Canadian military will no longer release info about numbers of personnel affected by COVID-19

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  25 novembre 2019 | Local, Aérospatial

  Defence Construction Canada issues Advance Procurement Notice for the Future Fighter Capability Project

  Defence Construction Canada (DCC) has issued an Advance Procurement Notice (APN) for Solicitation No. APN-DC-2527 for construction programs for the Future Fighter Capability Project (FFCP). If contracts are awarded, the work will occur between 2020 and 2030. SECRET personnel, document safeguarding and facility security clearances will be required for all projects for contractors and consultants. Information management system clearance to the level of SECRET may be required, but will only be approved post-contract award. Potential bidders who do not currently meet these requirements can apply to the Industrial Security Program (ISP) for clearances. DCC is an approved sponsor under the ISP. Requests for security clearances must be received prior to January 7, 2020. Advance Procurement Notice, Future Fighter Capability Project (FFCP), Canada (APN-DC-2527) Project Infrastructure is required at the Main Operating Bases in Cold Lake and Bagotville, with potential for work at various Deployed Operating Bases; Forward Operating Locations[1] and Combined Air Operations Centres in support of Future Fighter Capability (FFC). ISP Backgrounder Government of Canada information is subject to data and information protection requirements. The ISP is responsible for granting the necessary security clearances to contractors and their subcontractors for access to Government of Canada information designated as PROTECTED or higher. Key requirements include: individual and facility security clearances must be received in advanceof any access to government information; individual and facility security clearance must match the level of security assigned to the information being accessed; security clearances cannot be extended, transferred or assigned between organizations; site-specific Document Safeguarding Capability (DSC) security clearance is required for organizations that handle government information or assets at their facilities; IT systems that will receive, store and process government information must be approved in advance; foreign-based employees accessing government information at Canadian facilities must obtain a visitor screening approval in advance; foreign-based employees accessing government information from locations outside of Canada require security clearances, as does the facility within which they are working; subcontractors who will receive, process, store or access government information are subject to all of the same assessments and requirements as are the prime contractors (those holding the contract with the Canadian government) and must possess a valid security clearance for each contract; and prime contractors remains solely responsible (and liable) for the subcontractors compliance with the ISP. Compliance with the Industrial Security Program is a material requirement for any government contract having a security requirement. Failure to comply with the ISP can result in suspension or termination of security clearances. The termination of security clearances is considered to be a breach of contract, which entitles the government to terminate the contract for default. The requirements for SECRET clearances are extensive, necessitating advance planning to gather the significant and necessary information that is required. Whether you are currently registered in the ISP or seeking to do so, understanding the requirements of the ISP is critical to your ability to successfully bid for federal government work. To view all formatting for this article (eg, tables, footnotes), please access the original here. https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=8a031226-d61b-424e-ac7b-ccc8b7df104b

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  29 septembre 2020 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité, Autre défense

  COVID-19 further delaying some overdue military procurements

  Lee Berthiaume OTTAWA — While the federal government is pressing ahead with plans to buy billions of dollars worth of much-needed equipment for the Canadian Armed Forces, the Department of National Defence's top procurement official says COVID-19 is further slowing down some already delayed purchases. The past six months have seen a number of major milestones for Canada's beleaguered military procurement system, including last week's unveiling of the first of 16 new military search-and-rescue planes after 16 years of delays and controversy. Procurement officials are also now reviewing three bids that were received from fighter-jet makers at the end of July as Canada inches closer to selecting a replacement for the aging CF-18s following more than a decade of political mismanagement. The list of recent successes also includes Halifax-based Irving Shipbuilding having delivered the first of six new Arctic offshore patrol vessels in late July, while progress has been made on a number of other files, such as the long-overdue purchase of new engineering vehicles for the Army. Yet some of those milestones would have been achieved earlier had it not been for COVID-19. And Troy Crosby, the Defence Department's assistant deputy minister of materiel, acknowledges many other projects are being affected as well. That includes the more than 100 military procurements — roughly half of them dealing with new equipment and the rest focused on building new infrastructure on Canadian Forces bases across the country — that were listed as already delayed before the pandemic hit. "COVID didn't speed anything up," Crosby said in an interview with The Canadian Press. "I think everybody would understand that that's going to have some impact. And exactly what that impact is difficult to tell right now." Delays in military procurements can have several impacts. In some cases such the CF-18s, the Canadian Armed Forces is being forced to keep using equipment that was supposed to have been retired years ago. In others, delays drive up the cost of the new purchases due to inflation. The projects most likely to be delayed due to COVID-19 are those in production, Crosby said. Examples include the construction of new naval ships by Irving and Seaspan ULC in Vancouver, which have had to adopt physical distancing and other COVID-19 measures at their shipyards. "For the projects that are at a stage where the work is office-based ... once we got over that initial hump as everybody had to as we moved toward a remote-work posture, the work continued," said Crosby. "If you're in a shipyard and you're trying to advance the production of a ship given all of the physical distancing requirements and the health and safety considerations, that's challenging." Crosby has previously argued much of the frustration around military procurement is the result of unrealistic expectations born of a lack of understanding and appreciation for how the system — which is dealing with more projects than at any time in recent history — actually works. COVID-19 has also prompted speculation the Liberal government could start cutting back on its promise, unveiled in 2017, to spend $553 billion on the military over the next 20 years. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan told The Canadian Press earlier this month that the funding is "secure." Asked about the spending plan — which is contained in the Liberals' defence policy and known as Strong, Secure, Engaged — Crosby said: "Strong Secure Engaged continues to be our focus and it laid out a program of work and we're trying to get that program of work delivered. "It's been that way right through this whole COVID situation. That hasn't changed anything. ... The people in the materiel group, the people we're working with across government, we're all seized with the program forward." This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 28, 2020. https://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/news/covid-19-further-delaying-some-overdue-military-procurements-1.24211049

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  23 novembre 2018 | Local, Aérospatial

  Liberals press on with second-hand jets amid questions over who will fly them

  CANADIAN PRESS OTTAWA — The Trudeau government pressed ahead with its plan to buy second-hand fighter jets from Australia on Tuesday despite withering fire from the federal auditor general, who warned that the military might not have anybody to fly them. Six years after blowing up the Harper government's plan to buy new F-35s without a competition, auditor general Michael Ferguson targeted the Liberals' own attempts to buy jets. He first picked apart the government's aborted plan to purchase “interim” Super Hornets to bolster Canada's aging CF-18 fleet, and then its current plan to buy used Australian fighters. The government says those extra fighters are needed to address a shortage of CF-18s until a state-of-the-art replacement can be purchased and delivered — a lengthy process that will run through 2032, at which point the CF-18s will be 50 years old. But the auditor general's office arrived at a very different conclusion: The military doesn't need more planes because it doesn't even have the pilots and mechanics to operate what it already has. What it really needs, the office found, is more people. “The shortage of personnel in relation to technicians means that they don't have enough technicians to prepare and maintain the planes,” Casey Thomas, the principal auditor on the fighter jets study, told reporters on Tuesday. “And they have 64 per cent of the pilots that they need, so they don't have enough pilots to fly the planes. What National Defence actually needed was to increase its personnel.” The auditor general's report also flagged concerns that the government's plan to sink $3 billion into the current CF-18s and additional Australian fighters to keep them flying to 2032 won't be enough, as the money won't actually improve the aircrafts' combat systems. Without more money, which some analysts have suggested could mean hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars more, Canada's fighter-jet fleet will become even more obsolete, to the point where the plans might not be any use at home or overseas. Yet only a few hours after the auditor general's report was released, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan announced that the Liberals had signed a contract to buy the 18 second-hand jets from Australia. Officials have pegged the cost at around $500 million. Sajjan also said he had directed officials to look at options for upgrading the combat systems on the CF-18s and Australian fighters, which he acknowledged would mean investing more money into aging fighter jets. Missing from the announcement: Any new funding or other initiative to increase recruiting and retention of pilots and technicians. Instead, Sajjan said the government and military have already introduced several initiatives through the Liberals' defence policy last year, such as giving tax breaks to military personnel deployed on overseas missions, to give them reasons to stay. At the same time, the minister sidestepped questions about recruitment, saying the military can't reduce its standards for new pilots. He noted that commercial airlines are also facing a significant pilot crunch. Air-force commanders have previously said the current training system, which can only produce 115 new pilots each year, a fraction of whom are fighter pilots, is not fast enough to replace all those who move on to commercial opportunities. The subtext to much of the auditor general's report on Tuesday was the question of how Canada ended up in a position where the military will be flying fighter jets until they are 50 years old. The Liberals were urged early in their tenure to launch an immediate competition to replace the CF-18s. Instead they spent two years working to buy those stopgap Super Hornets before a trade dispute with the company that makes them, Boeing, saw the government move on to the used Australian jets. The Trudeau government insists that it was doing its due diligence, but critics — including numerous retired air force and defence officials — have accused it of trying to bend procurement rules to avoid buying the F-35. Yet even before the Liberals took the reins, the Harper government was having a hard time making any progress on buying new fighter jets. The Tories championed the F-35 before resetting the entire process in 2012. That move was prompted by Ferguson's first report, which accused defence officials of misleading parliamentarians about the stealth fighter's costs and various technical issues. National Defence later pegged the full lifetime cost of the fighters at $46 billion. “Lot of people had a hand in this,” said defence analyst David Perry of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, adding that the worst part is there is no easy or obvious solution to what has become a very troubling situation for Canada and its military. “I think our fighter force is in trouble.” https://lfpress.com/news/national/liberals-press-ahead-with-second-hand-jets-amid-questions-over-who-will-fly-them/wcm/859a3329-9d8b-4856-af7f-5c8064e778e7