National Defence described the change as being due to a “typographical error.” The department, through the office of Vice-Chief of Defence Staff Vice-Admiral Bruce Donaldson, changed wording that originally placed the project further along the Cabinet decision-making process when Treasury Board President Tony Clement (Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont.) tabled the report in Parliament last June.
A former Parliamentarian who is familiar with Treasury Board’s reporting system to Parliament was shocked and, although he did not want to be identified, said Mr. Clement should have announced the change and publicly amended the reference while informing Parliament it had been misled when the report was first tabled nearly a year ago.
The document, a Report on Plans and Priorities which all departments submit to Parliament through the Treasury Board Secretariat as yearly updates on major plans and acquisitions, originally described the $25-billion F-35 project as being in the “definitions” phase when Mr. Clement tabled it in the Commons last June 9.
The term meant that the Treasury Board Cabinet committee had approved spending for the acquisition of 65 F-35 stealth jets, following the government’s announcement in July, 2010, that it had selected the aircraft as a replacement for Canada’s aging fleet of CF-18 fighter jets. The decision sparked controversy and opposition attacks throughout the fall of 2010 into March, 2011, when the opposition defeated Mr. Harper’s minority government. The F-35 costs was one of the oppositions' central planks to move a non-confidence motion in the House. At the time, the government said it was too far along on the project to scrap it without substantial financial risk to Canada’s aeronautics industry.
In its amendment to the report last month, National Defence downgraded the F-35 project’s status to “options analysis”—an earlier stage in which National Defence and the government would have been weighing a range of fighter jet options to replace the CF-18s. The term would have been contradictory to the government’s position at the time, since Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) and Defence Minister Peter MacKay (Central Nova, N.S) had the previous year announced the government had chosen the F-35, which is being developed and tested by Lockheed Martin Aerospace company in the United States under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Defence and a consortium of eight other countries, including Canada, that have the option of eventually purchasing F-35s.
The Treasury Board committee’s secretariat, while confirming through its media relations office that it posted the change last April 24, would not say when National Defence submitted the amendment.
A reliable government source, however, told The Hill Times National Defence forwarded the change two weeks before it was posted, after Mr. Ferguson tabled his report.
National Defence, describing the original entry as an error, told The Hill Times it was corrected "immediately" after it was "noted."
"Subsequent to the tabling of the Department of National Defence's Report on Plans and Priorities 2011-12, the error related to the Next Generation Fighter Capability was noted and fixed immediately," said Major Jonathan Diderich, senior communications adviser for the F-35 Next Generation Fighter project in the department. "The standard procedure has been followed for making the change."
The Hill Times had emailed questions about the amendment to the department on April 25, but as of Wednesday this week Major Diderich's office was unable to respond to several of the questions, including one about the date of the correction.
"Subsequent to the tabling of the Department of National Defence's Report on Plans and Priorities 2011/12, a typographical error in the section III Supplementary Information, specifically the 'Status Report on Transformational Projects and Major Crown Projects,' on the Next Generation Fighter Capability (NGFC) has been corrected. The NGFC Project Phase 'Definition' has been replaced with 'Option Analysis,'" the National Defence notice of the amendment on the Treasury Board website says.
Neither National Defence nor the Treasury Board issued a news release or alerted Parliament about the change.
Mr. Ferguson strongly criticized National Defence and the Public Works Department for the way they have handled the F-35 acquisition, concluding in his report that National Defence did not “exercise due diligence” and failed to adequately pass rising costs and delays up the ladder and that it underestimated the project’s full lifetime costs. The report said Public Works failed to “demonstrate due diligence” as the government’s procurement authority and relied exclusively on National Defence for its acceptance that the acquisition could be sole-sourced to Lockheed Martin.
Mr. Ferguson’s report included internal National Defence estimates that put the cost of the F-35s at $25.1-billion over a 20-year period—$9-billion for acquisition and $16.1-billion for sustainment, maintenance, personnel and operating costs—compared to the $14.7-billion amount the government was using prior to the election.
Robert Fonberg, deputy minister at National Defence and ultimately responsible for the project within the department, confirmed at the Public Accounts Committee this week the department provided the $25.1-billion estimate to Cabinet in 2010 for a decision on the project, but he said Cabinet decided to provide Parliament only with the $14.7-billion total.
The government has since challenged Mr. Ferguson’s position that operating and personnel costs should have been included in the public figure, but at the same time said it accepted Mr. Ferguson’s conclusion and his recommendation that National Defence refine its estimates to include full lifecycle costs.
While Mr. Harper initially said following the auditor general’s report that the government would consider all options for the CF-18 replacements, the chief of air staff at National Defence and air force commander, Lt.-Gen. André Deschamps, told the Public Accounts Committee this week that “from an air force perspective we are focused on delivering the transition to the F-35.”
Despite the government’s announcement in 2010 that Canada would acquire 65 of the F-35s—and the government’s insistence over the past year that critics and the opposition parties were exaggerating the aircraft’s eventual acquisition and sustainment and maintenance costs—the National Defence bureaucrat in charge of procurement told the Public Accounts Committee the department has not yet gathered enough information to provide detailed cost estimates.
Dan Ross, assistant deputy minister for materiel, told the committee National Defence will not have that kind of costing detail until the project reaches the “definitions” phase.
“I would like to clarify that of the four phases of a project, identification, options analysis, where you identify your high-level requirements and do your preliminary estimates and seek approval in principle to begin a project, and then the definition work, where you’ve refined those detailed costs and plans for infrastructure and weapons and logistics set up, we’re still in the options analysis stage,” Mr. Ross volunteered while being questioned by Conservative MP Darryl Kramp (Prince Edward-Hastings, Ont.).
Despite Mr. Ross’s statement that the project is still in its “options analysis” phase, and despite the change to the report, the document as currently posted on the Treasury Board secretariat’s website states that, among other “Major Milestones,” the F-35 project received “Effective Project Approval” in February, 2011, and “Treasury Board Expenditure Authority” in March, 2011.
NDP MP Malcolm Allen was surprised to learn National Defence changed the phase description of the project from “options analysis” to “definitions” following Mr. Ferguson’s report.
“It’s almost like revisionist history,” Mr. Allen told The Hill Times. “We’ll go back and clean up parts of it and point to it, ‘This is what we were going to do all along,’” he said.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: TIM NAUMETZ
No comments:
Post a Comment