Remarks by Minister of National Defence Bill Blair at the 2024 Halifax International Security Forum

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  6 janvier 2020 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité

  No timeline set for development of promised defence procurement agency

  By Charlie Pinkerton; iPolitics Published on Jan 2, 2020 3:02pm Although Canada's defence minister has been tasked with working toward creating a new defence procurement agency to improve the country's often slow-moving system for purchasing military equipment, there's no clear timeline for when the new body will be put in place. In the mandate letter addressed to him by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and published last month, Harjit Sajjan was told that part of his job in this Parliament will be to “bring forward analyses and options for the creation of Defence Procurement Canada,” which the Liberals promised to advance toward in this mandate while they campaigned in the fall's election. “A lot of work has already started on (Defence Procurement Canada) and the goal of this is to make sure that we get the procurement projects done as quickly as possible to make sure the Canadian Armed Forces has what they need,” Sajjan told iPolitics the day before his mandate letter was released. Sajjan also said the Department of National Defence (DND), Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada and Public Services and Procurement Canada still need to complete “more work” before a timeline for the creation of the new procurement agency would be set. Some of the first steps of the Trudeau government to improve Canada's military procurement system was in transferring the responsibility of military procurements to being managed internally at DND. When the Liberals published its overhauled defence policy in June 2017, DND said that 70 per cent of procured projects were being delivered past their deadlines. “Cumbersome decision making and approval processes have introduced undue delays. Accountability among departments has been diffuse and at times unclear,” says the Liberals' defence policy (it's titled Strong, Secure, Engaged). As a response, the defence policy declared that DND would internally manage the contracts of all projects of under $5 million — an initiative which it said would reduce departmental approval times by 50 per cent for 80 per cent of all contracts. The defence policy is intended to lead how Canada's military operates beyond this decade. At the same time as developing the new agency for military procurement projects, Sajjan has also been tasked with choosing which company the government will choose to pay almost $20 billion to build Canada's next generation fleet of fighter jets. According to the current timeline laid out by the Canadian Armed Forces, the government will receive the final bid proposals from the three companies it deemed in 2018 as being capable of meeting Canada's needs (which includes Saab, Lockheed Martin and Boeing) early in 2020. If it sticks to its timeline, the government will pick which company will be its fighter jet provider by next year and will receive the first next generation jet as early as 2025. Sajjan's mandate letter includes another procurement-related list item; he's also tasked with advancing the renewal of Canada's naval fleet. There are four major navy procurement projects that are nearing their conclusion. Canada is buying new surface combatants, new Arctic and offshore patrol ships, new joint patrol ships and retrofitting its 12 frigates. The combined cost of these projects is expected to cost taxpayers more than $83 billion. Investments in procured projects account for a large portion of the $32 billion jump in annual defence spending that Canada is planning for by 2027. If achieved in that year, Canada's defence spending as it relates to a portion of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) would equal about 1.4 per cent. Canada currently spends just over 1.3 per cent of its GDP on its military two years ago. It has pledged to NATO to work toward spending two per cent of its GDP on its military, which is a common goal amongst allied countries. Over the past few years, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called on Canada to increase its military spending to surpass two per cent of GDP. Global News reported less than a month ago that Canada had multibillion-dollar discrepancies in the last two years in how much it planned to spend on its military and how much it actually spent. According to documents obtained by the publication, it had a discrepancy of $2.29 billion in military spending in 2017-2018 and a shortfall of $4.45 billion in spending last year, compared to what it outlined in its defence policy.

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  18 juin 2019 | Local, Aérospatial

  VISION 2025 : AU-DELÀ DE NOTRE IMAGINATION

  Vision 2025 : Au-delà de notre imagination est un plan de sensibilisation piloté par l'industrie pour amorcer un nouveau dialogue entre l'industrie, le gouvernement, le grand public et d'autres parties prenantes. L'objectif principal de Vision 2025 est de faire la lumière sur les contributions importantes des secteurs de l'aérospatiale, de l'espace et de la défense partout au Canada et sur l'importance de protéger l'industrie aérospatiale canadienne et d'investir dans ce secteur pour nous assurer de demeurer un chef de file mondial. Article complet :https://aiac.ca/fr/vision2025/

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  9 avril 2020 | Local, Sécurité

  Pandemic equipment snarls will rewrite Canada's definition of national security needs, say experts

  When every country needs the same stuff to keep people safe, cost arguments seem less convincing The mad scramble to secure protective medical equipment and ventilators in the midst of a global pandemic has given some of the people who work in the usually tedious world of government procurement an unwelcome excuse to say, "I told you so." For years, there have been quiet but persistent demands coming out of the defence and acquisition sectors for successive federal governments to develop a list of "strategic industries" that do not have to rely on foreign supply chains — as insurance against the kind of procurement panic in play right now. Those calls were largely ignored. Now, defence experts are saying the COVID-19 crisis is a costly wake-up call. Canada needs — and has needed for almost two decades — a 21st century national security industrial plan that focuses on critical equipment and materials that should be produced at home, not abroad. 'Totally negligent' "We've been totally negligent on that and it is something I have articulated over and over again," said Alan Williams, the former head of the procurement branch at the Department of National Defence. "It's absolutely critical and if this doesn't wake us to that reality, I don't know what would." Williams devoted a substantial portion of one of his books, Reinventing Canadian Defence Procurement: A View from the Inside, to the absence of a national security vision of Canadian industry. "It frankly pisses me off because there's no reason for us not to have done that," he said. "That should be the kind of thing ministers, the leaders of the country desperately want to do. And why we seem to have avoided that kind of strategic thinking ... It just boggles my mind. It's inexcusable." 'Key' industries geared toward trade, not tragedies There was a faint glimmer of hope in the initial debate over the National Shipbuilding Strategy a decade ago, when the former Conservative government made a conscious decision to build future warships, Canadian Coast Guard and fisheries vessels in Canada, instead of outsourcing the work to other countries. At least in the context of defence procurement, Canada does have what are known as "key industrial capabilities", including shipbuilding, the production of certain types of ammunition and the construction of a range of aerospace and maritime electronic systems. Much of the work of those "key" domestic industries is, however, geared toward making high-end components for global supply chains. Critics have often said the policy focuses on high-tech innovation and business priorities, rather than hard-headed national security interests. Other countries, Williams said, have carved out a space for national security interests in industrial policy by not allowing other countries to build certain pieces of equipment. The Japanese, for example, have retained the capability to assemble their own warplanes. A shift in thinking The COVID-19 crisis, which has uncovered a potentially deadly shortage of ventilators and protective equipment for medical professionals, will push the federal government into a radical re-evaluation of what we need to be able to build at home to protect the country. In some respects, that work has already started. Earlier this week, reflecting on the Trump administration's moves to restrict exports of protective equipment, Ontario Premier Doug Ford expressed dismay over how the fate of so many Canadians had been taken out of the hands of the federal and provincial governments. Doctors, nurses demand government fill 'unacceptable' gaps in protective gear on front lines Canada working to produce up to 30,000 ventilators domestically: Trudeau "I am just so, so disappointed right now," he said. "We have a great relationship with the U.S. and all of a sudden they pull these shenanigans. But as I said yesterday, we will never rely on any other country going forward." Over the past two weeks, the federal government has announced plans to pour more than $2 billion into sourcing and acquiring protective medical equipment — masks, gowns, face shields, hand sanitizer — at home. On Tuesday, Ottawa unveiled a plan to get three Canadian companies to build 30,000 ventilators. Health equipment may have been outside the normal definition of national security needs until just a few weeks ago — but the shifting geopolitical landscape offered another warning sign that was ignored, said procurement expert Dave Perry. Leaning on China "This is pointing out the flip side of our globalized world and globalized supply chains," said Perry, an analyst and vice president at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. "The cold, hard truth is that we're going to be relying on China for critical supplies." When the coronavirus outbreak ramped up, federal officials should have been aware of the potential peril involved in relying on Chinese factories for so many critical items. But in the absence of homegrown capability, Canada is at the mercy of panicked nations in the midst of panicked buying. "The entire world is trying to put through orders from the same sets of factories we're trying to source from," Perry said. "It might be accurate to criticize the Chinese for their response, but in the current context the government has to be cognizant of the impact on our potential ability to source stuff we really, really need right now from China — when there's not a lot of other options available in the short term and when the rest of the world is making the same phone calls." One of the critical arguments against a homegrown national security industrial strategy has been the cost. It's an argument familiar from the shipbuilding context: taxpayers pay a premium when we task Canadian industry with delivering solutions, instead of turning to cheaper foreign manufacturers. Elinor Sloan, a defence policy expert at Carleton University, said she believes the crisis will focus the public's attention on securing the critical industries and supplies the country needs in a global crisis. "The trade-off, as we know, is that it can be more costly to build or produce at home," she said. "This crisis may engender a perspective among the public that the extra cost is worth it." https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pandemic-covid-coronavirus-procurement-masks-ventilators-1.5525373