Evidence of meeting #8 for Public Accounts in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was aircraft.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Anthony Housefather Liberal Mount Royal, QC
I want to come back to Mr. Kuruc's last question in terms of the challenges that would be posed.... The more jets.... We go from the Hornets to the F-35s, and we may have sixth-generation jets coming up. Pilots are not automatically qualified to fly one aircraft when they're qualified to fly another aircraft, are they? Maintenance crews would have to learn various different aircraft, so it does pose a challenge. I understand it's not an insurmountable challenge, but certainly having multiple different jets introduced at the same time.... If we were to take 16 F-35s plus go to another supplier for the others, it would pose a number of challenges, which I assume would increase costs, would it not?
LGen Jamie Speiser-Blanchet
That is a correct assumption. It would duplicate a certain amount of infrastructure and training and different support requirements. They would be different for each of those types of aircraft, yes.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you.
Thank you very much, Mr. Housefather.
We're beginning our third round, with five members for various times.
Mr. Stevenson, you'll lead us off, please.
Conservative
William Stevenson Conservative Yellowhead, AB
Thank you to our presenters here. I'll try not to repeat much of what has been said before, but from Ms. Beck and the lieutenant-general, I need probably just a yes or no on this. From what I'm hearing, you are 100% on the F-35s. You have no doubts that any change to a different plane is going to come from the political end, not you guys. You guys have all decided this is where you're going for this. If there's any change, it's going to be from the Prime Minister or their side to go away from the F-35 at this point.
Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
You're right. We are public servants. We offer the facts, and the decisions are made, and we take guidance from our elected leaders.
Conservative
William Stevenson Conservative Yellowhead, AB
I'm not sure if this is for Ms. Hogan or not, but if there was any change, can you tell me what the costs would be for any other cancellations going forward? I thought that was in there somewhere, but what would the consequences be to have any change if they did go away from that?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General
I think there are committed costs that have already been incurred. There's a commitment right now—or at least there was at the time of the audit—to purchase four aircraft and then parts for eight others, long-lead parts. I don't know if that's progressed since then. Obviously that would be committed, but then the nation-to-nation agreement would have to change, or Canada would just not call up the rest of the planes. I think that's something National Defence could help you better understand.
Conservative
William Stevenson Conservative Yellowhead, AB
What I'm reading and what I see from your answer is that it's best to get this done and get forward on the F-35. Then it goes back to managing costs. Maybe Ms. Folkes can answer part of this. In my reading, there's Defence Construction Canada, and I'm not sure.... Maybe you can clarify what the difference is between the PSPC and the Defence Construction Canada parts, and who is responsible for dealing with the costs and overruns on that side of it.
Associate Assistant Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Defence Construction Canada is within Public Services and Procurement's portfolio. It is the organization that would undertake the construction for National Defence. It has specific authorities under the Defence Production Act and reports up through the responsible public services and procurement minister.
One thing I will say about the costs with respect to infrastructure speaks to the 50% fidelity that we had back in 2019. There are quite a few secure requirements that all members of the F-35 joint strike fighter program have to meet. It is not until you make a purchase decision and inform the joint program office of that purchase decision that you're able to receive a lot of the information around infrastructure. That is part of the reason we didn't have that information in 2021 and towards the end of 2022.
Once you make the procurement decision, you're then able to receive a lot more information on infrastructure and other highly complex requirements that allow you to have greater fidelity of costing.
Thank you.
Conservative
William Stevenson Conservative Yellowhead, AB
My main thought on this is who's responsible for the cost versus the decision to purchase the F-35s.
I do have another question, but I'm not sure if it should go to Ms. Beck or to Jamie. A few years ago, the current government had a strategy where they were going to “green” government, and they said the F-35 was going to be part of that. Is that still part of the mandate for net zero going forward?
I'll leave it at that part first, if it is yes or no, and then we'll go from there.
Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
It's something that we're pretty proud of, but it's not specific to the F-35 program. I'll let Pete elaborate, but we have recently, for instance, through Defence Construction Canada, started the construction of the first net-zero housing in the Government of Canada.
Conservative
William Stevenson Conservative Yellowhead, AB
Can you tell me of any other NATO country that has a defence requirement to do greening of their...?
Assistant Deputy Minister, Infrastructure and Environment, Department of National Defence
I can jump in and perhaps try to help answer this.
A number of other countries in NATO do have greening targets generally for the work they do as part of government, and that includes their defence departments. I wouldn't speculate on how many, but a number of nations do have some of those targets built in.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you.
Oh, go ahead please, Lieutenant-General Speiser-Blanchet.
LGen Jamie Speiser-Blanchet
I can elaborate quickly.
One thing we are partnered with is a global air chiefs climate change collaboration. It's essentially a club of air forces that are working together to try to share best practices and work with one another to enable climate change reactions, and it does include some greening of our fleets. Some of it is, of course, reactions to climate change and humanitarian assistance types of elements. There's also a very robust discussion on synthetic aviation fuel, and we are using that in the RCAF to positive effect.
There are some greening efforts that I would say are embedded in different parts of the organization.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Infrastructure and Environment, Department of National Defence
As we build buildings, we build them to a higher standard now than we did in the past, including net-zero or net-zero-ready buildings. We will be doing that as part of the infrastructure for the fighter.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative John Williamson
Thank you. As long as it's not tanks.... I represent CFB Gagetown, and we need diesel to run those things.
Ms. Yip, you have the floor for five minutes, please.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you for sharing those greening efforts and initiatives from National Defence. It's something that is really good to hear, especially with all our climate change issues.
Ms. Beck, why was the construction of the fighter squadron facilities in Cold Lake and Bagotville more than three years behind the original schedule?
Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
I think we've touched on that a bit, but I am happy to elaborate, and maybe Pete will want to jump in here too.
It's because the specifications changed. The articulation in the early years of the project was that the joint project office required a certain kind of hangar, and it's much more than just a hangar where we park the aircraft at night. That change to require much greater security includes those steel plates that Pete was talking about earlier.
That then meant a much longer and more expensive supply chain to ensure that the steel that makes it into the hangar has been protected from birth, so to speak, all the way along that supply chain. Strictly speaking, security costs alone would have gone up because of the need to make sure the entire supply chain was secure, so we didn't end up with steel in the building that had other things in it, for instance.
Liberal
Jean Yip Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
The Auditor General's report indicated that there was “insufficient departmental engineering personnel to service support equipment for both the CF-18 Hornet and CF-35A during the transition.” How is the defence department overcoming this shortage of engineering personnel?
LGen Jamie Speiser-Blanchet
I can answer that one.
Maintenance support personnel is an area that we are continuing to work on, because we do not, as mentioned, have an abundance of them. However, this is an area that we continue to work on.
In terms of that engineering support, there's the maintenance support, but then there are also the vehicle techs and others who are supporting different areas of the squadron and the squadron facility. Some of them actually come from the Canadian Army, so we're working on ways to work with them to be able to mitigate that shortage. We also see potential for a future opportunity to work with someone in the Canadian industry who can perhaps help us to mitigate that shortage. This is an area that we could look into future contracting for.
We still have some years. It's on our action plan of things we must look at and continue to address and monitor. There are options that we will consider as we go forward.