National Defence committee  There are tons of procurements that move forward that are fully successful. We just never hear about them. I would say a good 75% of procurements move through. It's the big rocks that get a lot of controversy and generate a lot of attention. The reality is that we buy quite a bit on time.

National Defence committee  Canada is one of what I would call the “fighting few”. There are many countries—as we saw in Afghanistan—willing to contribute, but they're not necessarily willing to fight, or to fight without caveats. We are willing to do a number of things other members aren't willing to do. We are willing to take risks and take on operations that others aren't.

National Defence committee  It depends on the situation, but generally speaking—the chief of the defence staff has pointed this out—we are very stretched as it is. Now, there was an ambition within the 2017 policy to have concurrency of operations, for us to be able to do two major operations at once. We are strained to do this.

National Defence committee  If I were Australia and the United Kingdom, and Canada said, “I would like to join AUKUS,” I would ask, “What are you bringing to the table?” If you have nothing to offer and you're a smaller member, why should they offer you anything? The United States might be willing to, but why would the Australians or the British give up contracts to Canadian companies?

National Defence committee  Absolutely.

National Defence committee  Well, one of the challenges you have when you're dealing with large projects is that the current posting system places people from operational postings into capability development within the forces. There's nothing wrong with that. On a conceptual level, you're taking people who are just operators, and you're putting them into the development of requirements.

National Defence committee  I don't think any country is doing anything so right when it comes to procurement, but at the very least, what they're doing is being far more transparent with their public and their parliaments about why they're doing what they're doing and how they're trying to do it. As many of you know, the Canadian tradition....

National Defence committee  You're all familiar with the difference between vote 1 and vote 5 money. As soon as something engages vote 5 spending, it engages all the processes that are required for a capital acquisition. That means when you're trying to buy something—let's say like a new computer system—you're trying to go through a 15-year process.

National Defence committee  Let me break it down. Within the CAF, one of the challenges you have is that the requirements are being written by people who are cycling through postings fairly rapidly. The staying power of those people, given the CAF rotation system and how they are reposted after a certain period of time, removes the memory even from individual projects and often in the past has resulted in situations where there isn't that good understanding of how the project is tracking over time.

National Defence committee  I'm not worried about those big projects. CSC and future fighter have tons of people dedicated to them. I can tell you only how many years the air force committed to future fighter and the resources that were put in it. The bigger problem is the smaller projects that don't get the same level of attention.

National Defence committee  Raising those thresholds and, similarly, delegating some decision-making to lower-level individuals within the procurement process is the only way you're going to speed up. It's the only way you're going to be able to meet the pace of change that's being set. Again, that comes with risk.

National Defence committee  I'll give a simple example. For instance, if what we've seen comes to fruition and the government moves forward with the sole-source acquisition of the P-8A for the CMMA, one of the best ways to ensure that there's understanding and trust in why that decision was made is far greater transparency about the requirements and why that decision is made the way that it's made.

National Defence committee  There is a significant difference between the amount of expenditure required to maintain and keep resources up to date over the long term, and the ability to spend. The fact that we haven't been able to spend the allocated funds stems from the fact that we haven't spent enough beforehand to obtain the personnel and institutions needed to spend the money.

National Defence committee  If we can't invest in the staff whose job it is to spend the earmarked amounts, long-term costs will simply rise. In other words, not spending budgeted amounts or delaying the purchase of equipment has an impact on the final cost of the purchase, which will ultimately be higher.

National Defence committee  It's because we like to have very ambitious defence policies, and the military likes to have defence policies that tell it to buy the equipment it needs. As a result, politicians, the Department of Finance and the armed forces all have an interest in ensuring that costs are very low, in order to have policies that allow them to buy equipment.