National Defence committee  If I rightly understand the question you're asking, it gets into almost a case-by-case basis. If they are acquired, what are the terms of the acquisition? What can they have access to? As an example, a Canadian company, MDA, now Maxar Technologies, acquired U.S. companies, but th

National Defence committee  In the context of procurement and value for money, we're trying to do a lot more work on how we test, and test early. We've had some really good outcomes from this approach. What we can't do is establish all of the test facilities and test ranges, duplicating what all of our alli

National Defence committee  Thank you very much, sir, for the question. I will ask my colleague, who has a much deeper understanding of this area than I do, to speak to it in a second, but fundamentally they have a rule set whereby it's largely inside of NATO, and then it can turn into subsets. I often co

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for the question. I don't have a percentage with me. Our chief financial officer could answer that better, but I'll say in broad lines that it would be a significant portion, for no reason other than the Canadian surface combatants. As has happened in the pas

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. As indicated, I sit at the Conference of National Armaments Directors, where I have engagement a number of times a year with my colleagues, both in plenary and in bilateral engagements. We have other bilateral engagements and we speak a fair bit in a

National Defence committee  For capability acquisition, sir, yes, it is. It's very regimented. Not only is it establishing the capability, but there is never an infinite amount of money, so there are cost-capability trade-offs. I would say capability comes even a step before that, in the context of the capa

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for the question. I have some of those statistics with me and I'll go through some of them. I think some of the others, though, we will take away to make sure we provide some of the breakout that you indicate.

National Defence committee  I think those are things that we look at all the time for the very reasons you're suggesting as well. Fundamentally, as far as NATO procurement goes, if I could just quickly set the scene, as far as equipment goes and some of the things you gave as an example, NATO is ultimately

National Defence committee  I can. I think my colleague Len Bastien was here a couple days ago to talk more about the NCIA. My role is more in the NSPA, but—

National Defence committee  If there were to be a NATEX at NCIA, it would come out of Len. Specific to the point on the NATEX, it is something from the previous construct, before the agencies were formed as they are now. It is a position that has been funded out of my organization for many years. Under the

National Defence committee  They are.

National Defence committee  Absolutely.

National Defence committee  Again, I'll take it away. I don't know what occurred there. I do know that we continue to partially fund.... There was no one to send. The position was going to go empty at one of the last posting rotations. We've continued to provide some funding to the Canadian delegation in

National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Good morning and thank you for the invitation to appear before you today. As indicated, I am Patrick Finn and am the assistant deputy minister (materiel) at the Department of National Defence. I am joined today by the director general, internati

National Defence committee  With regard to the timeline, it is now in definition, as we call it, so I can say that it's been formally launched by government. We're doing that. We have gone out to industry. We started to kind of pull in the information and look at the costs there. We hope within the next yea