National Defence committee  I'm concerned by the same observation. The cost of that risk transfer to industry is given right back to us. When I insist on insurance liability coverage from a company on the construction of a ship or the delivery of a vehicle, they go out and get financing for that insurance and they put it in their bid price.

National Defence committee  I don't have that actual number with me. I believe the actual contract value with Boeing for the C-17s was slightly over $1 billion--$1.1 billion.

National Defence committee  The total cost--contingency, everything--is slightly over $2 billion, and we're estimating slightly less than $3 billion for 20 years of support for Chinooks. The submarines were a cost of $850 million for acquisition. The cost of a single new submarine is more than $1.5 billion.

National Defence committee  Perhaps I could make one general comment on the list of future projects. All of those programs don't move together. There is a very carefully laid-out investment plan that has a sequence of spending. You cannot bring in every major platform replacement program for the Canadian Forces to be spent on at the same time.

National Defence committee  Merci, Monsieur. The fundamental question is Industry Canada's responsibility to articulate that from a point of government policy. I know the government will look very closely at the CADSI recommendation and respond at the appropriate time. To go more specifically to your point, the predictability of where we will invest next with industry is a huge issue.

National Defence committee  Thank you, sir. I think it's true that project managers who have extensive experience to take on extremely difficult, large, and complex projects are relatively rare. We haven't had very many large, complex programs in the past 15 years. In six years, my predecessor actually only achieved the contract of one major new project, which was the maritime helicopter project.

National Defence committee  As you know, in the summer of 2008 the joint support ship project had unacceptable bids, and the government chose not to enter into an inappropriate contract. Working with the chief of the maritime staff, we have come back and very rigorously reviewed the requirement, and looked very hard at the cost drivers of that requirement.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Committee members, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the invitation to come and speak to you about procurement in the Department of National Defence today. As the chair said, I'm the assistant deputy minister, matériel. The materiel group is a central service provider and functional authority for all materiel for the Canadian Forces and the Department of National Defence.

Public Accounts committee  All I can say is that there was a large number of views and analysis done, much of it by fairly junior ranking officers. There were thousands of briefing notes and e-mails, and so on. The committee that I chair weekly did not bring diverging views of analysis to me and to General Tremblay from the army staff and the senior officer of CEFCOM to say there should be some other solution halfway through or a different way to go on the LAV RWS.

Public Accounts committee  There were 18 vehicles in October 2009.

Public Accounts committee  It was in October 2009.

Public Accounts committee  They were in Canada and were being used for troop training.

Public Accounts committee  Not really...

Public Accounts committee  That is normally the case, as Lieutenant-General Leslie commented. For the armoured heavy logistics vehicle and the Nyala, where we bought approximately 100 in the one case and 75 in the other, we needed virtually all of them in Afghanistan. The Auditor General is quite correct.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to reinforce what Lieutenant-General Leslie said, at the time there was opinion and views and analysis by a large number of staff. Every Friday morning I chaired a meeting that managed sort of minute-to-minute execution of these 30-plus projects. That went to every two weeks for about a two-year period.