National Defence Committee on April 14th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Garrison, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

You made reference earlier to the defence acquisition guide. How often is it updated and what does it give us, now, in terms of timelines? You're looking at in the next three to four years, I would say, needing a decision on the F-18, needing a decision on the Polaris refuelling aircraft, and also needing a decision on the Aurora replacements. That seems like a lot of decisions coming in a very short time frame.

[LGen Michael Hood]

The number of projects that are ongoing in the Department of National Defence in any given year is tremendous. We were talking just about the air force, but then you imagine the navy and the army on top of that. It's a very busy system. Technology evolves very quickly, as you well know.

I have a copy of the defence acquisition guide. I don't know if the plan is to update it yearly or not.

Todd, would you know?

[BGen Todd Balfe]

It's certainly not yearly, sir, no.

[LGen Michael Hood]

There's the RCAF footwear project, options analysis in 2018, final delivery 2025, just to give you an example. This is publicly available. The CC-150 is in there, and the TIC3 Air.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

My question about the updating was the heart of my question, because what we're dealing with now, certainly with the navy, is that we're in a situation where we're getting gaps in the actual equipment that's available. We don't have supply ships of our own available because of failures and delays in procurement. It seems to me that if we don't get decisions very soon on these major aircraft acquisitions, we risk gaps in having the equipment available to us.

[LGen Michael Hood]

That is a potential challenge.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I was wondering whether the defence acquisition guide gives us any guidance, both as a committee and to the government, on when these decisions will have to be made in order to avoid those gaps.

[LGen Michael Hood]

Within the defence acquisition guide, there's indicative timelines of when we ideally would like to have these projects delivered.

But as you well know, the majority of work on these projects once we go into acquisition is not a defence role. It involves other government departments primarily. Even the assessment right now on the bids that have come in on fixed-wing SAR is not an RCAF responsibility, it's PSPC now as a department.

I would be very happy to see greatly improved acquisition timelines and processes. To be fair, I have to say that, yes, I would like to see improvement.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Obviously, you'll be consulted by these groups that are working on procurement, I would assume.

[LGen Michael Hood]

I have a force development arm within the air force where we mature projects through options analysis. However, Treasury Board is involved in the contracting and the financing of it, so I have a part to play but I can't push from below. The process needs to be able to facilitate those timelines.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

You wouldn't really have any ability to respond if I asked you whether there's an impact to the reprofiling—in that very bureaucratic term—of capital acquisition expenditures in defence, in putting them off three to four years in the future.

[LGen Michael Hood]

Let me give you an example of the Cyclone, which is the Sea King replacement. The reason we have reprofiled money there is because the contractor hasn't delivered. I wanted it quicker, but they didn't deliver, so we reprofiled.

The challenge with reprofiling is defence inflation is such that a dollar today is worth much less than an annual inflation rate moving forward. Ideally, we'd love to be spending it now, but sometimes we can't, and that's not something we control either.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

You've raised a topic that I hadn't intended to ask you about, but I need to ask someone about it. What is the department of defence's current estimate of the defence inflation rate?

[LGen Michael Hood]

I would not be the right person to answer that. I think it varies. I know that it's significantly greater in magnitude than we would have predicted for inflation rates in the economy, for example, but I don't have an exact number.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Darren, let's put it at five minutes.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Sure. I'll try to go quickly here so I can share some time.

You brought up the Cyclone. I had the pleasure of visiting and seeing a Cyclone in Shearwater with Minister Foote when she landed the simulator. We ordered 28. Six have been delivered.

It says on page 2 they're in service, but does “in service” mean that they're deployed or that they're on a training mission right now? Also, if they aren't deployed yet, when will they be deployed? How many pilots do we have trained and ready to operate these Cyclones?

[LGen Michael Hood]

I would have to get you all those exact numbers if you're looking for specifics.

What I can tell you is right now we're doing operational tests and evaluation, so it's been flying off the back of ships. That is the first block of aircraft. There are still two more blocks to come.

We will stop flying the Sea King on December 31, 2018, so we'll be operational with the Cyclone before that. Again, it's one of those “retire Sea Kings and increase Cyclones”.

I don't have the exact piece. I'm comfortable with where we're at right now.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

You did speak of a gap. I don't want to use the word “gap” if you didn't use it, but you spoke of a bit of a gap. They're not coming in maybe as fast as you'd hoped.

[LGen Michael Hood]

Actually, I think it's more our ability to train people and operate two aircraft at the same time.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

That's what I thought too.

[LGen Michael Hood]

I can't throw 200 more pilots at the problem, because I don't have them, so it's acceptable, I think.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

So you're comfortable in the transition from Sea King to Cyclone?

[LGen Michael Hood]

Yes.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Is the Cyclone going to provide us with the modernization we need for port threats?