National Defence committee  There are three pieces of work being done in Canada: the 42 tanks being repaired and overhauled—not necessarily in Montreal, but it's a competitive process—plus building 18 armoured engineer vehicles, and armoured recovery vehicles, which are very expensive, and that's very high-quality work.

Public Accounts committee  Perhaps I could elaborate in more detail. Some of the challenges that were evident at the place in time when the Auditor General did her review were representative of the early introduction of equipment, without perhaps the normal time and space to deliver the integrated logistics support with normal spare parts.

Government Operations committee  Our sense is that the single entity is not required. The team we have is effective. These are separate, complex skill sets. The expertise resident in Industry Canada, Public Works, and National Defence is complementary. Clearly, the system is not broken and is working well.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. I'll briefly respond to that. Just as a point of clarification, we don't need any vehicles that are a metre thick. We use technology to beat the rocket-propelled grenade threat. The ability to pick up our personnel and equipment by helicopter and move them to a forward-operating base, instead of traversing the routes, is hugely important.

Government Operations committee  Briefly, a huge amount of effort is done on that, both by our force development people, chief of force development, and our research and development people, Defence Research and Development Canada. Dr. Walker's organization is constantly tracking technology change. The operational commanders have a formal lessons-learned feedback process to the strategic joint staff.

Government Operations committee  I don't believe that I would find previously used or surplus equipment to be in the high-risk category. Actually, it's normally a lower risk because it is a proven solution. Spare parts, maintenance procedures, and all those things are already in place and don't have to be developed.

Government Operations committee  If I may, there is actually quite a bit of specific detail on the website on each one of those reports. The $7.3 billion is a total contract value over a number of years, mostly for repair and overhaul, and only a small portion of that is actually being used, because these are incremental maintenance contracts, largely, that are higher risk.

Government Operations committee  Thank you. The search and rescue project is progressing. Option analysis is ongoing, revised costings are being done. The Buffalo is easily serviceable to 2015. Structurally, it had been reinforced a number of years ago, and an avionics upgrade is being done to the cockpits, because it's basically a cargo airplane.

Government Operations committee  Merci. This is an ongoing requirement of good stewardship, where we regularly go in and look at higher-risk projects, because some projects are very difficult. They are complex repair and overhauls and service support contracts and they go on for a number of years. So the chief of review services regularly and independently, in a very close relationship with the Auditor General, reviews those higher-risk projects and gives me feedback on improvements to management.

Government Operations committee  The budget for Public Works services is approximately $5 billion a year.

Government Operations committee  We have a budget of $5 billion per year to equip Defence; this includes Public Works services, a group of 400 personnel and salaries the equivalent of some $30 million.

Government Operations committee  Merci, Madame. The Auditor General did a very good and very rigorous report. She described not the loss of equipment, but the ability to track where it is, when it has been issued, when it has come back to be repaired, and so on. That picture at that moment was accurate. I have visited Afghanistan a number of times.

Government Operations committee  If I could just elaborate, the Americans pull through R and D investment. They will spend billions of dollars investing in a platform--a strike fighter, for example, from Lockheed Martin, and then they pull through and actually acquire it from Lockheed Martin. Technically, was that a competitive process in acquisition or not?

Government Operations committee  I meet on several occasions during the year with my counterparts in EU countries in a NATO forum, in the national armaments directors forum, and with the partners of the joint strike fighter program. I participate in the CEO meeting for the joint strike fighter program every six months, and we have very frank conversations about exactly these issues.

Government Operations committee  The aspect that's somewhat unique in Canada is the separation of the function of contracting from defence materiel in general. It works well here. The Australians have a combined defence materiel organization. The United States has four or five, although my counterpart has sort of a strategic role of coordination in the Pentagon.