CAE appoints Todd Probert as group president, Defence and Security

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  29 janvier 2021 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  Canada's new top military commander marks international debut in virtual NATO meeting

  Art McDonald says mutual cooperation and understanding is at the heart of military alliance Murray Brewster · Canada's new top military commander had an international debut of sorts on Wednesday as Admiral Art McDonald attended, via video conference, a meeting of his NATO counterparts. The military alliance's chiefs of defence staff meet on a regular basis and the event was the first for McDonald since he assumed command earlier this month. The discussion was also significant in light of the change in leadership in Washington and the Biden Administration's pledge to reinvigorate ties with allied nations. McDonald, in a Tweet, said "mutual cooperation and understanding is at the heart of the Alliance," but offered no further remarks on the substance of the meeting. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg spoke with U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday in a relaxed, friendly discussion that was carried on NATO's YouTube channel. The chat was a stark contrast to some of the free-wheeling, tense and unpredictable media appearances Stoltenberg had with former president Donald Trump, who routinely questioned the value and expense of the alliance. "We've got a mountain of work to do ahead of us, from tackling COVID, to climate, to the security challenges," Biden told the secretary general. "I intend to rebuild and re-establish our alliances, starting with NATO." The words and reassurances were echoed in Stoltenberg's opening remarks to the defence chiefs on Wednesday. He said he was looking forward to working with Biden because "the U.S. and Europe are safer standing together." Push for increased defence spending Under Trump, the U.S. made it a priority to push other NATO nations to spend more on defence and take a greater share of the collective defence burden. In a sign that pressure is not going away, Stoltenberg told the defence chiefs that allies should remain committed to increased military spending, investments in modern capabilities and a higher state of readiness for existing forces. It is a tall order in light of the budget-busting deficits being run by western governments because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Liberal government in Canada has said throughout the crisis that its military spending plans, carved out almost four years ago in its defence policy, are safe from the budget axe. Stoltenberg also said, significantly, that he will present recommendations on how to equip NATO for the future when allied leaders meet in Brussels later this year. And he underlined that he wants NATO to take on a more global approach and work closely with democracies in the Asia-Pacific region. The North Atlantic alliance, which was founded to counter Soviet expansionism in Europe, has increasingly over the last few years grappled with the rise of a more assertive China on the world stage. 'A return to treating allies like allies' A defence analyst said it wasn't hard to spot the lighter mood in the call between Biden and Stoltenberg. "Relief and excitement were the two major emotions — almost palpable — on the call between the Secretary General and President Biden," said Robert Baines, president of the NATO Association of Canada, a non-governmental organization based in Toronto. "The call reminds us just how frayed the tone of the U.S.-NATO relationship has been. None of the statements from the President would have been extraordinary without the context given to them by the past four years." Baines noted Biden's commending of Stoltenberg's "personal diplomacy" over the last few years. "That was no doubt meant to give Mr Stoltenberg some credit for his handling of President Trump," he said. Biden's remarks are significant for Canada because throughout the Trump years the United States often took unexpected unilateral action without consulting allies, Baines added. "Over the past several years, from the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Syria to the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the United States under President Trump was not one that consulted, or even warned, its allies," he said. "On more than one occasion, Canada was left in the lurch because of unilateral action by the United States when our Canadian soldiers were on the ground and potentially in harms-way. President Biden's comments suggest a return to treating allies like allies." https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/nato-mcdonald-military-1.5890963

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  22 juillet 2021 | Local, Aérospatial

  Le Canada fait un nouveau versement de 71 millions $ US pour le chasseur F-35

  Le Canada a discrètement effectué au printemps un nouveau versement de plusieurs millions de dollars pour le développement du chasseur furtif F-35, même si le gouvernement ne sait toujours pas s'il en achètera — et malgré les appels d'artistes et de militants à ne pas acheter de nouveaux avions de combat.

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  29 mars 2019 | Local, Naval

  SNC-Lavalin's legal woes are putting a $500M federal defence contract at risk

  Murray Brewster · CBC News A SNC-Lavalin contract with the Department of National Defence (DND) worth half a billion dollars comes up for renewal next year — when the Montreal-based engineering giant is expected to be on trial over corruption charges. The pending expiry of the $507 million contract to support the servicing of minor warships and auxiliary vessels, signed in 2011, sharpens the debate over what a guilty verdict would mean for the Quebec-based engineering giant and whether a conviction actually would mean subjecting the company to a 10-year ban on bidding for federal contracts. The stakes are high for DND. In addition to holding an important defence contract, SNC-Lavalin has access to a range of secret military drawings, equipment and intellectual property. Although its agreements are periodically reopened to new bids, the embattled corporation has been a reliable contractor for National Defence. A survey of active federal government contracts shows DND and Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) were the two biggest users of SNC-Lavalin services and construction during the current fiscal year. Across the whole of the federal government, SNC-Lavalin holds 53 'active' federal government contracts — 25 of them with DND — with a combined value of $670 million. A company with a big federal footprint The firm signed roughly $68 million in new or renewed agreements with the federal government ($23.7 million with DND and PSPC alone) in the current budget year up to the end of December. That figure excludes what could be a large number of smaller contracts worth less than $25,000 — contracts the federal government can award without competition. An inventory of those agreements is extremely difficult to track down, but PSPC acknowledged it awarded $146,522 in minor work to SNC-Lavalin in the current fiscal year. The RCMP laid corruption charges against SNC-Lavalin and some of its units in February 2015. All the charges relate to the company's operations in Libya. The charges allege that the company offered officials in that country $47 million in bribes and accuse SNC-Lavalin and two of its subsidiaries of defrauding various Libyan public agencies of approximately $129.8 million over 10 years, starting in 2001. The company has been at the centre of a political firestorm since early February, when The Globe and Mail reported that former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould felt pressured by the Prime Minister's Office to grant the company a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA) — a legal tool which would have allowed the company to avoid a criminal trial by acknowledging fault and paying a fine, among other conditions. In defending their interest in a DPA for SNC-Lavalin, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and others in his government have pointed to the scale of the engineering firm's business, the possibility it could be banned from federal government work and the number of people it employs. Scott Newark, a former Crown prosecutor who teaches at Simon Fraser University, said it's been clear from the outset that avoiding the federal contract ban has been SNC-Lavalin's main objective. The question of what would happen to those federal contracts should the company be convicted is a subject of debate, however. There are policy provisions that allow federal officials to cancel existing contracts and ban future bids from a company convicted of serious crimes, such as bribery. PSPC would only say the federal government would "assess the situation" if "a supplier becomes ineligible during the life of a contract" due to a conviction. The power to terminate or suspend a contract rests with federal bureaucrats, according to PSPC's Ineligibility and Suspension Policy. A company convicted of serious crimes can avoid being fired by the feds by signing an undertaking stating "that it will conduct business with Canada in an ethical and responsible manner." But there's never a guarantee that such an undertaking will be offered to a convicted company. Just three companies are currently banned from carrying on business with the federal government — all relatively small firms in Ontario, Quebec and Newfoundland. No ban on bidding during trial A spokesman for DND said there's nothing stopping SNC-Lavalin from continuing to bid on federal contracts as they appear, even during its trial. "These contracts were issued pursuant to Government of Canada contracting regulations, particularly as it concerns open, fair and transparent competitions," said Dan Le Bouthillier in an email. "Those regulations also stipulate that any company eligible to bid on Government of Canada contracts may continue to do so, so long as they meet the necessary requirements for the work." In an analysis piece for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Newark said PSPC is working on a revision of its 'integrity regime' policy to give federal officials more discretion to waive bans of individual companies contracting with the federal government. Public Services Minister Carla Qualtrough has said her department is looking at eliminating fixed bidding disqualification periods and replacing them with a wholly discretionary determination — which would include the option of imposing no contracting ban at all. Even under the current system, Newark said, an order cancelling a company's federal contracts and banning it from future contracts following a conviction is far from a slam-dunk. "I checked on the Criminal Code and the Corruption of Public Foreign Officials Act and, of course, it's not in those statutes. It's not a mandatory consequence." he said. The integrity regime review has been underway in Qualtrough's department since 2017. Newark said he's amazed that nobody with the company or the federal government seems to have realized that a conviction for SNC-Lavalin could lead to something other than a 10-year contracting ban. "Why didn't anybody say, 'Hey wait a minute. We know what about this. We're changing our policy,'" he said. The head of procurement at DND attempted to reassure members of the all-party House of Commons defence committee during a hearing last month that SNC-Lavalin's "secret" work for the federal government does not pose an unacceptable risk. "We hold the intellectual property, the drawings and everything," Pat Finn testified on Feb. 28. "Irrespective of the circumstances in which the contract is terminated, we hold the material." https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/snc-lavalin-s-legal-woes-are-putting-a-500m-federal-defence-contract-at-risk-1.5073996