Mr. Speaker, I am happy today to support this motion by the member for Joliette.
The motion reads:
That, in the opinion of the House, the government should have a Standing Committee of the House of Commons hold public hearings on every proposed procurement of goods or services by the Canadian Armed Forces valued at more than $100 million, in order to ensure that the procurement process is transparent and fair to all concerns.
In my opinion, there are good reasons to support this motion. I think that the Liberal government has given Canadians great cause to question its procurement programs. I tend to partially agree and partially disagree with the member for Calgary Northeast.
The auditor general has said that there is too much bureaucracy within our procurement process. Perhaps we should be taking out some of those levels of bureaucracy and putting in public scrutiny at that point. Public scrutiny should probably be at the level of the statement of requirement so that we could get this moving a little faster.
If we look at the maritime helicopter project, the SOR on that has already been nine years and we still have not seen anything. If we had the defence committee involved in it we would have seen something by now. From that point on it can go through the regular process but again taking out some of the levels and maybe speeding things up a little. There is no question that things have been dragging.
After all, this is the Liberal government that came to power by cancelling the EH-101 program at a cost of about $1 billion. It says it was only $500 million. If we look at what it will cost by the time we get the new Sea Kings and the search and rescue on line, it will probably be well over a $1 billion.
This program was critical to the Canadian search and rescue forces and maritime helicopter capability. It was cancelled for strictly crass political purposes. Our search and rescue capability today is hanging by a thread. A couple of weeks ago an American helicopter piloted by a Canadian completed a rescue mission off the coast of Nova Scotia.
There is a report sitting in the minister's office that reportedly says the Labrador helicopters are prone to catastrophic failures and they present a high risk to crews. The Liberals have since turned around and bought the EH-101 helicopter for search and rescue, but after spending almost $1 billion to cancel a program.
The interesting point is that we will not see the first new helicopter until the year 2001. As for the Sea King it is still waiting for a replacement. We do not even have the SOR on it yet. Once we get that it will still take five to eight years down the road.
I have been to Greenwood to see the work they are doing to rebuild these helicopters. If we add in the rebuilding they are doing, we are talking about 70 hours for every one hour of flight. No wonder the auditor general is nervous about the whole situation and is saying that the government is not handling things properly.
It is costing us millions of dollars to keep these aging helicopters air worthy, and that with a minimal return. The Sea King is available less than 40% of the time and its mission system fails half the time when it is available. There is question about the legitimacy of the Canada search helicopter program from industry and the Sea King replacement contract is coming up.
The member for Joliette has already spoken to us about the infamous Griffon helicopters. I will therefore leave them aside for now.
Then there was a Bombardier contract for NATO flight training in western Canada, an untendered contract awarded by the Liberal government to the tune of $2.85 billion. Many questions have been asked about this Liberal decision. Perhaps, if the process were more transparent, parliamentarians would have been less suspicious of Liberal motives in the decision.
These are questions that parliamentarians should be able to ask and should be able to get substantive answers to, but not at the moment. In my opinion the Liberal government, through its sleight of hand approach to procurement, has forced parliamentarians to put forward these types of motions.
One of the very functions of the committee process is to enable parliamentarians to question government on the estimates. The government has not been forthcoming in this regard and has demonstrated its disrespect for the parliamentary process. It is not just a problem of the Department of National Defence but of all departments of the government. Thus parliamentarians are forced to take action such as this motion to create another committee.
SCONDVA is studying the issue of procurement. This committee should have the same oversight role with regard to defence procurement. SCONDVA demonstrated its competence and its credibility with the recent quality of life study. It is a good, strong committee with members deeply interested in the defence of the country and has garnered considerable expertise on defence issues in the last several years. Thus it is only right that the expertise of SCONDVA is given an oversight role on defence procurement.
If we remember, the Somalia inquiry called for a vigilant parliament. Vigilance must be demonstrated in the field of defence procurement as well. Another committee as recommended in the motion would be necessary to allow SCONDVA to deal with the massive issues before it.
My only concern is that while remaining vigilant we do not unnecessarily tie the hands of government in times of crisis. For instance, the United States is now running low on cruise missiles at a time when it is at war.
It might not be in the nation's national security interest to put procurement issues through a committee during a serious crisis. I think many would agree that this is a delicate time and a delicate issue. Thus I support the motion.