National Defence committee  I suspect there may be some modifications that need to take place. I know that in Canada, sometimes, in lieu of a national security exception, we use the clause that's called “not in the public interest”. This has been used before, but in a very limited capacity. That would probably need to be looked at as well, the use of that and under what conditions.

National Defence committee  I think there's a lot of confusion around the ITB regime. The ITB regime is a passive way of getting.... It's a blunt instrument that is used to get Canadian content or Canadian involvement within procurement. By its nature, it shouldn't penalize Canadian firms; it should be a way to incentivize and build domestic capacity.

National Defence committee  I can speak to the last one for sure. I think members are obviously worried that it hasn't been released. It is what we might call a “rallying document” for us, where we get a little more visibility on the direction that the armed forces are going in. We also understand that there are some improvements expected, or structural improvements within procurement, some concepts or ideas that we've been working on with the Department of National Defence and PSPC.

National Defence committee  I have no idea what's holding up NORAD mod. Again, I'm not in the conversations. If they are sourcing something from Canadian firms, I'm most certainly not involved in those discussions.

National Defence committee  We have had a very top-level briefing on some of the technology planks under NORAD modernization, but at this point, we have not been involved in the actual planning and preparations for the equipment that's going to be purchased for NORAD modernization. Some of our companies may have been involved in some of the procurements with regard to the North Warning System, but you'd have to speak to them directly.

National Defence committee  I can't speak to the operational needs in the Canadian Armed Forces. I have not seen a copy of the defence policy update, but I understand that this asset may be discussed in the defence policy update.

National Defence committee  I think there are some areas that I would call “quick hits” or low-hanging fruit, where we know we have resident capability within the country and, in the case of the war in Ukraine for example, we know we would need to restock. We have a lot of armoured vehicles. We're world leaders in armoured vehicles, so that would be identification of one capability that we know is resident in Canada, and if we needed to source that very quickly, we could source it.

National Defence committee  I think you heard from the chief of the defence staff that they haven't increased munitions through the munitions supply program since, I think, 2022, or they haven't purchased additional munitions through that program. We were basically using stocks in order to send our contributions to Ukraine.

National Defence committee  Sure thing. Mike is very right to say that it starts off with identifying and prioritizing what we want in this country from a security and capability perspective. Then you drive that into the outcomes you want in your procurement model. We want an outcome of maintaining a certain capability with a Canadian vendor.

National Defence committee  No, we understand in general how the system works, but if you actually want to do the hard work of eliminating steps that make this overall process highly complicated, you would have to be able to have exposure to the 250-some steps the Department of National Defence goes through to get a project from project conception to requirements analysis, options analysis and then through to actual procurement.

National Defence committee  We would expect to see something like this in mandate letters, and we would expect it to be very directive to the ministers in charge. There are effectively three ministers, but there are a few more who play within defence procurement and export, if you will. We would expect to see it in all of the three ministers' mandate letters to take action to have procurement reform.

National Defence committee  We're not at the table.

National Defence committee  First and foremost, before I go into hypothetical bottlenecks, we would need to map the system. Right now, there exists no mapping of the procurement system, in the public domain anyway, which means we cannot identify where there are bottlenecks, misalignments, or perhaps duplications to make determinations on how we would change that process.

National Defence committee  Industry is expecting to see demand signals that are firm, binding, signed contracts. These investments in production lines to ramp up will take capital investments that repay themselves in the order of 15 to 20 years. This means that they need to be backstopped by a procurement size that is large enough to, effectively, run the line for that long a period of time in order for them to recuperate their investment.

National Defence committee  As I understand it, proposals have been put to the Government of Canada. I have not seen these proposals, but I understand from companies that proposals have been put in to the Government of Canada to increase shell production and modify the lines, particularly for 155s. You'd have to ask the company to confirm this, but to my knowledge, there have been no legally signed contracts to increase production so that we can deliver to Ukraine.