Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, on the first amendment.... Regarding the first amendment, there was a difference of opinion with regard to certain aspects of the contract. What we use in the terminology is called "excusable delays". In our opinion, there was a reason for the delays which were re

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chairman, I will address the issue of openness, fairness, and transparency, and I'll let my colleagues from DND speak to the issue of cost, if that's okay with you. First, on the acquisition of the Sikorsky Cyclone helicopters, we had a fairness monitor who oversaw the biddi

Public Accounts committee  Am I allowed to give an answer or...?

Public Accounts committee  Thank you. I appreciate it. On the issue of documentation, and just to expand on that difference of opinion, the Auditor General has a very clear view that we should have on file a robust, very strict, sole-sourced justification. When we carry out an ACAN, we use a market analys

Public Accounts committee  In that case, I will continue. Very good. I will do so in English and in French if you're comfortable with that. On the issue of criteria, when we had a company, through the ACAN process--which is meant to be open, fair, and transparent--we posted it for 30 days instead of

Public Accounts committee  I agree with the AG. In the department, we use both lowest-price-compliant and best-value-for-the-crown. But after discussions in the department and in view of the audit, our action plan clearly says that we need to look into this question. What we need is a framework. I don't h

Public Accounts committee  Before I answer, Mr. Chair, I would like to clarify something my colleague from National Defence said earlier. Regarding the accountability of people who work on these files, we are not talking about a single person, but rather of a team of experts who get up in the morning, com

Public Accounts committee  I simply wanted to make that comment, which I did. I will now answer your question. We received a request from Sikorsky for an excusable delay, which we turned down. They sent us a second request and an explanation. We will consider it and apply penalties if need be.

Public Accounts committee  They're paid in Canadian dollars.

Public Accounts committee  I would like to make a correction. I apologize, I believe they were paid in Canadian dollars. I have been told that the Sikorsky Cyclone maritime helicopters were paid in Canadian dollars. In the case of the Chinooks, the transaction was in U.S. dollars.

Official Languages committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to be with you today as Deputy Minister of Public Works and Government Services, and to have this opportunity to convey my pride in our progress in meeting our official languages goals, and to describe our continui

Official Languages committee  That's interesting. I was saying in my opening comments that in my department, we put a heavy emphasis on getting the fundamentals right, as they say in English. And here, we really are talking about the core business of the department. With the management team, I want us to be t

Official Languages committee  Thank you for your question. I will begin and Diane may want to add her own comments. I was very surprised to see that our rating was slightly better in the past. It was “C”. That is hardly nirvana, but it was slightly better than a “D”. I have to admit that this has always been

Official Languages committee  I fully agree with you. Perhaps I could just review three or four points I mentioned in my opening statement. First of all, we will be much more closely connected to Anglophone organizations all across Quebec, not only in Montreal. There must be points of entry; that's my first

Official Languages committee  Yes, absolutely. I fully agree with you. In my opinion, the challenge was that people were not necessarily aware. I am a Francophone from Quebec City. I didn't speak much English when I began working in Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories, and there weren't many Francophone