Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to join you today to talk about chapter 5 of the 2009 fall report of the Auditor General. As you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, I have here with me today Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie, chief of the land staff, and Dan Ross, assistant deputy minister, materiel.

National Defence committee  Absolutely, Mr. Chairman, but the only thing I would ask is that I'm not sure exactly what reports we're referring to. We'll certainly go back and look. You'll have our full cooperation.

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. To clarify, Mr. Chair, the expected costs for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces for security at the Olympics, estimated almost a full year ago and appropriated, I think, in the supplementary estimates (A), were $212 million. Through the course of last summer, as we completed our planning and realized we would need certain things, such as marine barrier protections for $3 million, our estimate went from $212 million to a total of $229 million.

National Defence committee  We can certainly get back to you on that.

National Defence committee  If I understand Kevin's point, as we redid our program activity architecture, it actually went from a billion in that line to a billion in other program activities.

National Defence committee  I don't know. Do you know what it is, Kevin?

National Defence committee  Mr. Chairman, I think the total identified incremental costs of Afghanistan to date are around the $9-billion mark, I think, for the Canadian Forces and National Defence. I don't know exactly the number we're running at in 2009-10 and 2010-11. Whatever that number is, that number will no longer be available to the department and the Canadian Forces.

National Defence committee  What is the line item?

National Defence committee  The strategic review is part of the Treasury Board's expenditure management system. Every fourth year, every department of government and agency is going to have to go through a strategic review. We are coming up to 2010-11, which will be the fourth round. At the end of this round, all departments will have gone through a strategic review.

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. I might actually just turn to Mr. Jacobson on the question of project managers in particular. The CADSI report, as I read it, has really three critical recommendations in it. One is around this notion I think you've just raised of a defence industrial policy.

National Defence committee  Thank you for the questions. Mr. Chairman, let me start with the issue of fixed-wing search and rescue at $3 billion. We don't do these things by way of fixed envelopes per se, Mr. Chairman. In our costing we have assumed, in the context of our annual $21-billion budget, that over time we would end up purchasing a new fleet of fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft for approximately $1.5 billion.

National Defence committee  Yes, only to say, Mr. Chairman, that the incremental costs of the deployment in Afghanistan have been handled as a separate appropriation item since the mission began. So on the costs of the actual mission, while we will no longer be incurring the cost of the mission once we withdraw, no longer will we be getting the appropriation for that either.

National Defence committee  We did talk about that perhaps when you were out of the room for a second, and we said we have had discussions all the way through the Auditor General, the Department of Finance, and the public accounts committee. The member asked if there was anything the committee could recommend or help us with, and certainly the idea of raising that limit would be of benefit to us, because it would take away from the time we spend--not necessarily hugely efficiently--trying to land on that small number and allow us to use it to manage the organization probably a little bit more efficiently.

National Defence committee  Mr. Chairman, I will just make two or three really quick comments. One, on the issue of supply, it is a 20-year plan. As to the 2% question on the envelope growth, this is an organization whose funding has grown by over 50% in the last five years. The 2% comes on top of that 50% growth.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. This was an issue that we had a lengthy discussion on at the public accounts committee. The member is right. Every other department has a 5% carry-forward opportunity. The Department of National Defence was set at $200 million back in the mid-1990s, and I think there's a general growing realization by the Auditor General, the public accounts committee and, by virtue of your question, this committee as well as to the ability to manage a $20 billion organization while not being allowed to go to $20 billion and one dollar because we would blow our appropriation.