National Defence committee  If you have the opportunity, I hope you do come and see us at the yard in Halifax. You will be able to see a vendor map of Canada on a screen, with every vendor on it, up to date. We can lay the ridings on it right over that map, so everybody can have a good look at where the mo

National Defence committee  Just as a point of interest, when we built the frigate program in the 1980s and 1990s in Saint John, there was more money spent in Ontario and Quebec than there was in New Brunswick in Saint John. Ontario and Quebec were the big beneficiaries of that program at the time. I would

National Defence committee  Do you want me to give you the technical answer? My answer is that I don't think we could spend any more money to get any better. We spent a bundle to get it right, so, Kevin...

National Defence committee  You've got a tough job dealing with me.

National Defence committee  Excuse me, and just to finish what Kevin was saying, not only do we have RFID tags on our equipment, but all of our employees in the yard have an RFID tag. We know where all of the employees are in the yard, for a couple of reasons. Safety is number one. These are complex areas.

National Defence committee  I could just finish that, if you don't mind.

National Defence committee  I mentioned this earlier. In December, Davie took a ship.... They were building it for 10 years. They had federal government money. It was maybe not the same owner, but the previous owner had $200 million-plus from EDC. They built one. It took 10 years. The contract 10 years ago

National Defence committee  You know, there was no shipbuilding in Canada for many years. You had shipyards in Montreal and you had shipyards up in the Great Lakes. You had a number of them. They all went broke. Davie's has been broke I don't know how many times. It went bankrupt different times. You heard

National Defence committee  Yes, we have made a major effort in this area. We have a training program for the entire workforce. We started with a group of employees used to building ships in a traditional way. We changed our entire method and adopted much more sophisticated technology. We have a program whe

National Defence committee  Exactly.

National Defence committee  Could I just add to that, Jonathan? We've been in the shipbuilding business as a family and a company for a long time. As a company, we've built about 80% of the warships in Canada's fleet today, and we've seen the booms and bust. We had a first-class shipyard built and paid for

National Defence committee  We shouldn't underestimate the value of indirects in this thing, because I think we're going to establish a lot of companies in Canada—small and medium-sized business, to Jonathan's point—that haven't been in the business before. The Aspin Kemp example by GE on Prince Edward Isla

National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Just before we start, Mr. Ross Langley is not here with us this afternoon, just to correct that.

National Defence committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to you here today to provide an update on our work at the Halifax shipyard. With me today are members of the executive team, as was mentioned. Vice-chairman Ross Langle

Fisheries committee  Thank you. [Proceedings continue in camera]