Public Accounts committee  Well, I would draw your attention to the government's announcement. When we get a response from the U.S. government to the letter of request, that will provide us the information on which we'll base a life-cycle cost analysis of those planes, and the government will then make a d

Public Accounts committee  That's what I said. That's why we are getting the information. It's part of our letter of request to the U.S. government. We will do that and do our own analysis and challenge of those numbers, and develop a life-cycle cost estimate in the fall.

Public Accounts committee  Of course not, Mr. Chair. The minister is not going alone. He is working with his colleagues, the Minister of Procurement—

Public Accounts committee  —and the Minister of Innovation and Science in a whole-of-government effort to look at whether the government should acquire 18 interim aircraft.

Public Accounts committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. DRDC is the research and development arm of National Defence, and they already do a lot of projects in co-operation with industry. This is a really important issue that we heard in the consultations on the defence policy review: how can we better leverage

Public Accounts committee  It's very much some of the work we are doing as part of the defence policy review, so I don't want to get out ahead of Minister Sajjan on that. It's how do we better use our R and D budget to leverage Canadian jobs, exports, products, and how do we then use our procurement syst

Public Accounts committee  We're doing quite a bit. I'll ask Pat to talk about how we use the procurement system to leverage that.

Public Accounts committee  We've also heard the same comments as we're doing the policy review. So again, if you can be patient another short while longer, I think you'll see that addressed.

Public Accounts committee  The flags go up with me too, believe me. As I said, when I came to the department, I think DRMIS had kind of stalled because it was trying to become one system where all the data went into it. We completely changed our approach to that. It will sit on top and grab data from othe

Public Accounts committee  When you look at the equipment and what you're replacing it with, in a way you're a bit comparing apples to oranges. You had an older piece of equipment, less technology, and less capability. In the case of the new equipment, it will cost you more—

Public Accounts committee  That's right. Now we do the life-cycle costing going forward on all of our major equipment that we've implemented in the last 18 months—a centre of costing. We're doing life-cycle costing, and we will look at what the sustainment and maintenance costs are. We're not assuming i

Public Accounts committee  Well, as I indicated, we're going to do full life-cycle costing of that acquisition. We have to look at what infrastructure may or may not be needed, and other elements of it. It's how you would acquire the equipment. It's part of the analysis we would do before the government ta

Public Accounts committee  No, I'm not telling you that.

Public Accounts committee  No, he hasn't, sir. He has said that we've gone into discussions with the U.S. government and with Boeing to look at the purchase of those fighter aircraft.

Public Accounts committee  We have not entered into any contract with Boeing or the U.S. government to purchase the aircraft.