National Defence committee  I think we see both ships right now at about 2021, beginning of the year and end of the year. That will continue to refine as we do all the design work I talked about, but that would still be the view.

National Defence committee  They were telling us last week that just in the yard, their shipbuilding workforce is now over 500, and engineers and procurement specialists beyond that. Of course, in that whole supply chain of systems and pipework and cable, it would be in the thousands. Again, I just don't have the numbers.

National Defence committee  These are local engineers. We do have a reach-back to the company, ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems. They have a Canadian division as well, and have actually hired in Canada. That's really to make sure that if we have any questions about interpretation of the design package or things that they have given us...but this is a Canadian workforce.

National Defence committee  We started in 2008. We received Government of Canada approval in 2010 and issued the requests for proposal. In late 2012 we signed the umbrella agreements with the two yards. They then spent about 36 months each completely recapitalizing their facilities, impressively so. As Ms.

National Defence committee  I would say that in the evolution of specifications by which we build ships, if you went back a generation ago, the military specification would have been the highest standard. That's still true, I would say, for our front-line combatants. The way we will design and build the Canadian surface combatants, or were we to do submarines, will be around structures and capability that make them highly survivable.

National Defence committee  Regarding the joint support ships, the ships themselves are based on a mature German design, the Berlin-class ship. We have acquired that design and brought it into the yard where we have a combined workforce. I have some people in the yard, engineers and others, working with a significant workforce in the yard and beyond, who are now looking at the design.

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. You said that the submarines are at the end of their life, but that's not quite true. This may be a positive effect of an unfortunate situation, but at the very beginning of their life in Canada, the submarines went to sea less often than was suggested.

National Defence committee  Yes, it's specifically New Zealand, not Australia.

National Defence committee  A generation ago, the distinction in size and firepower between a frigate and a destroyer would have been quite different. Nowadays, they've probably morphed in size of ship. I think what has happened is, as we've retired our Tribal-class destroyers, the two capabilities that were unique to them in the navy were command and control of a task group and what we would call area air defence, which is an umbrella of missile capability that could protect all of the ships.

National Defence committee  We have about a decade, so you're exactly correct. We've structured all 12 ships, as far as the layout of compartments and spaces and cabling go, but we've only fitted four with the command and control capability, since you only need one on each coast. We can actually move the equipment to any of the ships and they can perform that role.

National Defence committee  I was just saying that Australia had the same ships. It is part of it, yes. I would say in the overall context of the work that we did and the capabilities that showed up. For the New Zealand navy, when they were looking at all the capabilities and they looked around the world competitively, everything that we had done regarding design and with non-recurring engineering was of interest to them.

National Defence committee  If I may add to that, on the innovation, of course, our minister, Minister Sajjan, is extremely interested in this area, which is a key part of the defence policy review. He's challenged us to see how we can further use innovation in working, as indicated, with Innovation, Science, and Economic Development, but also in all the round tables, and to look at different models around the world, such as DARPA in the U.S., and other areas that we could bring home and do more work on, not just to innovate in the sense of what are the future threats and what's going on, but on things that we've seen in the past in the ships that could also then be leveraged for export.

National Defence committee  The strategy itself, of building in Canada, is actually to reduce that very risk. If we were to go offshore and acquire these assets—and we see it in other areas of military equipment—we would be absolutely beholden to export licences and other things. Bringing it into Canada is the way we're trying to mitigate some of that risk.

National Defence committee  I'm really not the right person, in the context of capability and future capabilities. That would be our vice chief, chief of force development, and others. What I will say from experience, having a couple of times been involved in looking at nuclear submarines in Canada, is that it's a very complex, massive undertaking.

National Defence committee  I apologize, but I would like to add something to Ms. Campbell's comments about technology. When you look around the world at submarine technology and the advances in air-independent propulsion in fuel cells, there is a lot happening in this area which in the future could be used, if not under ice, certainly at ice edge and in other things like that.