NSS, which ran a competition where two shipyards were selected, the Vancouver Shipyards and the Irving shipyards in Halifax, there are other vessels, tugs, and other assorted ships that will have gone out to open tender and are available for other shipyards to build on for a work share.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you.

I want to ask you about a problem that people have approached me on, which is that the value proposition in a lot of these things is getting the exports out the door. That's where your real multiplier gets to be. Some of this has issues about lethality, etc. You have a triangle consisting of DND, International Trade, and Foreign Affairs. The export permit, for lack of a better term, just bounces around among those three. I would be interested in the views of the industry as to how that system could be improved.

[Christyn Cianfarani]

The export permits are issued out of Global Affairs Canada in line with the export control regime. We've made a number of suggestions on how to streamline the process. In particular, one of the things that concerns us most is the harmonization among all the various export control regimes. For those of you who may not be aware, there is not just one export control regime. There are multiples, including what we call the “export control regime”; the controlled goods list; the international traffic in arms, if you're looking at the United States, which is our biggest market; and fourthly, the automatic firearms country control list.

One of the single biggest hurdles to industry is the fact that each one of those lists is controlled by a different entity and those lists are often not harmonized, meaning that you have to go through literally four of those doors in order to be able to get your controlled good out the door. That's not saying that we want to have less of them; we would like them to be harmonized so that it's almost like a one-stop shop to get your permits to be able to get your goods to market.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thanks.

On getting your goods to market and bidding, on the opportunity to bid there's a process, a precondition, so I take your point on harmonization. Do you have any other suggestions so that our companies can bid in a timely fashion?

[Christyn Cianfarani]

Part of bidding in a timely fashion is that you will have paved the way to be able to bid in a timely fashion. In other countries, the defence industry for export is a managed market. It's not a free-trading market. If you want to have an entrance point on a major procurement in another country, doing it as an individual company is far less powerful than doing it as a nation.

I think one of the single biggest impediments is that as a nation we don't have a strategy vis-à-vis other nations in terms of what we want to sell them, which then paves the way, by nature, for.... The precursor is that you're going to go in, you understand how the export control regime works, and it gets you out through the door. That's the process, but the reality is that as a country vis-à-vis other nations we're missing the strategy to get ourselves aggressively sold into other countries.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Ms. Cianfarani, thank you very much for coming to the committee today.

I'm going to suspend for a couple of minutes to quickly say goodbye. We'll then go in camera to discuss committee business.

[Proceedings continue in camera]