Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank all of you for being here this afternoon.
In reviewing this matter again, it's always interesting how data comes up, certainly with the Canadian Armed Forces collecting the data, and now what to do with that data. Clearly the auditor has been in your offices many times, and again we see this theme of data management being a challenge. I hear your comments, which are positive, that this time we're doing more with the data that is being collected and about how we can certainly improve services to Canadians with the equipment support for the Canadian Armed Forces.
Again, in your comments, I'm very glad to see that, and as concrete measures, that is great, but I'd like you to turn to page 13 of the report, at paragraph 7.41. As we say in French sometimes,
“the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
That's what I'm concerned about right now, that even though we're saying we're going to do things, this is not the first time that this has been brought to the forefront.
Paragraph 7.41 of the Auditor General's report says, and I'll read it:
In our 2011 audit, we recommended that National Defence develop a means of monitoring overall and equipment-specific total cost information for maintenance and repairs. In response to our recommendation, National Defence stated that by December 2013, it would use its financial and materiel information system, the Defence Resource Management Information System (DRMIS), to record and monitor overall and equipment-specific total cost information for its maintenance and repair activities, such as personnel, contracted services, spare parts, maintenance equipment, and infrastructure costs.
Paragraph 7.42 says:
We found that National Defence did not use DRMIS as the source of information on overall and equipment-specific costs for maintenance and repair.
And it goes on.
At that time, the department had said they would use the system. The Auditor General said they did not use its capabilities fully. Here we are in 2017, and you're telling us again that you will use this system.
How have things changed so basically now that we should be confident that the system will be better used? At the end of the day, we all agree that we're not getting value for money and we're all concerned about that. What specific measures can you tell us about today that we can rely on to be done?