Public Accounts committee  Let me start. I'm not sure which bar the member would like to speak to. No laws were broken. No Treasury Board authorities were broken. We have a project approval guide. Did we follow it exactly to the letter of our guide? No. We've explained the reasons for that, and we're going

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to come back on the point I was going to speak to one minute ago. We come to this table prepared to speak to the substance of these extremely serious matters. These are very serious projects. They're multi-year--10 years longer in the case of

Public Accounts committee  Do we have any time left to answer, Mr. Chair?

Public Accounts committee  No, I do not have concerns. I might let the vice-admiral or the ADM Materiel speak to that issue. Where, for operational security purposes, we need alternative procurement processes with Public Works and Treasury Board, we have those in place.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Chairman. I'll be quite brief. The Canada First defence strategy in many ways, from a National Defence/Canadian Forces perspective, was a breakthrough approach to modernizing the Canadian Forces, their equipment, and infrastructure to g

Public Accounts committee  I'm sorry, I didn't understand the question, Mr. Chairman.

Public Accounts committee  No, I actually have no responsibilities to deal with military procurement. I was asked to lead a project to look at obstacles that could be overcome to reform the entire military procurement process.

Public Accounts committee  Do you mean market analysis done with respect to the Cyclone or the Chinook? Is that what you're talking about?

Public Accounts committee  No, I did not deal with specific military procurement projects at that time. I was asked to lead some work across departments on the reform of the procurement process at a strategic level.

Public Accounts committee  No, actually, they didn't replace me in those responsibilities, Mr. Chair.

Public Accounts committee  I'd just like to make a couple of introductory comments. I think it's very important to take on this issue of the 70% cost increase, because it's somehow worked its way into the psyche out there. I think, depending on how you want to look at it, you can either torque this up or t

Public Accounts committee  No.

Public Accounts committee  I began in my job on October 1, 2007, Mr. Chairman.

Public Accounts committee  At that time I was the Associate Secretary to the Treasury Board.

Public Accounts committee  I worked on a project on the overall reform of military procurement while I was at the Treasury Board, but it was not specific to the purchase of helicopters.