Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome to each of you. Thank you very much for being here this morning.
What we have to discuss together and to look at is a very important topic. It's about the success of the military mission, the lives of our brave men and women in uniform, and the necessity of choosing good weapons, good contracts, and to do it in a timely fashion.
I think what the deputy minister, Mr. Fonberg, said is very important, especially the following paragraph:
However, we never looked at the urgency as a licence to be sloppy in our processes. We never looked at the urgency as a reason to withhold information.
This is very key. We have four cases, and I must say....
In reading the report, we see nevertheless that troubling errors were made, in all four cases. I am certain that we will not have too much of the time alloted to us to go into this in detail. That is why this committee exists, to verify these details with a great deal of attention and rigour.
I would like to talk about the first case, the armoured vehicle replacement project. It seems that a design error was made. The Leopard 2 were unable to be equiped with mine plows and bulldozer blades, which made them rather unsuitable, if I understand correctly, for the mission.
On page 10 of the Auditor General's report, it states, “no research was done to find out if these implements could actually be fitted on the tanks.” So, the immediate question that springs to mind is how such a mistake could have been made.
Next, I want to go to page 26 of the report. I will read the paragraph in question, because it is quite surprising. It is paragraph 5.80 on page 26 of the English version.
It's paragraph 5.80. I don't know the page number in the English version.
Half of the paragraph will read something like this:
“We found that National Defence was aware, but did not disclose, that there was a significant risk that it would not be able to replace the entire Leopard 1 tank fleet in Afghanistan because it would not be able to equip the new tanks with the landmine plows and bulldozer blades needed for operations there.”
We wonder whether this was a mistake, or a failure to provide that information. First, I would like clarification from Ms. Fraser, please.