Evidence of meeting #39 for National Defence in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was companies.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Scott Anderson Conservative Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC
I'm going to move on to the next question.
The government frequently speaks about leveraging pension funds and private capital to support defence, and you mentioned integrating industry a few minutes ago.
What roles do organizations like Brookfield and other institutional investors anticipate having in projects that are administered through the DIA?
Liberal
Conservative
Scott Anderson Conservative Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC
You're the one who's allowing it to happen, sir.
Conservative
Scott Anderson Conservative Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC
No, it hasn't happened. I'm asking you what safeguards are there. What sort of involvement.... Do you have a plan to go forward?
Liberal
Stephen Fuhr Liberal Kelowna, BC
We're going to look at, on a case-by-case basis, the opportunities that lie in front of the government.
Conservative
Liberal
Stephen Fuhr Liberal Kelowna, BC
First of all, it's the public service that does this. It's not me personally. The public service will look at the—
Conservative
Conservative
Scott Anderson Conservative Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC
The bill creates 13 separate exceptions to competitive procurement. Can you identify a single major defence procurement failure in Canada that occurred because they didn't have access to enough sole-source exemptions?
Liberal
Stephen Fuhr Liberal Kelowna, BC
What I said to Mr. Bezan before was that the Government of Canada has always had the ability to sole source. It has always had the ability to—
Conservative
Liberal
Stephen Fuhr Liberal Kelowna, BC
—use a national security exemption. Probably the biggest example of a mess-up on a sole source was the F-35 that the previous Harper government tried to do. In fact, they were held in contempt of Parliament for trying to do it.
Conservative
Scott Anderson Conservative Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC
Okay. I don't think that's how it went.
The bill gives the minister authority to acquire shares in corporations and influence corporate government. Under what circumstances does the government believe it should become an owner of private defence companies?
Liberal
Stephen Fuhr Liberal Kelowna, BC
I think that you would have to ask the CEO of the investment agency when that becomes an issue. I can't speculate on what may or may not happen in the future.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Charles Sousa
I appreciate that.
Mr. Earle, it's over to you now for five minutes, sir.
Liberal
Philip Earle Liberal Labrador, NL
Thank you, Chair.
Through you, I want to say that, at this committee, we often hear primarily from industry witnesses who talk about the importance of the build-partner-buy pillars within the defence industrial strategy, as well as the need for close co-operation among government, industry and the Canadian Armed Forces.
The secretary has great former experience from an SME. I think we did business together in the past. More importantly, the secretary has great knowledge of what the strategy means.
How do the strategy and how it's put together strengthen the relationship between those pillars, contribute to a more effective procurement process and make it more efficient?
Liberal
Stephen Fuhr Liberal Kelowna, BC
Communication is a big one. I've talked to many companies that didn't know where to go, didn't know who to talk to and were burned out with trying to deal with the machine, as they referred to it, so they missed out on opportunities. If someone is interested in defence procurement and they put any kind of effort into it, they're going to get someone in our department who will help them.
Liberal
Philip Earle Liberal Labrador, NL
Thank you.
Looking at SMEs, how will the DIS help create long-term certainty for Canadian defence companies that are seeking to invest in facilities, technology and, most importantly—as you alluded to earlier—our skilled workers?
Liberal
Stephen Fuhr Liberal Kelowna, BC
There are a number of programs out there to help workers that are unrelated to this that the Government of Canada is doing and that we've been talking about.
Companies basically will invest in themselves and get out over their skis if they know what's coming. You skate to where the puck's going. If you don't do that, you're going to be playing catch-up all the time.
As I mentioned before, sovereign capability is in this document, specifically the defence investment plan and the defence policy. Those documents exist and are out there, and they give companies some certainty, an idea about where the Government of Canada will be investing. Certainty is what's helpful for business; uncertainty is not. We're saying that we're going to be serious about build-partner-buy. That's us, the DIA.
Then there's the buy Canada policy, which is a PSPC policy. Between those two things, there's certainty built in.
To go back to where the puck's going, with those three documents I just talked about, industry can start to see where we're headed.
Liberal
Philip Earle Liberal Labrador, NL
I have about two minutes left.
I know you know the aerospace and defence sector very well, and you know the significant importance of teaming. At Monday's committee, we talked about how important that is. Are there provisions in this, either intentionally or otherwise, that will aid Canadian companies in such arrangements?
Liberal
Stephen Fuhr Liberal Kelowna, BC
I think a good example of that would be the strategic partnership. It's having companies come in early and manage more of the process. Let them figure out who would be best.
Typically primes would do this anyway, but it would be bringing in companies early in the process. It might be MDA or Telesat, or in the case of fighter lead-in training, it would be CAE. They can figure out the most effective way for teaming. They actually manage much more of the process, because they're closer to the issue than the government is.