Public Accounts committee  I talked about the culture initially. That might be the issue. In an organization that is fully focused on military operations and the related tasks, this might be viewed as secondary. We talked about the changes that have been made. Inventory management is now recognized much m

Public Accounts committee  There are actually two consecutive phases. We do the options analysis on all of our major projects to look at just that—what the options are, and how we should proceed. The options analysis for the automatic identification technology started a few years ago. We looked at it at th

Public Accounts committee  It could be, from option analysis through definition, implementation, contract awards, and delivery. Yes.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. I think the point—

Public Accounts committee  From the context of inception and definition of the problem, we're not selecting technology. We're doing problem definition from a corporate perspective, if I can call it that. What was the budget? How does this fit? How does this fit in the overall defence budget? Where do we fi

Public Accounts committee  Once we enter definition, that will be the time at which we launch a competitive phase, a request for proposal. Depending on the value, this will involve our colleagues at Public Services and Procurement Canada and elsewhere, such that we go out to the marketplace for the solutio

Public Accounts committee  Not an indicative, as of yet. As we approach definition, we'll have that from what we call a rough order of magnitude. Looking at scaled options, we've scaled some options anywhere from $300 million to $1.2 billion, again a rough order of magnitude cost, as we've talked to differ

Public Accounts committee  In this context, it would be full implementation of that technology. It might take some time, but our intent is to have it as a road map for continuous improvement. As you indicated, it's a technology that's moving very quickly from RFIDs to satellites and other things, and we r

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much for the question. What we're trying to do here is to make sure we have an understanding of our inventory overall. This means the location of it, the quantity of it, the state of it, and ultimately the price of it from a valuation perspective. The latter is ke

Public Accounts committee  When we talk about the automated identification technology, we have some of that technology today. We have high-value items that are bar-coded. We use hand scanners. Some of our processes are dated. We're renewing all of our processes. We're doing a lot of work. We're using the t

Public Accounts committee  Thank you for the comments. A system in chaos.... Did we wind up there particularly in the context of, I'll say, some of the valuation of inventory? Perhaps. I was talking about all the procurements. We have inventory that goes back 50 years that is still inventory that we nee

Public Accounts committee  Thank you very much for that question. As the ADM responsible for materiel, I oversee all the aspects of the inventory, including location and value, etc. One of the things we're trying to do with this plan, and I'm going to call it a cultural change as well.... I've been in t

National Defence committee  Again, I think it's a better question for Admiral Lloyd. He and I have talked about this. We had to prematurely, from the perspective of what we wanted to do, retire the two Preserver-class ships. We were at two, so we replaced capability by capability. I think time will tell. I

National Defence committee  In all of these contracts, under the aegis of the defence procurement strategy that was announced a few years ago, we now have weighted and rated value propositions. As part of those value propositions, there will be aboriginal offsets and other things built in. Now, the bidders

National Defence committee  I think we see both ships right now at about 2021, beginning of the year and end of the year. That will continue to refine as we do all the design work I talked about, but that would still be the view.