National Defence committee  I find it a privilege--and I've commented on this in the early part of my comments--for me to be involved in providing these kinds of capabilities for the future of the Canadian Forces, and indeed for Canadians. As General Lucas has just said, I certainly welcome the opportunity to come and speak to you about them this morning.

National Defence committee  As I've already stated twice this morning, nobody told me to change that. I found a discrepancy between two components of the SOR and I looked at options on what we would do to rationalize that discrepancy to ensure when I advanced this SOR that it would be complete and would provide the best value for Canadians.

National Defence committee  I'm not going to speak hypothetically on whether he could or not. What I am going to say to you is that in the case of the strategic airlift project, there was no direction received from the government with respect to the requirements themselves. When I finished my refinement process that I spoke about and the SOR was prepared for the Chief of the Air Staff to review, the requirements never changed after that point.

National Defence committee  In the May 1 e-mail, that is correct. In the May 14 e-mail, which is referred to in the newspaper, this was after the last iteration that I just described, where I had found this inconsistency. My staff and I had discussed what the options would be. We were preparing a document in Microsoft Word to illustrate the details of this, so that I could go and talk to my boss, the director general of air force development.

National Defence committee  At that time.

National Defence committee  Thank you for that opportunity, and I do apologize for it being a long response, but there is an amount of it. What I was getting to there is that there is a period, in defining the requirements, when the requirements are in draft mode. And until the point when I actually bring the document to the Chief of the Air Staff for his signature and advance it through the department and to the minister, we have a period of refinement.

National Defence committee  Thank you for that question. As the Chief of the Air Staff has already stated here this morning, we looked at a representative distance, understanding that Canada has, between it and most of our future operations, oceans. We took the representative distance from Trenton to somewhere in Europe--in this case the specific number is from Trenton to Ramstein--as being an appropriate minimum acceptable distance.

National Defence committee  Efficiency is a key element here. We use three basic principles. One is an overriding basic principle on each and every operational requirement we build, and that is to get the best value for Canadians and the Canadian Forces. The other two basic principles that applied in the case of the strategic airlift project were that the capability we received must significantly exceed the capability of the current tactical airlifter, the CC-130 Hercules, and it must exceed the capability of the current strategic airlifter, the CC-150 Polaris.

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. It's certainly something that there has been a lot of speculation on over these last couple of weeks, and I welcome the opportunity to put things into the open. First of all, it's an interesting thing we do as we develop statements of operational requirement.

National Defence committee  No, that is not what I'm stating now.

National Defence committee  No, I'm stating that I was in a period of refinement of the SOR. The other thing I'll comment on is that if one takes part of a discussion from one period of a process like that, that I've just described, referring to an e-mail string that I was involved in at one period of time in part of this refinement period, and then takes an e-mail from another period and tries to relate them, they are probably very unrelated issues.

National Defence committee  Thank you for your initial comments about the job we do in the directive of our requirements. Very shortly, I can say that at no time through this process has there ever been any influence from the government with respect to the operational requirement. I would also say that we develop these operational requirements absolutely clearly to provide best value to Canadians and the Canadian Forces and to meet performance requirements of the Canadian Forces.