Government Operations committee  Since you mentioned humanitarian and disaster relief, it is one of the six top-level goals in “Strong, Secure, Engaged”, and regrettably the CAF have not really organized themselves to do much with it. It does tend to interfere with what they see their main job as. I'll just leav

Government Operations committee  One of the virtues of working under the Auditor General Act, which I now miss, is that you're entitled to see every record and interview any person. The short answer is that I didn't have great difficulty, although sometimes there was a bit of a cat-and-mouse game going on betwee

Government Operations committee  I think that would be a constructive move. Part of the problem is that Canadian politics are the most partisan of nearly all of the Westminster systems. When you look at the Australians, they have a lot more standing joint committees that tend to be much less partisan. The Britis

Government Operations committee  I think that's well said. The PBO has basically used a forecast based on the weight of the ship, and given the fact that we don't really know much about the ship, it's as good of an estimate as you're going to get. As I mentioned in my opening statement, the former director gene

Government Operations committee  I don't believe I'm really qualified to say what size of tariff is required, but I think the government needs to look at the shipbuilding industry as a whole over the very long term. Tariffs would certainly be a part of that.

Government Operations committee  Yes. I think one of the points that the government needs to keep in mind is that the naval and coast guard program is going to come to an end, and then we will have paid a premium for building up the yards and for doing our naval building at home. If we don't get sustainment out

Government Operations committee  Yes and no. The shipyards all had to be brought up to a standard before they started work, and that took Seaspan extra time. However, once they're at standard, no. They should be competent to do the work.

Government Operations committee  Well, it would have sped things up. The problem with having a third shipyard is whether at the end of the program we will have enough work to sustain three shipyards. I think that was the issue that drove the government to limiting it to two in the beginning. I'm not sure we know

Government Operations committee  I think Mr. Collins actually addressed this previously. Having a shipbuilding industry is a strategic requirement if you're going to have a navy. Certainly, we would not want to lose our shipbuilding capacity. As for how great the economic benefits would be, I'm sorry, but I'm n

Government Operations committee  I heard that testimony, Mr. Chair, and I thought it was somewhat exaggerated. I think the government made a deliberate choice to outplace the prime contractor to industry. It ceded a bit of control when it did that. However, the problems that have been experienced are not stron

Government Operations committee  I certainly see it as a need. If you look at the history of defence spending, even during the height of the Cold War, the late 1970s and 1980s, when the government by its orientation was towards a budget military side, they pushed spending up to pretty much two per cent, and it s

Government Operations committee  I think it's definitely a strategic choice that has been made. The question that I have is this: What happens at the end of the current production envelope? Are we going to be able to sustain what we've built? Even if we stretch everything out for a very long period of time, what

Government Operations committee  If you don't mind the pun, I think that ship has sailed. The government in power—as a matter of fact, two governments—have decided to try to revive the Canadian shipbuilding industry as a strategic decision. At this point in time, there certainly would be little or no benefit and

Government Operations committee  I don't think you need to sit and cross your fingers. I think that parliamentary oversight is going to be a spur to the resolution of some of these issues, but trying to make it go faster now that we've set upon this course is going to be quite difficult. The capacity of Seaspan

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Rather than reading my statement, which Mr. Collins has pre-empted with an excellent summary of where we are, I'd just like to mention the two problems that I pointed out in it. One is that with the length of time now, due to continuing delays and to t