Government Operations committee  Let me suggest that one of the ways has already been mentioned by Professor Huebert. That is the idea of creating, at the parliamentary level, committees where individual MPs of all parties would essentially be bound by the kind of confidentiality requirements that you refer to.

Government Operations committee  Yes, thank you. I think there's always a tendency to want to follow the Australians here because they tried an experiment with creating a separate department of defence procurement. They've abandoned that, and they've essentially put their defence procurement back under the authority of the Minister for Defence.

Government Operations committee  On the first question about what kind of air capabilities, I have a very different view on this one than Professor Huebert. There's only one question for me, and that is, what are the Americans flying? Because of the crucial importance of the air defence of North America, still, after all these years, for me there's only one question to be asked and answered, and that is, what are the Americans flying in the defence of North America and what, then, are we going to be flying?

Government Operations committee  If you want a really good example of a process that was free of this kind of politicking, look back in history to the time when the Government of Canada replaced a number of fleets of jet fighters with the CF-18 Hornet. The Liberal government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau managed that particular process excellently, and it was not at all politicized except right at the very end when the Parti Québécois government of René Lévesque was involved.

Government Operations committee  I think the problem for the sole-source decision of the Conservative government was that it wasn't really explained very well. A number of other of our allies have gone sole-source. The Australians, of course, went sole-source. That was largely because of a decision made by the United States back in the mid-1990s.

Government Operations committee  I suppose so, in the sense that there's a huge logic, as most of the witnesses who have appeared before this committee have suggested. There's a real logic to the F-35, and thus an illogic to some of the other contenders. That's one of the reasons that so many of the other contenders simply said that they were not going to be part of this process.

Government Operations committee  I think that the proof will be in the pudding, as they say. I don't know whether or not, in future procurements, we're going to see a reduction of the political games. I'm not here, by the way, talking about political interference. As our colleague Jim Fergusson said to you, all procurement is political.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Thank you for inviting me to discuss the question of defence procurement objectives, and in particular the inefficiencies in the defence procurement process in Canada. In my short three minutes, I want to talk about one factor that Professor Huebert has already referenced, and that is politicization—the efforts of a political party, in government or in opposition, to use a defence procurement project for purely partisan political purposes, to score political points for themselves or against their opponents.