Evidence of meeting #65 for National Defence in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was equipment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
5:50 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Do you have any examples of things that were done effectively—in terms of procurement in the past decade—that we can take lessons from?
5:50 p.m.
Associate Professor, Carleton University, As an Individual
There are tons of procurements that move forward that are fully successful. We just never hear about them. I would say a good 75% of procurements move through. It's the big rocks that get a lot of controversy and generate a lot of attention. The reality is that we buy quite a bit on time. It's not necessarily on schedule, but we do buy it.
We focus so much on the negative that it leads to what Professor Kimball noted. I'm even a part of this, in a sense. When we focus only on the failures, we end up putting more and more process in to control the failures. We have built up so many controls around the process that there's now no room for speed. Every single time there's a scandal or problem, our solution is always to pile on more oversight and more controls.
The problem in Canadian defence procurement is not the lack of oversight. There is, in a sense, too much of it. I say this as somebody who was involved in that oversight.
5:50 p.m.
Liberal
Charles Sousa Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
The chair is being very mean, Dr. Kimball. I really wanted to hear from you.
5:50 p.m.
A voice
He's crotchety.
5:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Yes, I'm crotchety, cranky, etc. At five minutes to six, I might be persuaded to hear, for a moment or two, what Professor Kimball has to say and to finish off our conversation.
Professor Kimball.
5:50 p.m.
Prof. Anessa Kimball
I would close by saying that obviously defence procurement is a complicated labyrinth of an animal.
It's clear that there are various recommendations that can be implemented that would help facilitate clearer contracts and more transparency. There are ways in which data could be more available to scholars, so that we could help to evaluate this better.
At the end of the day, it comes down to people who are in uniform who need to be ready, and to how we recruit and retain those people. In that respect, one thing that we haven't talked about very much at all is the education and the professionalization aspect, and how that is essential to all of this.
This is also an area where, frankly, there is a lot of work to be done. There are a couple of institutions that have monopolies on defence education, and I think we need to think about that in a different way. Other countries are doing it differently.
I would leave it by saying that one of our procurement problems is in the education line and getting people psyched about defence and about contributing to defence.
The next big challenge in procurement is going to be green defence procurement. We don't even know how we're going to do that. We have to do that in the next five to 10 years.
5:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you, Mr. Sousa, for manipulating the clock like that. It was very clever of you.
This is an extraordinarily complicated conversation. I appreciate the contribution from both of you.
I take your point, though, Professor Lagassé, about the level and the culture of secrecy around here. It does make it extraordinarily difficult. The consequence of excessive secrecy is that politicians react the wrong way to misinformation. That's something we could deal with. We could have a conversation among ourselves about that very point. We are running to the point where we can't continue to do what we're currently doing. Something needs to change.
Colleagues, we are set up for Friday.
For next week, we're taking bets as to exactly how long. The clerk will receive your bet as you walk out the door.
With that, I'm going to adjourn. Thank you again to both of you.