Thank you very much.
To be honest, I don't know where to begin because there's so much in this report. Let me just start off by saying that at National Defence you have the task of purchasing, you have the task of supporting, and then you have the task of staffing. Based on the Auditor General's report, it looks like in three areas you've gone wrong.
On the first, in terms of purchasing, you've overestimated equipment use, you've over-purchased. With respect to support, you have underestimated the cost of providing that support to the equipment. Then in terms of staffing, you have under-resourced the personnel requirements.
Let me just pick one. I'll go to the support of equipment.
Mr. Forster, you said earlier that while some costs, such as the purchase price of a piece of equipment, are relatively easy to track, others, such as the development and disposal cost and the operating and maintenance costs over a 20- to 30-year period, are not. As reasonable people, we can certainly appreciate that type of explanation.
However, in the Auditor General's report, it was also pointed out, with respect to the use of incremental funds, that money that was specifically allocated for particular purposes was not used for that purpose. There's an example the Auditor General gave in his report that $115 million was provided in the 2014-15 fiscal year to support the Chinook helicopter, and $137 per year thereafter. Part of that money was not spent for that purpose. What's worse is that there wasn't any monitoring from National Defence.
My question is in two parts. First, to the Auditor General, beyond that finding were you able to provide any type of assessment in terms of how this happened? Was this a blatant disregard of what is expected by the Treasury Board, which is that when incremental funds from the government are allocated for a specific purpose, that money be used for what it was allocated for?
My second question is to Mr. Forster. What happened there?