Madam Chair, I would like to get back to equipment, because the member alluded to it earlier and in his speech, and there were comments from the other hon. member about the forces being well equipped.
I think we are confusing two forces. There are the forces in Kabul, who are there in a peacekeeping role, and recently they got new armoured jeeps to protect them. As we can recall, a year or two ago, two of our soldiers were killed in unarmoured jeeps. Those jeeps have been replaced.
The rush for equipment right now is not for the Kabul role. The rush for equipment is for the new Kandahar aggressive role, where we are going to hunt down the Taliban. That is why more equipment is needed: because they are not adequately equipped for that role.
I want to deal specifically with two of the sixteen projects that are going through, one of which is the armoured protection for the LAV IIIs. The government is ordering 77 kits, but it is ordering 77 kits of level 1 protection, which is 10 year old protection.
The company that produces level 1 also produces level 3, which is lighter and more effective and gives those forces more protection. Yet the government decided to give them 10 year old armoured protection instead of the most modern and the most risk-free armoured protection. I wonder why that decision was made.
My second question to do with equipment has to do with the armoured patrol vehicles. The government is ordering somewhere in the area of 50 armoured patrol vehicles. At the moment, as I understand it, there are three possible competitors. The evaluation criteria are as follows: 50% is awarded for delivery on schedule; 30% is awarded to the best cost; and 20% to the best performance.
We are talking about armoured vehicles that are going into combat and we are setting delivery and schedule as two and a half times as valuable as the performance of the vehicle. That just seems bizarre.
Perhaps the member could explain to me these two procurements and why the government is doing it that way.