Public Accounts committee  With respect to the importance of moving to domestic production, there has been a significant shift over the course of the pandemic to more domestic supplies. Dr. Kochhar spoke about the NESS in particular, but if you look more broadly at procurement of PPE, our estimates are tha

Public Accounts committee  As I alluded to in my remarks, a lot of it was just pure effort at the beginning, with the teams working around the clock. But it was also leveraging flexibilities we introduced to make it easier to secure products, such as the ability to delegate authority so we could move quick

Public Accounts committee  With respect to situations where there was advance payment as part of the mix, the vast majority of those were delivered in accordance with the contract. And in the very small number of cases where there didn't happen, there's legal action to recover the payments. But it was a su

Public Accounts committee  That is certainly one of the lessons learned, and the Auditor General's report is helpful in this regard as to how we can institutionalize some of these practices and make sure that we approach it more systematically. We have a checklist, as was alluded to earlier, so that we k

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, I've spoken to the greening initiatives at some length already, with a 57% reduction of our carbon footprint already, the district heating and cooling in the national capital region and regional energy certificates. That's essentially the suite of greening investments

Government Operations committee  That's a little bit speculative, I think. Since we're in discussions on option analysis right now, it's hard to pin down—

Government Operations committee  I don't know if there's anything Simon wants to add, but I would just note that the requirements we were given had some urgency in terms of needing an aircraft to meet those specifications now, and there's quite a difference between the off-the-shelf timeline associated with the

Government Operations committee  It is an existing aircraft in production. I don't know, Simon, if there's anything we can add for the committee's benefit on the availability of that aircraft.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for that question. Unfortunately Defence Construction Canada is an arm's-length corporation with their own responsibilities, so I can't speak to their efforts. I do know that they're active in this area. They're making great strides not only in greening but also in ind

Government Operations committee  The work continues to find as many opportunities as we can for contracting with indigenous organizations and to meet the 5% target. We have some very interesting success stories including, as you just mentioned, in work in the north. Our North Warning System sustainment contract

Government Operations committee  Thank you for that excellent question. This is a very dynamic area for all organizations to figure out what kind of office portfolio is needed for the future. We are renewing our 10-year plan for offices and taking into account the new hybrid work model. It obviously reduces t

Government Operations committee  We're midstream in that process, so I don't have the final results. There will be a track of potential savings, obviously, from terminating leases that will be no longer required. There would be some revenues from the disposal of assets that are no longer required. There are al

Government Operations committee  Thank you for that question. There's a wide range of activity in the department, so that speaks to some of the high numbers. In particular, in areas like construction, as you can appreciate, when a building is designed—take the parliamentary precinct project—we don't have in-ho

Government Operations committee  In some cases, the expertise is so specific and time limited that the best value is to get an outside expert in to do it. If you need a building designed or need particular expertise for an intensive period of work, the professional services contract is often the best way to go.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. These initiatives, as you know, were announced in the budget. They're being coordinated by the Treasury Board Secretariat, and each department will receive essentially its target for both the operating expenditure reduction and the one you mentioned e