Before I answer the question with specific pieces, I'll say I'm a computer engineer, so I look at things maybe in a very binary fashion. Defence procurement is being labelled as a whole bunch of things, but there are predefence procurement things. There is what I call pure and raw defence procurement and defence procurement processes, and there is postcontract award implementation procurement stuff, which I think tags along well with the “money being lapsed” question we had earlier. Each one of these things we want to characterize, then, as defence procurement. That's fine.
Starting with that as a premise, I think each one of those entities would benefit from improvement. I had a little bit of that in my opening remarks: This is a system, a complex system, delivering complex equipment, and it does need improvement on a continuous basis to make sure we keep up with things.
I'll mention three areas where I personally think the system would benefit from improvement. I'll leave room for my colleagues to weigh in also.
The first one is in the preprocurement basket. Capability development and capability planning need to be there ahead of time. You don't deliver a ship overnight and you don't deliver an aircraft overnight. You don't deliver a radar system overnight. You don't deliver bullets or ammunition overnight. It takes planning. It needs to be acknowledged that the average time to deliver an airplane is probably between six and 10 years from the time you actually get the go signal in the pure procurement box. For a ship, it's longer than that. Therefore, we need to do a very diligent job, with consistency, regarding what we want from a capability development point of view.
The other thing I will mention—and I'm probably stealing a bit of the flavour of my colleague Mr. Crosby here—is that we're working on something now called continuous capability sustainment. That, for me, could be a fairly golden solution to quite a few things we're seeing in the system, including innovation and generating relevant equipment for the Canadian Armed Forces by investing in service, in a capability. We take a hit maybe at the beginning, accept a capability that is viable and functional, and then invest in it to make sure that it remains relevant over time.
The other thing I would mention is costing. I have a lot of respect for all of those who work in that domain. It's tough. It's tougher than ever. We have done, I think, within the enterprise a really good job of investing in that capability over the years. However, when the design of something is not even finished and when that something is not in implementation, will only deliver seven or eight years for now and will deliver until 2050, costing it to the nth degree, for me, is not the most useful thing the system can do. We should take a different strategic approach in how we cost things and how we get going with what I characterize as massive projects that will be multi-year and worth multiple billions.
I have other ideas, but I'll stop here and leave some room for others.