National Defence committee  Thank you, sir. Most of the landmines have actually been used up by the Taliban. Most of the ex-Soviet artillery projectiles have been used up. We see more improvised fertilizers and that type of explosive, sometimes older anti-personnel mines, as triggering devices. I can't go further than that because of the classification.

National Defence committee  I could comment from my perspective. We will repatriate large amounts of equipment, large numbers of vehicles, and a mountain of other materiel. Ammunition alone is a mountain. We're planning that in great detail right now with operational support command. We will have to refurbish a huge amount of materiel.

National Defence committee  I will just comment briefly, Mr. Chair. The public announcement is formally announcing that we're beginning to define solutions. The first public announcement is never the contract award or the beginning of spending money. It is we will formally be able to go and talk to companies, send out price and availability requests, letters of interest requests, and have a formal exchange.

National Defence committee  The delay is perhaps a broader interdepartmental understanding of the options, and agreement on those options. Once the process gets started, it could probably be quite quick.

National Defence committee  The range from those bases are what they are. The speed required to maintain the same service to Canadians is what it is. It's a question of how you want to articulate that to the market. Do you want to articulate that as very specific hard numbers, or do you want to articulate it as providing a SAR service that provides good protection to Canadians?

National Defence committee  I don't think it's hard at all.

National Defence committee  Once there is broader agreement and the chief of the air staff makes his final recommendation on requirement, I think the process, once under way, could go quite quickly.

National Defence committee  That's right. You know, the SAR sector in Canada is what the SAR sector is.

National Defence committee  It's the same. The sector hasn't changed.

National Defence committee  It's interesting. It goes back to the previous question. Mr. Bachand asked why there isn't success on all of these. The CF-18 replacement is not programmed until 2016-17. As I said in my opening remarks, we took the last delivery of our R-2 upgraded fighters last Thursday--an enormously successful program: off-the-shelf upgrades designed with U.S.

National Defence committee  It's absolutely the right point, particularly for shipbuilding. In shipbuilding, you need a long-term view of 20 to 40 years and a long-term, continuous build without the uncertainty in the shipyards of not knowing what's coming next. Shipyards shut down, they sell equipment, and they let people go very quickly.

National Defence committee  December 2004.

National Defence committee  The first principle of complex project management is to get it done. You have to get it done. You have to maintain the schedule, if at all possible. Delay drives cost. It drives technical risk, operational risk. There are so many factors that come into play. To do that you have to demonstrate some flexibility.

National Defence committee  Thanks, sir. In terms of the delay specifically, I think the requirement is to have a statement of requirement and a process that seems to be fair, competitive, etc. The government did go to the National Research Council to ask eight or ten aerospace professionals, and they submitted their report to us.

National Defence committee  In this case we have kept our liquidated damages whole. We have not forgiven them. We have moved those liquidated damages and those penalties to the next delivery. If you refuse to take a delivery and apply all liquidated damages, you tend to stop your project, projects that take a decade to get to delivering a very difficult solution.