Report: Bombardier’s CMMA offering would contribute $2.8B in GDP; price of planes 'competitive' with Boeing P-8 - Skies Mag

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  October 4, 2018 | Local, Aerospace

  Sea King disposal underway

  by Lisa Gordon The 55-year reign of the Canadian Sea King is coming to a close. In December, a crew from 443 Maritime Helicopter Squadron in Patricia Bay, B.C., will fly the CH-124 Sea King on its last flight for the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF). Earlier this year, their counterparts at 423 Maritime Helicopter Squadron in Shearwater, N.S., marked the aircraft's final East Coast mission on Jan. 26, 2018. While five helicopters are still operational until the end of the year in B.C., Canada's remaining 23 Sea Kings have been retired and are currently making their way through the fleet disposal process. Administered by the Department of National Defence (DND) and Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC), this process aims to repurpose, sell or otherwise dispose of the old helicopters in a safe and environmentally responsible manner. While final arrangements for the aircraft are subject to change, DND told Skies on Oct. 2 that eight of the 28 remaining aircraft will be publicly displayed by the Canadian Armed Forces at various military bases and museums across the country. Another airframe will be retained by the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) as a training aid, and one will be displayed at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa. Three aircraft were demilitarized and scrapped due to their poor condition, with components being recycled where possible. The remaining 15 Sea Kings and their associated parts — 12 are currently located at 12 Wing Shearwater and three are at Patricia Bay — are now for sale, a process that is being administered by PSPC. “Essentially, we have a website that is used to source interest for controlled and sensitive assets that are for sale,” explained Josée Doucet, manager of the GCMil group at PSPC, which deals with the disposal of surplus Canadian military goods. “In this case, we put the Sea Kings up for sale. Once we had expressions of interest, we held a bidders' conference on Sept. 26 in Shearwater, to showcase those aircraft. It gave bidders the chance to look at them, ask questions regarding the assets, and gave them an idea of what they are bidding on.” The helicopters are being sold in “as is, where is” condition. Doucet said she was very pleased by the number of potential bidders who attended the Shearwater event. “Now, the interested parties will receive a package from my office and be invited to submit a bid. There will be a timeline as to when we will start reviewing offers.” While Doucet said that timeline has not yet been finalized with DND, she indicated the goal would be to have a purchase agreement in place by the time the Sea Kings cease flying on Dec. 31. “It's a very aggressive timeline, so the offer to purchase dates will respect that.” Preparing for Sale Before the Sea Kings went on the market, controlled goods and military equipment were removed from the airframes wherever possible. Doucet said all Canadian bidders must be registered in the Controlled Goods Program. Interested foreign purchasers must be enrolled in their nation's equivalent program, which allows them to view military assets. “We have a number of processes. We only deal with registered Canadian companies, pre-approved foreign governments or authorized representatives of original equipment manufacturers. Only then would they be allowed to bid.” While Doucet declined to estimate the Sea Kings' worth, she said a myriad of factors are considered when selecting the winning bid. These include single-asset or full-lot bids, depreciation, condition of the fleet, and the costs to DND to maintain the helicopters as they await sale. “We also look to see if a bidder has an approved clear end use for the helicopters. What is the likelihood of obtaining export approval, as well as third-party approval from the country of acquisition — in this case the United States. We look at all that, because we don't want to exert efforts in an area that would not be fruitful.” Ultimately, she said fleet value will be driven by market demand. “I would have to say that from a commercial application perspective, the Sea King fleet has a lot of life left in it. Whether the fleet will be used as a gap measure, or to refurbish and resell, or to convert to commercial applications, the value will be subject to its intended end use.” A Lasting Legacy Canada accepted its first CH-124 Sea King at the Sikorsky plant in Connecticut on May 24, 1963. Since then, the maritime helicopter has earned its legendary status in the Canadian Armed Forces, serving with distinction on Her Majesty's Canadian Ship Bonaventure (the country's last aircraft carrier, retired in 1970), as well as on St. Laurent-class destroyer escorts, Iroquois-class destroyers, auxiliary oiler replenishment ships, and Halifax-class frigates. No other aircraft in Canadian service has ever commanded such a lasting multi-generational legacy. While 15 Sea Kings are destined for new homes, nine will remain on public display to ensure its story will never be forgotten. It's a fitting tribute to a King that ruled the waves for more than half a century. https://www.skiesmag.com/news/sea-king-disposal-underway

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  July 20, 2020 | Local, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Why it is time for smart protectionism

  Put simply, Canadian governments have a responsibility to practise smart protectionism where the risks to Canadians' personal security and national security are high. Free trade is good economics. Protectionism is bad. Global supply chains are efficient. Favouring domestic goods, services and industries is inefficient. Canada has long adhered to these orthodoxies. And most of the time it makes sense to do so. However, through the COVID-19 pandemic, both the public and private sectors have seen weaknesses associated with heavy or total reliance on foreign sources and global supply chains for essential goods, notably personal protective equipment (PPE). As of June 2, for example, the Government of Canada had ordered close to 122 million N95 masks from international suppliers, yet 12 million had been received and 9.8 million of those failed Canadian standards. We are learning the hard way that foreign sources cannot necessarily supply the products we need in the time, quantity or quality required during a national or global emergency. China, as the dominant global producer of many of these PPE supplies, has become the focal point for an emerging debate around domestic control over certain goods, technologies, and services. A recent report from the Henry Jackson Society in the U.K., for example, has argued the “Five Eyes”—the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand—are far too reliant on Chinese sources for all kinds of strategically important goods, and that this is a threat to the national security of those countries. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, too, has warned that Canadian companies that produce certain critical technologies are vulnerable to foreign takeovers by entities with agendas hostile to Canada's interests. This is not just an issue with China, though. In Canada, we like to believe that in national or global crises we can rely on the U.S. or other allies for help. Canada, in other words, would be at or near the front of the line with allies. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the behavior of the U.S. and European countries, suggests this is naive. Italy, a founding EU member, requested and was denied face masks from the EU's stockpile at the peak of their COVID-19 outbreak. In April, a presidential executive order gave the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency the power to “allocate to domestic use” several types of PPE that would otherwise be exported. U.S. produced masks bound for Germany, a close American ally, were reportedly diverted back while in transit. Ultimately, Canada was exempt from the U.S. order, but this episode should tell us that global emergencies can lead to “home front comes first” attitudes, even among our closest allies. Fundamentally, the issue comes down to one of efficiency versus necessity. Sometimes, in some areas of the economy, security of supply is more important than efficiency. While this thinking is new to most companies and governments in Canada, it is not new to Canadian companies working in defence and national security. The Canadian defence industry has long highlighted the need for focused sovereign production and control in key national security capabilities—in part to ensure security of supply—as our allies in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere have been doing for generations. The argument has fallen largely on deaf ears. There seems to be a greater aversion in Canada to any kind of protectionism than among our more pragmatic allies. There is also a belief that Canada can always rely on obtaining critical supplies from the U.S., owing to both our close trading relationship and bi-lateral defence agreements dating from the 1950s that purport to establish an integrated North American defence industrial base. Canada puts too much faith in these beliefs, to our peril. While we can still hold free trade and integrated global supply chains as the goal, we also need to recognize that this view of the economy does not always serve our national interests. Put simply, Canadian governments have a responsibility to practise smart protectionism where the risks to Canadians' personal security and national security are high. Christyn Cianfarani is president and CEO of the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CADSI). The Hill Times https://www.hilltimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/072020_ht.pdf

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  December 7, 2018 | Local, Naval

  Sole-sourced contracts can be 'raw deal', top officials said in navy ship case

  Lee Berthiaume / The Canadian Press OTTAWA — New court documents show public servants discussing the risk to taxpayers as successive federal governments have turned to sole-source contracts to buy desperately needed equipment for the Canadian Forces and others. The documents were filed on behalf of suspended Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, who is charged with breach of trust in connection with one such contract. They land amid frustrations with Canada's military procurement system — including because of political mismanagement — that have led to the need for quick fixes. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government has chosen to sign several sole-source contracts to bolster the coast guard's aging icebreaking fleet and the country's fighter-jet force, buying time to find permanent replacements. Sole-sourcing does make sense in many cases, said defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, particularly where there is an emergency or it's clear that only one company can meet the government's needs. "But if you're sole-sourcing to fill a capability gap, that's the result of mismanaging a procurement to the point where you are out of options and have no alternative," Perry said. "That's not really a good reason to be sole-sourcing." The Tories under Stephen Harper once intended to buy a fleet of F-35 fighter jets on an untendered contract, but aborted that plan in 2012 once the full price became known. Then the Trudeau government planned to spend about $6 billion on 18 sole-sourced "interim" Super Hornets from Boeing because it said Canada needed more fighter jets to support its aging CF-18s until replacements could be purchased through a competition. The Super Hornets deal eventually fell apart because of a trade dispute with Boeing. So the government is buying 25 second-hand Australian fighter jets, also without a competition. Canada isn't expected to get new fighter jets until at least 2025. The Liberals also recently bought three second-hand icebreakers from Quebec-based Davie Shipbuilding for the coast guard, whose existing fleet is on average 35 years old — with no immediate plan to replace it on the horizon. Suspended as the military's second-in-command in January 2017, Norman was charged in March 2018 with one count of breach of trust for allegedly leaking cabinet secrets to Davie over a different contract. He has denied any wrongdoing and vowed to fight the charge. The case against Norman centres on a sole-sourced deal negotiated between Davie and the previous Conservative government in 2015, in which the Quebec shipyard proposed converting a civilian cargo ship into a temporary support vessel for the navy. The $700-million contract with Davie was not finalized before that year's federal election. Although the newly elected Liberals at first wanted to delay it for a closer review, they signed off on the deal a short time later. Before Liberal ministers agreed to buy the converted ship, bureaucrats from the Privy Council Office, the government's top department, wrote a secret briefing note in November 2015 that discussed the problems with not holding a competition. "The risk inherent with a sole-source contract is that much of the leverage in the contract negotiation resides with the company," the bureaucrats wrote, even as they noted that the Conservatives had exempted the deal from the usual oversight for such projects. Despite these concerns, the officials recommended the government approve the deal. Partly because they had assessed that "risk mitigation measures" were in place, but mostly because the navy urgently needed a support ship for faraway operations. The court documents, none of which have been filed as exhibits or tested in court, include RCMP interviews with civil servants that suggest politicians' desire for votes in Quebec also played a role in the decisions about the ship. But the navy's need for the vessel was real. The navy at the time had just retired its 50-year-old support ships and while replacements are being built in Vancouver through the government's national shipbuilding plan, numerous delays and problems mean they won't be ready until the 2020s. The navy had originally expected to get new support ships in 2012. The briefing note said a competition could have been held to find another, perhaps cheaper, solution, but "a competitive process would take longer to deliver a solution — likely 10-14 months for a contract award, and then more time for the service to be ready." RCMP interviews with several senior civil servants raise similar concerns about awarding a contract to Davie without a competition while also alluding to the sense of urgency in getting new support ships. The Defence Department's head of procurement, Patrick Finn, told the Mounties that other companies were clamouring to compete to supply a temporary support ship in late 2014, and that "the information existed to say that this could be done competitively." But Finn noted that Davie had already found a ship that it could convert for the navy, which "at that point had no replenishment ships." Melissa Burke, an analyst with the Privy Council Office who attended various cabinet meetings about Davie's proposal in 2015, told the RCMP that federal procurement officials were unhappy because "they felt the taxpayers were getting a raw deal." https://www.timescolonist.com/sole-sourced-contracts-can-be-raw-deal-top-officials-said-in-navy-ship-case-1.23516431