Thank you, Chair.
Thank you very much to the witnesses for appearing before us today.
I think what really triggered our questions about how National Defence was managing its inventory was the fact that the Auditor General had signalled this problem for the last 13 years. I too noticed that there was a thumbs-up on the improvements that had been made by National Defence in regard to quantity. I think that can't be understated, because we can understand. Many of us have had experience dealing with inventory. I've certainly dealt with clients who have had that issue, and we can appreciate the size of the problem.
I would like to return to the Auditor General's remarks and get your comments on the fact that again this year the Auditor General found that National Defence's inventories were overstated by hundreds of millions of dollars. I just want to understand where that's coming from. Can we attribute that purely to legacy evaluation problems, or is it still a problem with the input that you mentioned in your remarks, and people are making mistakes with the input? That's worrisome, because why isn't somebody checking that? How can an error of that magnitude be made?
On the quantity as well, talk to us a little bit about how the improvements were made on the quantity. Here the Auditor General remarks, “Inventory is counted through a cyclical, risk-based approach.” Just talk to us a little bit about that.
For me personally, the thing that I get concerned about is that when we're not sure where everything is and so on, what is the risk of loss and, of course, of stolen items? Where do you feel you are in the security of the inventory?