Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, witnesses, for your patience with respect to the delay at the start of the meeting and for being here today.
There's no doubt we live in a very unpredictable and volatile international threat environment. Our decentralized, complex, multidepartmental approach to defence procurement is unique and doesn't seem to be working. It's characterized by bureaucrats, hurdles, political influence, cost overruns and delays in delivering major projects.
My first question is this. DND had $2.6 billion in lapsed spending last year. Is the bottleneck of defence procurement in other departments a contributing factor to DND's lapsed spending problem?
Mr. Crosby, go ahead.