Public Accounts committee  The life-cycle cost estimate is basically looking at it from cradle to grave. There are really five phases. There is the development work to determine what you need on the asset; the acquisition itself of the asset; the sustainment cost, which is the maintenance side; the operati

Public Accounts committee  With respect to bringing in money from the fiscal framework, generally in the past the in-service support has been an average amount throughout the life of the asset. There is a clear understanding with Treasury Board that in some years the amount will be below the average, and w

Public Accounts committee  Yes, that would be correct, sir. As we've mentioned, we've instituted a more professionalized costing certification, and through that we've developed more robust standards, and those standards were applied on these costings.

Public Accounts committee  Really, it's the magnitude and the volume of the contracts that we do. If we develop the investment plan with every single contract over a million dollars, it would just be cumbersome and burdensome to do. So we use the materiel threshold at this time. In the IP2014, we did not i

Public Accounts committee  No, sir, that's not correct.

Public Accounts committee  No. Within the investment plan, we would identify as a specific item those contracts over $20 million, but we apply the same rigour to all contracts.

Public Accounts committee  The key decision points usually are when a project hits the development and implementation stage. That's when we go from an indicative cost estimate to a substantive cost estimate—that's the time that we'll update the planning assumptions and apply the rigour necessary for a deci