19 juillet 2023 | Local, Aérospatial
Bombardier Defense delivers Global 6000 to Saab’s GlobalEye program - Skies Mag
The Global 6000 aircraft is ready to be transformed by Saab into its Airborne Early Warning and Control solution known as GlobalEye.
7 décembre 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."
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12 juin 2020 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Experts say COVID-19 hasn’t hurt Canada’s campaign for UN security council seat
By Rachel Emmanuel. Published on Jun 12, 2020 12:00am Experts say COVID-19 hasn't negatively impacted Canada's bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), though the final result is still anyone's guess. The UN General Assembly will vote on June 17 on what countries will join the powerful body as non-permanent members for two-year terms. Canada is facing stiff competition from Norway and Ireland, who both entered the race earlier, to fill the two Western European and other states seats. Adam Chapnick, deputy director of education at the Canadian Forces College and a professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College of Canada, said the coronavirus pandemic has changed Canada's narrative in the race — it can now portray itself as a large, wealthy country capable of helping smaller, less affluent nations emerge from the COVID-19-induced economic downturn. “We have more money to give and as a result we can demonstrate, in a time like this, the value of having us at the centre of global power,” he told iPolitics on Thursday. “[The COVID-19 pandemic] has allowed Canada to highlight some of the factors that differentiate it from its competitors, in a way that it would otherwise not have been able to do.” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau first announced Canada would pursue a seat on the UNSC back in 2016, just months after the Liberals bounced the Harper government from power. An outline of Canada's campaign is displayed on the Global Affairs website and points to commitments like addressing climate change, promoting economic security and advancing gender equality. While Canada announced its campaign long before the global COVID-19 pandemic, Andrea Charron, an associate professor and director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba, said the crisis could end up benefitting Canada's bid. Coming out of the coronavirus pandemic, she said Canada can signal that they'll be there to help struggling countries as they recover from their own economic crises. “It does no good if some states recover beautifully and others fall hopelessly behind,” Charron said. Like most other public gatherings, the vote will also be impacted by COVID-19 restrictions. In other years, all delegates would show up to UN headquarters in New York City and vote in person, with each round of voting taking a couple minutes. But this year, because of the pandemic, Chapnick said delegates now have a designated time to arrive and voting in the first round will take around 10 hours. Because a country requires two thirds of the vote to be elected, Chapnick said delegates will likely be asked to return to the building to vote again the following day or days, in the case that two countries aren't elected in the first round, which he said is probable. At a certain point, Chapnick said delegates might stop showing up to cast their ballots, with the bid becoming a “get out and vote campaign” that would never happen in a normal election year. “We've never had anything like this before,” he explained. Charron, who's also a Canadian Global Affairs Institute fellow, said it will be interesting to see how countries revamp their second ballot strategy, which refers to a country's plan to win the second seat if they didn't win in the first voting round. She said in a typical election, all the delegates are milling around and candidates can easily speak with particular countries in a last minute push to win their vote. However, because of COVID-19 restrictions, countries won't have quick access to make their case to the 192 UN delegates in one room. Chapnick said this new process has major implications for the second ballot strategy. Traditionally, he said Canada has had trouble creating a second ballot strategy because, as a G7 country, it assumes it will win in the first round. He said Canada is committed to the UN and views itself as a country that belongs on the security council, whereas smaller countries may ask to be considered in the second round if they lost to a more powerful country in the first run. “For a G7 country normally to have a second ballot strategy would suggest weakness,” he explained. But, by entering the race late, he said Canada now has wiggle room to develop a second ballot strategy — it can ask countries who pledged support to Norway or Ireland before Canada entered, to vote for the country in the second round, if there is one. Chapnick also said the Canadian team can spend the longer gap in between rounds calling delegates and asking for their support. Still, he warned that there's a “discount rate” of 15 to 35 per cent of countries who promised the Canadian government they'd vote for them, but won't. He said even the Canadian government cannot be sure who's voting for them. “Countries lie all the time,” he said. In fact, Chapnick said part of the reason the countries are voting in-person is because a number of countries refused to participate in electronic voting at the risk that someone could hack the system and realize a country broke their voting promises. He said countries break promises in one of two ways; countries make individuals deals to support all three countries but can only vote for two, or the head of government makes a promise and the ambassador then goes “freelance” when it comes time to vote. “You can never actually tell how a campaign is doing,” he warned. “Really strange things happen in these elections.” Charron said the good news is that all the UNSC candidates are excellent. She said there's concern that Canada will let this election define itself, with lots of national “gnashing of teeth” and deciding on the fate of the government in general, which she said is overblown. “It's just one of the organizations to which we belong,” she said. “We've won six times, we've lost times, we've survived, carried on in all cases.” https://ipolitics.ca/2020/06/12/experts-say-covid-19-hasnt-derailed-canadas-campaign-for-un-security-council-seat/
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24 avril 2022 | Local, Aérospatial, Naval, Terrestre, C4ISR, Sécurité
Competitive Projects launches new and exciting challenges!//Projets compétitifs lance de nouveaux défis !
Competitive Projects launches new and exciting challenges! The Call for Proposals is open! The Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) Program has launched four new challenges under its Competitive Projects element covering a wide scope of Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces (DND/CAF) needs, from the arctic domain to C4ISR and the preservation of wildlife. Don't miss the opportunity to apply to: Under the sea: real-time detection of marine mammals during sonar operations The needle in the haystack: Space-Based Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (SB-ISR) imagery for decision making Sub-zero Infrastructure, Security, and Sensors: Safekeeping assets in the arctic Do you copy? Establishing and maintaining broadband connectivity in remote and hostile areas Submit your proposals by May 31, 2022. The IDEaS Team Projets compétitifs lance de nouveaux défis ! L'appel de propositions est lancé ! Le programme Innovation pour la défense, l'excellence et la sécurité (IDEeS) a lancé quatre nouveaux défis dans le cadre de son élément Projets compétitifs. Ces défis couvrent un large éventail de domaines répondant aux besoins du ministère de la Défense nationale et des Forces armées canadiennes (MDN/FAC), dont l'environnement arctique, le C4ISR et la préservation de la faune. Ne manquez pas l'occasion de soumettre vos propositions pour : Sous l'océan : détection en temps réel des mammifères marins pendant les opérations sonar L'aiguille dans la botte de foin : L'imagerie de renseignement, de surveillance et de reconnaissance basée sur l'espace (SB-ISR) pour la prise de décision Infrastructure, sécurité et détection sous zéro : sécurisation des installations dans l'Arctique Vous recevez ? Établissement et maintien de la connectivité à large bande dans les zones éloignées et hostiles Envoyez vos propositions avant le 31 mai 2022. L'Équipe IDEeS