National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the question, and good afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity to appear again here with you this afternoon. In the case of urgent operational requirements, there are a number of specific examples. Since the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, the Cana

National Defence committee  I know that the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada is quite focused on an industrial strategy. What we provide is insight into the investments the Canadian Armed Forces are going to require. In the case of “Strong, Secure, Engaged”, there was a list of everything for whi

National Defence committee  When it comes to acquiring ammunition, for example, ultimately an order needs to be placed. There need to be contracts signed so the materiel can be ordered by the supplier, come together and be assembled into an end product. The less transactional notion is more applicable to on

National Defence committee  Mr. Page and Ms. Tattersall mentioned some of the risk-based approaches. I think the context was largely around contracting authorities. There are also expenditure authorities that need to be sought by the Department of National Defence. We're applying the same sorts of delegatio

National Defence committee  Again, the focus is on continuous capability sustainment, with the objective of quickly delivering to the Canadian Armed Forces an effective capability that we can then evolve over time through a spiral development approach. That is really where our minds are right now. We have

National Defence committee  We have conducted a review of the procurement process as it transitions through its major phases—identification and options analysis, definition implementation and where the time is spent—depending on the complexity of the projects. There are quite a few variables at play out the

National Defence committee  My organization responds to the Canadian Armed Forces' priorities from a procurement point of view and for the in-service support to the fleets that are assigned to operations. From a project perspective, we continue to come back to that. In the case of Operation Reassurance, we

National Defence committee  In the case of the urgent operational requirements that I just mentioned, there are three of them. The request for proposals have been released. We see ourselves being able to get through the procurement processes and deliver capability by midsummer of 2024. It comes down, in tho

National Defence committee  On a case-by-case basis, we can avoid any type of Canadianization, but in other cases, when we're looking at long-term platform requirements that we're going to have in service in Canada for 30 years—

National Defence committee  Since “Strong, Secure, Engaged” was released, the materiel group at National Defence has grown by approximately 630 people. That said, the amount of work we are progressing with has increased dramatically and continues to grow with the NORAD modernization, the replacement of dona

National Defence committee  The notion of risk, that perspective on risk and what is a tolerable level of risk come up regularly in our discussions and in how we formulate our processes. Sometimes we find ourselves having conversations about how we can roll projects out incrementally so that we can retire r

National Defence committee  To this point, we continue to participate in conversations at NATO and bilaterally with the U.S. on the need to improve readiness from a munitions availability point of view. Those have led to conversations with some of our munition supply contractors here in Canada, notably IMT

National Defence committee  We've formulated updated advice based on the new information we've received from industry, and that will go through the decision-making process.

National Defence committee  If I could add....

National Defence committee  Once the money is approved, industry forecasts three years for the production line to be operational.