Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, everyone. My name is James Paul. I am the president and chief executive officer of Defence Construction Canada. DCC is a federal Crown corporation established in 1951 pursuant to the Defence Production Act to operate as the tendering and s

Government Operations committee  We are the procurement authority and then the delivery organization that's managing the contract. So the Government of Canada approach, or certainly the DND one, is to use the private sector to do the construction work, do the design work, and do the environmental work, because w

Government Operations committee  We are managing that contractor's work. If you look at any given project, a general contractor would ultimately be the winning bidder, in a conventional construction approach. That company would hire and manage the subcontractors as part of their delivery, but you have to have an

Government Operations committee  We are the delivery organization, as I said, but it includes an oversight role. It's a hands-on management role—the inspecting, the monitoring. It's very similar to what Public Works does for other federal government departments. The Department of National Defence is the biggest

Government Operations committee  It’s approximately $100 million, or in that ballpark. We're not an appropriated entity, so we have to ensure that our fees match our expenses. We don't incur losses or run in a deficit position, nor do we borrow. We manage our business against the program and services we deliver

Government Operations committee  Again, if you take approximately 2,500 completed last year, a number of projects have a life of more than a year, so it would be in the thousands, obviously, that are ongoing.

Government Operations committee  Let me say briefly that part of it is in the selection of the project. You want to make sure that you're selecting projects whose use is fairly certain. This doesn't mean there is not flexibility. If I use the example of the CSEC facility, it's unlikely that over a 25- to 30-ye

Government Operations committee  Thank you. That is a good question. The way you put that is interesting. I would say that you're correct, in that whether you call it a P3 or a design-build-finance-maintain project, ultimately it comes down to the contract terms. I think P3 is, in the end, just a label we put o

Government Operations committee  The example I've been using has been in reference to that project. As I said, the procurement phase was completed, obviously, and the construction has started, but we're halfway through the construction now, so I can really only keep my remarks limited to that experience. I thin

Government Operations committee  The short answer would be that I know I won't be able to enlighten you on the specific cost elements. As I said, we're delivering the project. We weren't part of the financial analysis or the front-end planning there. Ultimately, it's all bundled into a single price for the proje

Government Operations committee  Yes, I have opening remarks, if you'd like. Thank you, Chair.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Chair. To keep the committee's time as effective as possible, in my opening remarks I intend to address the mandate of DCC—or would you like that to follow afterward?

Government Operations committee  Simply stated, Defence Construction Canada was formed as Defence Construction (1951) Limited, just as the name implied, in 1951 under the Defence Production Act. Our mandate is to deliver infrastructure and environmental requirements for the defence of Canada. That encompasses pr

Government Operations committee  In our model we are also a non-appropriated entity. We operate on a fee-for-service model. We adjust our resources depending on the amount of programming we're asked to deliver. Under our corporate plan, we do project for five years out. It's not just a year-to-year adjustment bu

Government Operations committee  Yes.