Government Operations committee  We will provide a direct answer to that question.

Government Operations committee  Do I have time to answer the question?

Government Operations committee  I think your question was directed at assurances regarding the integrity of the procurement process. In fact, I'm not certain I would say that the NSPS is a gold standard. But it set a high standard, a high bar, for ensuring a fair, open, and transparent procurement process. It dealt with the siloing of the different evaluation teams, keeping the results secret, and coding the results.

Government Operations committee  The value proposition commitments are binding. If that was your specific question, then the value proposition commitments are in fact binding—this is in the umbrella agreement—and their commitment to live up to their value proposition commitments will be written into each of the individual contracts.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. Mr. Chairman, if you don't mind, I'll begin and then see whether Mr. Vermette wants to add anything. You're quite correct regarding the IRB program. That is one aspect, as I mentioned earlier, of ensuring that there is appropriate investment. But more specifically to answer your question, you're probably more interested in what we included in the NSPS for the first time, which is a value proposition.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. At its heart, the NSPS is a Buy Canadian policy: the ships must be built in Canada. So I'm not sure.... Maybe your question was a little different, though, sir.

Government Operations committee  As part of the NSPS process, we have required the shipbuilders to demonstrate best value to Canada. There is also an IRB policy; there's no colleague here from Industry Canada to speak to the IRB program. There are incentives built into the shipbuilding process for both shipyards to ensure that they maximize the investments they need to make, or to buy in Canada, both through the IRB policy and also through the requirement that they demonstrate to us that it is best value.

Government Operations committee  Yes, sir. The IRB policy managed by Industry Canada has a very specific follow-up process for ensuring that the IRB commitments that are contractually included in the contracts themselves are followed up. I don't have the specifics of how the follow-up is done by Industry Canada, but I'm sure we could provide the committee with that information in terms of this process.

Government Operations committee  Yes.

Government Operations committee  Mr. Chairman, in general terms, we believe there will be extensive work for small and medium-sized enterprises throughout the country. This is an issue that we addressed in the request for proposals that we put to the yards. We wanted to see a broad distribution of the work, particularly to small and medium-sized enterprises, not just within the local areas but across Canada, and we believe there will be a strong distribution.

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. If you don't mind, I'll respond to the question. It's an excellent question, and in fact, you're quite right in noting that there has been a significant “evolution”, if I can put it that way, in the shipbuilding capability in Canada since the war years, as you've referenced.

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question. I'll ask my colleagues to speak, because the answer will lie individually in the various projects. Michel, do you want to start?

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. No, there is no delay. From the start point of the selection process of selecting the two shipyards, it was always envisaged that the next step in the process would be to examine what the shipyards needed to do to upgrade their own infrastructure in order to efficiently build the ships.

Government Operations committee  The answer to that would come from the individual projects themselves. Michel, do you want to speak that?

Government Operations committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair. Yes, the secretariat does exist, and it will continue to exist. There is a role that is defined for the entire life of NSPS. The reason for that is that, as we've discussed, we're bringing together multiple different projects and establishing strategic supplier relationships and arrangements with two suppliers, Vancouver Shipyards and Irving Shipbuilding.