Thank you, Chair.
I thank the Auditor General for being with us today.
Auditor General, I'd like to talk a little bit about chapter 2 in the context of lessons learned, because I notice that when we do these reports, in all of the recommendations there's quite often talk about lessons learned and departments either accepting or not accepting. In this particular case, the department actually said it disagreed with your major recommendations.
Let me put it in context. In the fall of 2010, Madam Fraser's report, in chapter 6, dealt with helicopters. Let me go through the recommendations quickly:
National Defence should review and apply the lessons learned with these helicopter acquisitions...
primarily, and I'm now paraphrasing, “...in the assessment of risk, project timelines, and costs, and...procurement strategies [should be] tailored to the complexity of the equipment being acquired”.
DND agreed. They responded:
National Defence continuously strives to capture the lessons learned in undertaking complex acquisitions and, in this context, will undertake a specific review... “
on that one. The response goes on to state:
In addition, a review of the associated policies, procedures, and processes will also be conducted and they will be revised as required.
This was a report done 18 months before this one. We had a project that clearly had difficulty; the Auditor General pointed it out, and the defence department said that you were right, and that they'd make sure that as they looked at other projects, they'd learn the lessons and apply them.
In your opinion, sir, did they learn any lessons? If they did, did they apply them?