Government Operations committee  The number I have is $24,860, so I agree that it is just under $25,000. To be perfectly honest, I don't know if that.... Most companies are aware of our contracting thresholds, but I have no specific knowledge of that contract. It was before my time.

Government Operations committee  Some of the work was done by McKinsey in assisting us to identify the right types of talents we needed. I was part of the first contract in my previous role as the assistant chief of naval staff for personnel and training. I did not know the components of a digital team. I did no

Government Operations committee  There are a host of areas where we can always improve. Most of that work we do in-house. We have a strong team of people in the navy who are constantly looking at our allies and adversaries around the world and identifying the practices we need to adopt in order to be the best po

Government Operations committee  Absolutely. As I was saying, in the three contracts for McKinsey, the first was to just identify meaningful and tangible things we could do. The second was to begin delivering on what we call the digital parade state, which is operationalizing an HR management tool that is digi

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair and Minister, for the question. The navy's example is a good one to explain how we leveraged McKinsey's experience in this case. In 2019, one of my predecessors issued a digital navy strategy, explaining how the navy would embark with digital at the core of

National Defence committee  Thank you for your question. I have no doubt that we are already in a position to protect Canada's sovereignty in the Arctic. The CAF has enough capability in all domains to ensure Canada's sovereignty and security in Canada's north, and to respond to current and future threats.

National Defence committee  One of the highlights for us of the introduction of the Harry DeWolf class is that we've worked to affiliate each of the six Harry DeWolf class ships with the six regions of the Inuit north to make sure that we are, from the beginning, understanding the region through the communi

National Defence committee  The crew of the Harry DeWolf is roughly 68 people when it goes off on Operation Nanook. A portion of those are always doing their first journey up north. How many of those are in their first year of service is a more difficult question, because we don't send anyone who is not qua

National Defence committee  Navies have always trained predominantly through on-the-job experience at sea. For much of my career, we were able to send people who had the maximum amount of training to sea. We made sure that the crews we sent to sea were trained probably well beyond the level that was require

National Defence committee  Things are always difficult in the Arctic in the winter. There's no daylight, it's extremely cold and everything is covered in ice. Clearly, it's tougher to carry out operations in an environment like that. I do think, however, that our capabilities are comparable to those of our

National Defence committee  Thank you for your question. You don't need a nuclear submarine to respond to another nuclear submarine. The first thing you have to be able to do is detect that nuclear submarine. Then, you have a number of options, including calling in the Royal Canadian Air Force. A number of

National Defence committee  The fortunate thing is that the design of the Canadian surface combatant actually involves a crew reduction. Right now, the Canadian frigates deploy on operations with a crew of approximately 250. We're anticipating the Canadian surface combatant will have a crew of around 210, s

National Defence committee  For questions related to search and rescue, I'll defer to my friend from the Canadian Air Force. I will say that the way the navy looks at the Arctic environment is that we treat it as an expeditionary theatre. That means we need to deploy with all of the capabilities that we re

National Defence committee  It's an excellent point. We are examining everything that we do in the Canadian navy to make sure that we are conscious of the environmental impact. The system you referred to sounds a lot like sonobuoys. As we look at systems like those, we make sure that it is an expendable. I

National Defence committee  Recoverable is very challenging, given the number that we use. We are always working to make sure that we don't do any harm to marine mammals. There are programs on both coasts right now that are using a series of sensors to detect and track cetaceans in our operating areas to ma