Government Operations committee  Thank you very much for those questions. There's no question that we have faced some challenges, from a Coast Guard perspective, in implementing the shipbuilding strategy. If we go back, I think it's important to note, as you have referenced, that starting in 2010 the national

Fisheries committee  Normally at this point in the year we would actually see a higher number in that column. This year we've had an ongoing discussion, I'll say, with the ship-source oil source pollution fund about some of the legal requirements that go with the payout of the settlement, so there ar

Fisheries committee  It's a very difficult question to answer. I can't give you a number. One reason is that although icebreaker is an easy term to use, our icebreakers are actually multi-task vessels. We don't cost things by saying that an icebreaker is specifically tasked to a seal harvest or a sp

Fisheries committee  We do have a delivery date. Those three ships, the offshore fisheries vessels, are to be delivered before the end of calendar year 2017.

Fisheries committee  The first one is well under way. The construction on the second one will start shortly. They will be building the ships in parallel. They don't have to work one at a time. There are some interim milestones that we're paying attention to. I wouldn't say they're hitting all of the

Fisheries committee  The procurement under NSPS is a partnership, if you will. Public Services and Procurement is in charge of the actual procurement process. The defence procurement secretariat resides there, and the DPS is in charge of procurement. Our role is in partnership. We work directly with

Fisheries committee  The original budget for these vessels was set in a rather different time and place. For one, NSPS wasn't contemplated at the time, so the question of what a fisheries science vessel would cost was kind of using commercial comparators. I don't think they were the right comparators

Fisheries committee  The total project went from $244 million to $687 million.

Fisheries committee  It is. Within the $687 million, $514 million is actually for building the vessels. Within that $514 million, you have a fairly significant margin for contingency. We set our contingencies fairly high at the moment. As people know—it's public knowledge—within NSPS we're working w

Fisheries committee  It is true that our fleet, particularly our large vessel fleet, is aging. I will note that our small vessel fleet has a much lower average age and is of much less concern. We're looking in particular at the icebreaking fleet, for example, where the average age is creeping up pr

Fisheries committee  No, there's nothing for Kitsilano in the supplementary estimates (C). We would expect that to be in for the coming year.

Fisheries committee  We did have a fire on Coast Guard hovercraft Mamilossa around noon today. The vessel was operating in Lac Saint-Pierre, in Quebec. The fire was in an engine compartment. On the hovercraft, the engines are fairly self-contained. They're in an enclosed space with a forced air intak

Fisheries committee  That money is not a cost overrun. The budget for this project was reset in 2015, and this is drawing down the first tranche of money from that budget. It is a large amount, there's no question about that, but we're now 40% into the first vessel, and the monthly goals are pretty s

Fisheries committee  These are different vessels. You can think of it very simply as that the fisheries science vessels are concerned with the health and well-being of the fish stocks themselves; the oceanographic vessel is primarily focused on the chemistry of the ocean, the temperature of the ocean

Fisheries committee  Those new vessels form part of a larger program. These are not the 47-footers that you may be most familiar with. Most of our lifeboats are the 47-footers. These are the larger Arun class. They can handle heavier seas and can go further offshore. We've been doing a risk assessmen