Yes.
Canada has a fundamental problem when it comes to understanding defence economies, dual-use and all of the issues that we are now focused on. We simply do not have the capability—and I'll get into the reasons in a moment—to critically evaluate and understand defence economics in Canada.
The community of scholars who are able to watch this is very small. I can list the five. There's Craig Stone, who is now retired; Dave Perry, who is the head of a think tank; Phil Lagassé, who's over at Carleton University; Richard Shimooka, who you heard from and who is also a member of a think tank; and Elinor Sloan. The list pretty well ends at that point. We don't have a robust community and an ability to actually examine and provide the arm's-length analysis of what we're trying to do in this particular context.
There are three reasons for this. The first one, of course, is that our major funding agencies have not chosen to make defence politics and defence economics a priority. When we look at both what SSHRC provides for and what the Canada research chairs provide for, it's literally almost impossible to find any acceptance or studies being conducted in this context.
In fact, when we look at the Canada research chairs—and this is my quick examination of this—I can find only two who really have defence orientations. They are, of course, very good people. They're Dr. Stéfanie von Hlatky, over at Queen's University, and Whitney Lackenbauer, over at Trent. You're not going to find anybody else on the CRC, so there has not been support for the individual and intellectual foundations we need.
When we look at DND's MINDS program, we see that it is a robust program. I have to acknowledge that I am a co-director of one of the networks, but the networks are only three years in duration, so you spend your first year setting it up, you spend the second year doing the research, and the third year, you're again thinking about the renewal. This creates difficulties for any longevity.
The third problem is universities themselves. They have not made defence studies a priority. As a result, hiring is reflected in this.
I'm constantly producing students who I think would make very good contributions to understanding defence economies, but unfortunately, they don't find positions within academia. For example, Tim Choi—a very brilliant mind—who is now working for Treasury Board on the shipbuilding strategy, was not able to find anything within a university. Another name that you will see all the time in the press is Heather Exner-Pirot, one of Canada's leading experts on critical minerals and mining policy. Again, the difficulty of ensuring that these very bright minds are brought in is very limited.
This leads me to my second major point, and that is the research impact. When we look at our attempts to understand Canada's policies—both successes and failures—when it comes to defence economies and when we talk about dual purposes, we have absolutely no lessons learned.
Let's look at successful defence procurement projects, such as the C-17s. Where are the open studies to tell us how we got that right, how we were able to move that up and how we were able to bring that under budget? We can also look at the frigate modernization as a success. Where are the studies on that to allow us to ask how we were able to bring it in on time and provide for a very successful follow-up?
Likewise, on the negative, when we look, for example, at “Strong, Secure, Engaged”, which was brought forward in 2017 as Canada's defence policy, there was considerable attention given to it as being fully costed. Where are the studies to say how successful it was, or, if it was not successful, what are the failures?
I'll end on two last points. We also have the difficulty of access to information. It's very hard to interview you folks now to really get to the bottom of when mistakes are made and when there are successes. Documents are very difficult. I'm currently researching and looking at our overall maritime strategy. I've spent the last four months trying to get access to the Canadian shipbuilding strategy—not the government report and not what the government says it says, but the actual report.
Now, it may be an indication that I'm just not a good researcher on this, and perhaps that's why I can't find it. I've gone through access to information. I've used my contacts through MINDS. I can't get a handle on that document, which means that either the document doesn't exist—and I'm hoping that's not the case—or it has been hidden so well—
