Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. The investigation is progressing and the discussions remain active. To your specific question about when something like that is found—when a problem is found—we do look at where the source of the problem—

Public Accounts committee  I would say, Mr. Chair, that over the next two months we'll have an answer.

Public Accounts committee  It was zero. Since the start of the national shipbuilding strategy, with the signature of the umbrella agreements with Irving Shipbuilding and the Vancouver shipyard, we have built the six vessels that my deputy just mentioned.

Public Accounts committee  There are others located in Ontario. One good example would be Hike Metal Products in Wheatley, Ontario. They are building, with Chantier Forillon in Quebec, the search and rescue boats for the Coast Guard.

Public Accounts committee  We do have a specific project called the Aurora incremental modernization project, and that's still ongoing. We're putting the final touches on this project as we speak, with the OEMs that are concerned, and the target date for that is 2024.

Public Accounts committee  As my deputy said, that's more a question for DND when they come to this venue, but—

Government Operations committee  The ADM of the materiel group is the technical authority for the project. I think the Royal Canadian Air Force should not be too far behind. The process right now includes a lot of certifying and a lot of qualification with the new aircraft, and obviously, the RCAF is quite involved with that.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. With respect to the fixed-wings, our CC-295 Kingfisher project is progressing. We have accepted 14 aircraft out of 16. We are accepting these aircraft now in Spain. That's the base aircraft.

Government Operations committee  “We” would be your defence procurement team, so a combination of the Department of National Defence—a client department in this case—ISED Canada and PSPC. When I speak about the defence procurement strategy governance, those are the three departments at the table.

Government Operations committee  The project's technical authority resides in the Department of National Defence. To your previous question, Mr. Chair, about our responsibility in PSPC, we are the contracting authority for the project.

Government Operations committee  Discussions on the framework agreement are proceeding very well. We are in negotiations. We received all the information from Davie Shipbuilding last spring, in about April 2022. This summer, in early July, we indicated that its bid met the standards. Since then, we have been in negotiations.

Government Operations committee  The NSS remains a very complex endeavour. It's a multipronged approach within the NSS. It has three pillars and multiple strategic objectives. The three pillars are the large ship construction; the smaller ship construction, those less than 1,000 tonnes; and then the refit and maintenance pillar.

Government Operations committee  If I could just clarify the new procurement question I just want to make sure that I'm specifically addressing the question here. I know it's with respect to the NSS, but I just want to clarify what is meant by the “new procurement” mechanism.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question. I don't want to speak about specific triggers here. We are in a finalization phase. This is a live procurement process, and this live finalization phase equals the negotiations. Discussing specific aspects of the procurement here is highly delicate.

Government Operations committee  You are very right. This was not done for other procurements. Actually, the process that we established, with the option of going to finalization or entering into a dialogue at a given point into the solicitation process, was novel for the future fighter capability project. At the outset, we knew this procurement was critical for the country, critical for—