Industry and Technology committee  We're going to be receiving a lot of assets that have a significant amount of data. In terms of managing that data, having data sovereignty and having some of the things that we have in Waterloo or in the technology corridors here in Ottawa, like artificial intelligence that will parse through that data, Canada has those capabilities.

Industry and Technology committee  It's fair to say there has been a lot of disparate engagement. The challenge is that, to use my cake analogy, there are thousands of interventions to companies across the country. I would ask you, “What do you want in your cake?” You would say, “I think it needs eggs, flour, sugar and some sprinkles.”

Industry and Technology committee  I don't know if it has hindered innovation necessarily, but we have a big distinction, which I call the separation between church and state, where we are very afraid and tepid in this country about unabashedly procuring, in the shortest frame possible, resident Canadian capability.

Industry and Technology committee  In some cases, procurements do move to the right; you're negotiating. However, I would argue that for the most part we see procurements get stuck in a couple of phases. One is the actual procurement-to-contract phase. It can take years, and the first happens a lot more up front.

Industry and Technology committee  One of the things we have shied away from.... To Mike's point about how we operate very transactionally, we look at everything on a procurement-by-procurement basis, which means you don't get these very large economies of scale. You also don't get business capital being invested because the buying is too small and it's lumpy.

Industry and Technology committee  One of the ways you can do that is by being far more interventionist than we are currently. The tools we use are passive. They require other companies to choose where they invest. Using a defence industrial strategy, you would call out specific areas of interest where you wanted foreign primes.

Industry and Technology committee  One of the challenges is that innovation can come from any kind of company, but there is a lot of innovation that comes out of small to medium-sized enterprises. One of the single biggest problems we see with the procurement cycles we currently have and the inability to procure, immediately, Canadian sovereign capability is that the procurement cycle being anywhere from five, 10 to 15 years will basically run small businesses out of cash flow, so they cannot retain the skills or sometimes even the service provider—the individual who has the knowledge—for such a long period of time.

Industry and Technology committee  Thank you for the question. It's a very good one. Our typical policies, in general, are to compete—compete for largely everything. In the case of small companies with unique technologies that are selling directly to the federal government, I would argue that we should potentially even be skipping a competitive process with foreign entities, perhaps by signalling that you want certain capabilities within your country.

Industry and Technology committee  I think the cost of not doing it is a bit different from Mike's answer. I think we have been signalling, on the world stage, that we are going to be prepared to meet our 2% of GDP commitment to the rest of the world, and failure to do so would result in serious reputational damage to Canada.

Industry and Technology committee  I'll do my best. First and foremost, we actually have a lot of really good sovereign capability already residing within Canada. That's one of the fundamental problems—that we think we don't have as much as we really do. I would draw your attention to the fact that we study this sector every couple of years.

Industry and Technology committee  Yes.

Industry and Technology committee  First, I don't know whether the ADM—I assume it was Hadwen—expressed that they have been working on the defence industrial strategy for almost 12 months now. I would argue the sense of urgency has been happening for almost over a year and, I would assume, given there have been many interventions to ask for information, they would be in a position where they could at least launch some elements of a defence industrial strategy, whether it was fully baked or not, at this particular point in time.

Industry and Technology committee  Thank you for inviting me. The Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries, which I lead, represents over 1,000 firms that make up Canada's defence and national security industrial base. The government's commitment to establish a defence industrial strategy—the DIS—is the right course of action at this historic time.

National Defence committee  Honestly, I don't know. I haven't done the math. All I look at is that I think there are about 6,000 rounds per day and 250,000 rounds per month being used by Ukraine—something along those lines. The numbers are astronomical.

National Defence committee  Well, I think that some of the things it's doing right now will help to expedite the process. Going around the world and understanding what our allies already have in an off-the-shelf procurement in this particular case, I think, will expedite the capability in the hands of the Royal Canadian Navy, so I would say less bespoke and probably more off the shelf.