National Defence committee  At a theoretical level I think they're correct, but in a practical sense, as long as you have a variety of policy objectives both internal and external to the department, it's very difficult to have one focal point. If you want somebody within the Canadian Armed Forces to be resp

National Defence committee  I concede your point about criticism, but I hope you'll concede mine, which is that whether there is criticism or not it's embedded in the culture. People are simply afraid of it, but I take your point. One thing that used to drive me to distraction when I was in defence was the

National Defence committee  I think the problem with the Halifax was not its initial purchase—although that took a while—but its mid-life refits and its replacement. You wanted two examples of projects that worked well. One was the C-17, which is the strategic airlift. There were not many alternatives. We

National Defence committee  I was going to try, as well, but I'll let you go first.

National Defence committee  I think it's probably fair to say, as my colleague said in his remarks, that we have the most complex set of rules amongst our allies, by a long shot. Most of our allies move faster than we do. I think our European allies are inclined to move faster because the threat is much mor

National Defence committee  I'm having a hard time answering your question, because it could be more effective. That said, the minister responsible for defence procurement is very experienced, and all his colleagues will try to convince him of what is or is not going on. In addition, in Canada, a lot of th

National Defence committee  I tried to say in my remarks that I thought all of the objectives were reasonable, so I start from that premise. Regional development in and of itself has absolutely nothing wrong with it and we should pursue it whenever we can, but one of the things that I believe Canada—or th

National Defence committee  Absolutely. I think one thing we should do more of—we're already doing some now—is not giving a particular company a set of requirements of 1,500 pages, but rather giving them 100 pages that require a result, a result-based acquisition. Many of our allies use this, but we still t

National Defence committee  This is an issue that people have been divided on for some 20 years. I don't think we need to change the number of departments. What's really important is to establish the essence of each department in advance. We would need a central department. During the Second World War, ther

National Defence committee  I think they are the rise of China and its much more aggressive foreign and defence policy, the advent of significant cyber-attacks against Canada and all our western allies, and what Russia is doing in Ukraine. A lot of people question whether we should be supporting Ukraine, bu

National Defence committee  I think the first has to be the certification by the chief of the defence staff that whatever is needed is needed now and within a particular time frame, along with a clear elaboration of why it can't be done with the existing rules, a clear indication of what specific rule is be

National Defence committee  Again, I'm not sure it's possible to elaborate rules that would apply in all circumstances. Essential to all of this is effective planning in the defence department. In a lot of cases, these things can be predicted. To the extent that things can be predicted, you can deal with su

National Defence committee  I wish I had an answer to that, but I think the beginning of it is the acceptance that in some cases defence acquisition is more important than regional economic development. I don't think it needs to be disengaged or disconnected in every single case, but we never make the case

National Defence committee  Culture change, as you know, is one of the hardest things to bring about. I think the first thing would have to be a government-wide statement that we're expecting public servants to consider effectiveness as well as rules-based approaches to things. We would have to find a few c

National Defence committee  That's another very good question. I want to be clear that I'm not suggesting waving one's arm opposite a billion-dollar expenditure, but I think what I was referring to was the rigid adherence to every sub-subrule in a lot of cases and the fear that the slightest error would be