National Defence committee  For sure. Again, I could talk about my own experience when I worked at CFB Cold Lake. We used DCC as a hiring agency, meaning that if we needed a new staff member, it was a case of, “Oh, well, we'll just ask DCC to fulfill that contract.” That is not their role. DCC has letter

National Defence committee  For the record, anywhere we use a contractor when we could use a federal public servant is a risk to national security. We don't have control of the information. The information is held by third parties and is at risk.

National Defence committee  Yes, it might be taken out of context. The “one defence team” motto means that, whenever we need all hands on deck, civilians will come in and help. I can't say, without having the context in which that was said, whether or not they're using those jobs.

National Defence committee  I will definitely say that it's not a good or a bad, and I can't lump everything into one bucket. I would say, though, that a public servant would be able to do the work when you ask them to do it. With a contractor, you have to amend a contract. They are not going to work outsi

National Defence committee  Do you want to go first?

National Defence committee  Definitely, there needs to be more transparency. We were talking about those professional services. All it says is “professional services”. We can't dig into the data and say that those are engineering or IT workers. We need to have a little bit more transparency, especially when

National Defence committee  I do 100%. The institute is very clear about when we think contracting should happen. As June said, it's when there's a short-term and necessary need, surge capacity that we just can't manage, or we don't have the skills. What happens in these contracts for defence is that we r

National Defence committee  That's a complicated question. The military has been doing stretch work for so long—climate change, environmental disasters and all these other things that are not normal to their operational readiness or defence of the country. I believe the department has expressed that it does

National Defence committee  You used the word “civilian”. Are you talking about public service employees?

National Defence committee  I don't believe so. I believe that any of that work is then being contracted out.

National Defence committee  The procurement process is onerous, but it is that way for a reason. It's to make sure that we have transparency, that there are checks and balances in place. In that procurement process, when there are add-ons to the contract, they don't necessarily follow the same rigour and ov

National Defence committee  Again, it's hard for us to say what is necessary or not if we haven't done the pre-planning ahead of time. Our union has been very clear that you need to make sure that you look internally first. You bring groundskeepers and you bring some of the UNDE members into it. Let's talk

National Defence committee  Again, I question the fact that it would be less costly. When you look at the fact that they're willing to pay a market rate to any member who can be contracted out, and then a 30% bump on top of that, what is the value to taxpayers? Again, we've lost the institutional knowledge.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  It's done independently. The two biggest contractors right now for the IDEaS program are Calian and Telus. What they do and how they use that grant money is not for the department to say. We do not have any oversight, transparency or accountability, so I cannot say for sure.