NDDN Committee Report

NDP Supplemental Opinion

The New Democratic Party would like to thank everyone involved in producing this report. Since June 2023, this committee heard from 36 different experts, union leadership, government officials, and retired military officials. We greatly appreciate the witnesses that shared a wide range of perspectives on the complex subject of military procurement reforms.

We also want to thank the Library of Parliament analysts, the committee clerk, the interpreters, and all House Administration staff that support our work at the Standing Committee on National Defence.

In this report, New Democrats sought to bring an important balance to the topic of procurement reform. Experts, government officials and political parties are unanimous on the problem at hand: too often, military procurement is subject to cost overruns, delayed timelines, and inadequate transparency to the public. The NDP believes that we must find reforms that can provide the women and men of the Canadian Armed Forces with the equipment they need, while maintaining transparency with the public and preventing the price-gouging by big corporate interests.

We are pleased that many of these reforms were successfully put forward as recommendations. In particular, the NDP is pleased to see the following reforms put forward:

RECOMMENDATION 11: That the Government of Canada direct the Department of National Defence to review the process for contracting out base maintenance and service contracts to ensure the department can adequately complete a Value-For-Money analysis.

RECOMMENDATION 7: That the Government of Canada review the lifecycle costing of procurement to ensure the process for foreign bidders considers the relevant findings of international audit agencies.

RECOMMENDATION 18: That the Government of Canada update the defence procurement process to ensure that the use of the National Security Exception automatically triggers additional oversight by independent agencies.

RECOMMENDATION 20: That the Government of Canada recognize the distinct needs of women in the Canadian Armed Forces by conducting and publicly reporting a GBA+ analysis.

RECOMMENDATION 23: That the government of Canada empower the Procurement Ombudsman with the authority to compel documentation from federal departments.

Together, these recommendations will contribute to greater transparency and accountability in our procurement process.

Through Recommendation 11, the committee’s report will correct a longstanding concern within the Department of National Defence. The women and men that serve in civilian roles to support our Canadian Armed Forces have had their budgets eroded by ideologically driven decisions by successive Conservative and Liberal governments. They have seen decisions made to outsource to big firms, only to have facilities and services degrade from shoddy work. We heard from the Union of National Defence Employees that their members are often brought in to correct the work of contractors, while contractors turn a profit by cutting corners that directly impact our military preparedness. Their research has proven that outsourcing by the Department has cost Canadians more and for a worse outcome.

Recommendations 7, 18 and 21 will help stop the American Military-Industrial Complex from taking advantage away from Canadian industry. Through questioning by the NDP at this study, we discovered the Government of Canada relies solely on the numbers provided by bidders to assess the lifecycle costs of new equipment.

When the Government decided to sign Canadians on to the acquisition of 88 F-35 Fighter Jets, they relied on numbers provided by Lockheed Martin to decide if it was worth the cost. By the Government’s own estimates, the next generation of Canadians will be left with a $70 Billion bill to be paid over 45 years.

Not only do New Democrats believe this was a problematic choice for Canadians, but we believe this is a dishonest number. The U.S. Government Accountability Office has found that Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter jets costs are far higher than the American public were led to believe. We believe the Government of Canada should take these findings under consideration when making purchases like this in the future.

We also discovered that unlike the United States, we have no additional oversight powers triggered by the decision to sole-source and rush procurement through the National Security Exception. This lack of oversight contributed to the full story of the F-35 scandal, which this report would benefit from covering in full.

We heard from Alan Williams that in 2010, the Conservative government tried to sole-source F-35’s without any legal authority, and spent years misleading the Canadian public as to why it wanted to do so. Eventually, after years of the NDP fighting for accountability, the Conservatives backed away from the acquisition. This period would have greatly benefited from additional oversight mechanisms being triggered when the decision to sole-source is made, so we can ensure procurement decisions are made with Canada’s best interest in mind.

Through our experience with the F-35 Fighter Jets, New Democrats are concerned with the following recommendations:

RECOMMENDATION 5: That the Government of Canada honour its commitments to its NATO Allies and meet the Alliance’s 2% defence spending target.

RECOMMENDATION 6: That the Government of Canada prioritize the efforts to maintain a 20% minimum investment in capital projects, as defined by NATO’s minimum obligations laid out to member states in the Wales pledge in 2014.

In this study, we have heard about two trends that will impact these recommendations: The ideologically-driven outsourcing of civilian jobs and the price-gouging by the American Military-Industrial Complex.

We cannot shovel more and more money into a broken system for the sake of an arbitrary spending target. We know that the Government is already making ill-informed procurement decisions to give billions of dollars to American corporations without meaningful scrutiny. We know the Government of Canada is choosing these American corporations instead of investing in good, unionized jobs in Canada. We do not believe that an arbitrary target, which would mean doubling our Defence spending, should be the goal of Canada’s military procurement.

New Democrats believe we should be solving our procurement problems by ending the wasteful outsourcing practices and investing in Made-in-Canada procurement options to build a domestic industrial base. We believe the Government of Canada should focus on rebuilding the foundations of the Canadian Armed Forces by building military housing, fixing the military health care system, and provided adequate salaries to the women and men in uniform. If we do not start with this, we will be left with very expensive foreign-made planes and submarines with no pilots or submariners to operate them.

Finally, New Democrats are concerned that this report did not consider our international obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty. While this report recommends that we increase military exports from Canada, there are no recommendations on the Government of Canada meeting our responsibilities on the world stage.

Since October 2023, the Government of Canada has authorized over $28 million in exports of military goods and technology to Israel. New Democrats are extremely concerned that the government of Canada is allowing Canadian-made weapons to be used to enact a genocide on Palestine. The Government has obligations under the Arms Trade Treaty to not approve export permits for military goods and technology where there is a substantial risk of human rights abuses. That is why the NDP has been calling for an immediate two-way arms embargo.

We have also heard reports that Canadian-made detonators sold to Kyrgyzstan have ended up in Russia’s arsenal, and Canadian-made components may be used in drone attacks in Ukraine.

New Democrats believe this report should have looked into Canada’s military export regime through the lens of Canadian-made equipment being used for human rights abuses abroad and provide clear recommendations to ensure we are upholding Canadian values in our exports.