Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. It was Avascent.

Government Operations committee  The analysis of the responses we received allowed us to know whether they were off-the-shelf military products or not, but I don't know if those specific terms were used.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. For this procurement here, we have not released a request for proposal. We had the request for information. We had some results and a good analysis on that, with some very specific conclusions that were also supported by, as I mentioned earlier, a third party assessment.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for this question. I'll look into it.

Government Operations committee  I don't think that was the case, quite frankly, because our client department, which is the technical authority, and we are aware of the aircraft that exist in the multi-mission aircraft sector. We also have the opportunity to provide information to companies if things are not clear.

Government Operations committee  That has yet to be determined. If you're asking for our own efforts in government, I don't have that figure yet. The CITT is now asking us to negotiate compensation. We are in the process of doing that. I don't have the exact figure at this moment.

Government Operations committee  I don't have that number. What I can share is that over two and a half years with PSPC in defence and marine procurement, this was my second case at the tribunal.

Government Operations committee  On part one, the CITT, I think I'll go back to my previous comment. Every defence and marine procurement, once detailed from a requirements point of view, is fairly massive. There are many technical requirements. Many of them are mandatory. Some of them are desirable. There are different assessments and different criteria.

Government Operations committee  For me, formal engagement or re-engaging with industry...we did not. I mentioned earlier that we re-engaged with all those who came back and wanted to talk to us, wanted more information and wanted to share additional information about their respective solutions.

Government Operations committee  The key piece of the RFI was that it be unanimous. It was a conclusion of the RFI that the only aircraft currently available that offered a solution to all Department of National Defence HLMRs, their high-level mandatory requirements, was the Boeing P-8 Poseidon. From a process point of view, we went from capturing this information to doing the analysis to trying to dig more into this potential solution—the Boeing P-8 Poseidon.

Government Operations committee  It was simply based on a request point of view. We didn't say no to anyone. We engaged with everyone who wanted to talk to us about this procurement. With respect to the concerning part, we had a third-party assessment, as I mentioned earlier. It was fairly standard. The analysis was fairly conclusive with respect to the only military off-the-shelf aircraft.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. Those questions are very focused on the plane itself, the cost of sustainment. I think they're better for DND to answer. We can move in with a process discussion if you wish, Mr. Johns, afterwards.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. We received 23 responses.

Government Operations committee  I would say that yes, at this stage of the procurement, it was a typical RFI. I mentioned earlier that the RFI included all the high-level mandatory requirements we had from the Department of National Defence. It's important to understand the difference between generic high-level requirements, such as interoperability—that would be one of them—and a specific set of requirements that would be a lot more detailed, which we would use in a request for proposal process.

Government Operations committee  Perhaps this is a good segue to the answer just provided by Mr. Matthews. When we receive a requirement, we look at what it is and the details around it. We then try to have the best solicitation process for the requirement. In this case, we started our process with a request for information, as detailed a bit earlier.