National Defence committee  Can I also add to that? Ahead of time, we went to the Government of Canada in our role as the prime contractor for the Canadian surface combatant program. We explained what we were intending to do with one of the bidders from a joint venture basis, explained the protections we

National Defence committee  What we've suggested to the crown is to look at the models used in the U.K. and the U.S. that have a single leader accountable for delivering the program within all the constraints. That was our suggestion to the crown.

National Defence committee  People like me and my colleague Scott Jamieson represent less than 4% of the workforce. All the trades in the shipyard are Canadian. As Jonathan indicated, it is the same with Seaspan. In order to get this business run right, there are people who need 20 years to 30 years of pl

National Defence committee  I'll give you a couple of examples from the AOPS program. We have a local small business, Bluedrop associates. Bluedrop has a $15-million contract to develop the 3D visualization of the training. They're really a world leader in this, a small company right in Halifax, and they ar

National Defence committee  It's due to delays in the program on the government side in understanding the requirements, getting the procurement strategy defined, getting the RFP out. It's just moved to the right. Scott, do you want to chime in?

National Defence committee  Thank you. The boss answered the question, but let me follow up.

National Defence committee  Let's just start with the ship design. The ship design is in the most modern, three-dimensional tool, the same one the Koreans use. In all the dimensions for steel cutting, for example, we don't fat-finger anything. It comes through the model, through some middleware, through o

National Defence committee  Right now, all of our labour projections say around 2,000 to 2,500. We're at about 2,500 and steady.

National Defence committee  Right now we're looking at a single platform. Some ships may get an upgrade in certain areas, and that's certainly doable. That's really up to the Canadian navy. I will tell you that in just about every combatant program in the world, surface ships, submarines, or whatever are

National Defence committee  We move them routinely. Yes, sir.

National Defence committee  We work very closely with NSCC. We built a training program that's available to the entire industry. I call it shipbuilding 101. It was a five- to six-week course that was run by the NSCC. We paid them the tuition to do that. We put 500 of our workers through it to make sure they

National Defence committee  Yes. We expect to deliver the first one by the end of 2018.

National Defence committee  It will be in the summer of 2022, sir, but we will start ramping down on the front end of the process. For example, the shipbuilders who cut steel will start running out of work at the end of 2019.

National Defence committee  Yes, but we know from the timeline that there's going to be a gap, and so we're in active discussions with the government on how best to mitigate that gap.

National Defence committee  This goes back to the discussion we were having earlier about the speed of decision-making and getting through making those hard decisions, once we pick the ship, as to how much we are going to change and what we're going to keep the same and all of that. That's why we're very co