Public Accounts Committee on Oct. 7th, 2025

[LGen Jamie Speiser-Blanchet]

As the deputy mentioned, it is in the developmental and research phase now. In fact, some of the numbers, depending on how the prototypes go, are late 2030s and 2040s.

However, other things that we are pursuing in the meantime are autonomous combat platforms—that's one. These are meant to be different drones that can accompany fighter jets. There will be opportunities, I believe, and we're certainly working more closely with Canadian industry while we talk to allies and partners who may be doing research as well. There's a lot more collaboration opportunity ahead. I believe those are areas that will be of benefit to us as we look to what we need in the future, because, as was mentioned, if we start now, those investments can actually help yield the technology and things that will give us that operational overmatch in the future.

[Ned Kuruc, Conservative, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Can we actually pivot now, or are we not sure right now? We could create the perfect storm, where we could again be behind if we don't act out and fulfill what I think Ms. Beck alluded to earlier, saying that all parties came to a decision, which we all did, and we find ourselves behind. If we don't execute now and fulfill the F-35s, when it comes time to upgrade we could actually be more behind, and it could cost the taxpayer a lot more money.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Mr. Kuruc, I want to stop you because you're over, but I will wait and allow for an answer.

[Ned Kuruc, Conservative, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

I don't know if I asked a question.

[Stefanie Beck]

We're focused on delivering what we have. We have commitments in place, and we need to continue to maintain those, but as the general said, we always have an eye to the future.

Maybe just one point is that on drone technology, the rate of change in the war in Ukraine is unseen. It's staggering. Every few weeks, there's a different version of a drone or a different version of electronic jamming equipment. It's just extraordinary, so we need to stay on top of that as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you.

The committee does recognize that you are all experts here—

[Stefanie Beck]

Some are more expert than others.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

The general has the unique situation where people will literally shoot at her, so thank you for your service.

We're going back to Ms. Tesser Derksen, please, for five minutes.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

Thank you.

I want to pick up on something Ms. Yip was asking about with respect to the facility. It's kind of a more specific question.

I know it's been brought up repeatedly that there were things you weren't necessarily anticipating with respect to the design requirements. Pardon the frankness of the question, but did we miss something?

I think that when you're procuring very expensive aircraft, you would have a pretty good idea of what the requirements would be for the facility they'd be housed in, in terms of security, build form and that sort of thing. I'm not an expert, so I'll rely on you to fill us in on that a bit.

[Peter Hammerschmidt]

We launched modified design-build contracts for the two facilities in 2020. Since that time, we have been pursuing the design work for the facilities.

Before the government decision to proceed with the F-35, we were at about 80% design on the facilities, so we had a pretty good sense already of what the facilities needed to look like. We did anticipate some change post decision on the selected fighter. To be frank, we didn't expect the extent of that change and just how specific some of those requirements would be. That led to the design changes I spoke to earlier.

We did have a very good sense of what a fighter squadron facility needed to look like.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

Okay.

I presume that at some point in the future we will be undergoing this process again, where we're procuring more aircraft. Hopefully, we'll all be retired by then.

Looking backward, is there anything you would do differently next time, with this knowledge that you could potentially be facing design requirements that weren't anticipated?

[Peter Hammerschmidt]

Certainly. This is the first time Canada has developed infrastructure for a fifth-generation capability. It's highly complex for some of the reasons that we've already covered. We've learned a heck of a lot, actually, as part of this design process. We've been working very closely with EllisDon, the contractor. Through the design predecision, we learned a lot of lessons that we applied in the design post decision, as we made the adjustments to the new requirements.

We are in kind of a constant learning mode on this. We will be applying those lessons very much in the context of future acquisitions, for sure.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

That's great.

Do you think there would be an opportunity to actually codify that knowledge and capture it? Anecdotally, it's something that you may talk about in the future, but is there a process where you would turn that into a best practice that's actually documented in a manual or something like that?

[Peter Hammerschmidt]

I don't know about a manual per se, but my team actively documents lessons learned, to be able to apply these next time.

Infrastructure is often a step or two behind, simply because we build to the requirements of the equipment that is being procured, so we're always looking for ways to keep pace with equipment acquisition to ensure that infrastructure is there in time. These are exactly the types of lessons we learn, document and build into the work we do going forward.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

That's good to hear.

I'll go to a very broad question with respect to methodologies and research.

This has obviously been a very extensive overview of a major defence procurement process. We talked about equipment, the storage and the training.

This will be for the Attorney Gen—

I just made you a lawyer. Congratulations.

This will be for the Auditor General.

What types of research methodologies went into your report?

[Karen Hogan]

I'm sure many of the lawyers who work for me would be happy if I were a lawyer, but no.

When you talk about research for a comparison or what we do for audits, it would be different. We definitely have data scientists who help support us when we do sampling and stratifying of populations. Here, we would have been looking for some advice of a technical nature.

Not to put Nick on the spot, but he has audited National Defence for decades now, so he does understand them a lot.

We typically try to compare, when we can, to foreign countries. It's a little more difficult in this space, for sure. We do definitely pay attention to what the Government Accountability Office has been doing. They have lots of work on fighter jets and have been talking about increasing costs just coming out of this in general for the F-35.

It's a very broad question. It would depend on the topic. If it were in the health field, I could tell you that we'd go seek out experts there if we didn't necessarily have them. We have the ability to go get what we don't believe we have in-house, and then we do rely on the experts, whom we actually audit. We don't take for granted that they do this day-to-day and they know, but we take a step back for an independent, unbiased view of things.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

You are out of time, but if you have a brief follow-up question, please go ahead, Ms. Tesser Derksen.

[Kristina Tesser Derksen, Liberal, Milton East—Halton Hills South, ON]

In this particular instance, did you sense there were gaps in the information you had before you to make reasonable determinations in your reports, or were you pretty satisfied with the data that you were able to access?

[Karen Hogan]

We didn't have any access issues here whatsoever. We had the required security clearance to have the conversations and to look at the information that we looked at. I wouldn't say there was an issue here whatsoever on this file.

[The Chair, Conservative, John Williamson]

Thank you very much.

We're going to have a truncated last round, which will give three members various times. Again, to give the government the last slot, I'm going to mix it up. I'm going to have Monsieur Deltell and Monsieur Lemire go first, and then Mr. Osborne will end it for us this afternoon.

Mr. Deltell, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Beck, I'd like to continue the discussion we had with Mr. Kuruc a few moments ago. You said that, in the woes of war, technological advances are rapid. History has taught us that. We're a long way from the days of Billy Bishop. It's important to remember that at the beginning of the Second World War, biplanes were still used and that the war ended with Messerschmitt 262s. Things changed rapidly.

Without going into the details and revealing any national security information, can you tell us whether the Canadian Armed Forces or the Royal Canadian Air Force have drones? What's the current situation regarding drones? What types of drones do you have?

[Stefanie Beck]

In fact, we have them for the navy, army and air force. Their nature depends on the needs we have to meet and the results we want to achieve. A lot of research is being done into what else exists.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

Where are they made?

[Stefanie Beck]

They are manufactured all across Canada, including Quebec, Ontario and Alberta. Every day, we receive messages from various Canadian companies that want to offer us products that can help us, especially drones.

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent—Akiawenhrahk, QC]

Let's continue the discussion and explore this area.

Is that part of the expansion plans for the armed forces and the Royal Canadian Air Force? How much of the budget will be allocated to that? Should we be putting more money into those aircraft, if we can define them that way, rather than into other aircraft?