Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and members, for the invitation to appear today to talk about some of Canada's air defence procurements.

I want to start by noting that we've made some good and noticeable progress lately on several of these. Most recently, yesterday, for the second time in 12 years, we announced that we'll buy the F-35. I hope that this time the announcement actually results in the purchase of new fighter aircraft.

Beyond that, and some other projects related to remotely piloted air systems, surveillance aircraft and aerial refuelling and transport planes, there's momentum behind some of our procurements. I hope the Minister of National Defence's public statements about the modernization of continental defence, which she says will start shortly, will further enhance our air defences if those move forward.

While this will all strengthen our defence, collectively, I think these initiatives could benefit from three improvements: greater prioritization of defence procurement, an increase in our procurement system’s capacity, and a more rigorous approach to scheduling.

Given the complexity of defence procurement and the multiple competing government objectives that have to be reconciled within it, procurements will move most quickly when governments clearly care about the speed of equipment delivery and make it a high priority. When that has been the case, major procurements have moved quickly, such as when we acquired transport aircraft and equipment for the war in Afghanistan in the late 2000s. Absent clear prioritization from the Prime Minister and cabinet, down into the bureaucracy and military, however, projects will move more slowly than they could otherwise. At present, it does not appear that defence procurement is a key Government of Canada priority.

The capacity of the procurement system also needs to be better calibrated with the volume of procurement projects that Canada is currently pursuing. The procurement workforce was downsized during a program review in the 1990s and has never been fully rebuilt to the same size. To cite one example, the materiel group at DND is only a bit more than half as big as it was at the end of the 1990s, despite working with roughly the same amount of money—adjusted for inflation today—as it did then. This mismatch between capacity and workload will be a key limiting factor in any attempt to accelerate the pace of air defence procurement projects or increase defence spending, including through the modernization of continental defence.

Finally, our procurement efforts could be strengthened by improving the rigour with which defence procurement project schedules are established. Too many of them appear to be set simply by starting from the date a new piece of equipment is desired and then working backwards, without any regard for the actual feasibility of completing the required work in the allotted time frame. Failing to account for the expected complexity and risk involved in a project, and the corresponding time it takes to complete, dooms projects to fail to live up to expectations from the outset and virtually guarantees that their budgets will be eroded by the impact of inflation over time.

Thank you. I look forward to questions.

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