The Conservative move came just prior to last week’s House recess, when Conservative MP Andrew Saxton (Vancouver North, B.C) moved a motion during a closed-door House Public Accounts Committee meeting to end its inquiry after only seven hours of evidence and testimony from witness hearings and before opposition MPs had a chance to cross-examine the National Defence officials after they criticized Mr. Ferguson.
The meeting on Thursday, May 17, was held in-camera, but Liberal MP Gerry Byrne (Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte, Nfld.) told The Hill Times he was furious after Mr. Saxton introduced his closure motion while the committee was meeting in secret to discuss other business, with the opposition expecting the F-35 hearings would resume the week of Monday, May 28, to hear again from National Defence and other government officials after Mr. Ferguson denied their dispute with factual statements in his report.
Mr. Byrne and NDP MP Malcolm Allen (Welland, Ont.) said the opposition parties also want to hear from other National Defence officials, some of whom expressed internal concern prior to Mr. Ferguson’s report about how the sole-sourced F-35 acquisition was being handled.
“The Conservatives have moved to shut down the committee hearings,” Mr. Byrne told The Hill Times in an interview last Friday. “It was done in-camera, and I cannot bite my lip any further. It has to come out.”
Mr. Byrne risks censure from the committee or the House of Commons by disclosing part of what went on behind the closed doors of an in-camera committee hearing, where discussions and votes are privileged, and their disclosure is prohibited by Parliamentary convention.
Mr. Byrne said he was surprised when NDP chair David Christopherson (Hamilton Centre, Ont.) allowed Mr. Saxton to move a new motion, which calls for the committee to begin writing a report on the F-35 inquiry rather than continuing with witnesses, when two motions from Mr. Byrne calling for new witnesses and documents in the inquiry remained in debate stage from past meetings.
“This can’t be held in-camera,” Mr. Byrne said. “The New Democratic Party has joined me in the past, that holding these sessions in secret is not acceptable.”
Mr. Byrne said the Conservatives have some explaining to do. “If someone accuses me of breaking committee rules, it’s not me who’s got explaining to do, it’s them,” he said.
“There is a motion on the floor of the committee to shut down the committee and go immediately into writing a report without hearing from ministers, without hearing from experts on the issue, without receiving required documents,” Mr. Byrne said. “The process of committee has been trampled on.”
The most significant contradiction between Mr. Ferguson and National Defence centres on $10-billion worth of operating costs for the F-35 that National Defence and Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) and his Cabinet failed to disclose to Parliament or the public when the government in 2010 announced its plan to acquire 65 F-35 fighter jets and again in 2011, prior to the federal election, when National Defence contested a report on estimated costs from Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page.
The government forecast a cost of $9-billion to acquire the Lockheed-Martin stealth fighters and $5.7 billion for sustainment costs over 20 years.
Mr. Ferguson said the government and National Defence should have included $10-billion in operating costs the government included internally, and also should have included a forecast for an estimated lifecycle of 36 years for the fleet instead of 20 years. The deputy minister of Defence, Rob Fonberg also challenged Mr. Ferguson’s statement that the federal Cabinet approved the budget as early as 2008, two years before the government announced the acquisition.
National Defence has claimed the operating costs would be similar to the cost of maintaining and flying Canada’s current fleet of CF-18 fighter jets, although one of the officials admitted during the inquiry the cost will be higher.
Department officials have also testified that it is impossible to forecast costs with reliability beyond a 20-year period. The U.S. Department of Defence, also part of the F-35 project, is projecting its acquisition and sustainment costs over a 50-year period, at a total of $1.1-trillion for the more than 1,000 aircraft it is acquiring.
“I would like to state for the record that we stand behind all of the facts presented in the chapter, and note that these facts were accepted by the department [during reviews of draft reports],” Mr. Ferguson told the committee at his last appearance on Tuesday, May 15, after the National Defence officials had contradicted him.
“I would like to address the issue of life-cycle costing for the acquisition of goods and services,” he said. “Life-cycle costing is required by Treasury Board policies and is also included in the Department of National Defence’s own project approval directive.”
Mr. Ferguson quoted the National Defence directive, which states the lifecycle costs should include “total cost” of the resources, including acquisition and “the cost of the resources needed to operate, maintain any system, including personnel.
Mr. Harper and Defence Minister Peter MacKay (Central Nova, N.S.) have insisted it is unnecessary to include future cost estimates for personnel, fuel and routine maintenance and support because those costs are already included in the F-18 fleet.
Mr. MacKay and Conservative MPs have compared the acquisition to buying a car, arguing consumers don’t include costs like fuel consumption or service in the cost of the automobile acquisition.
Mr. Allen, who did not attend the in camera hearing where Mr. Saxton tabled the motion to end the inquiry, said if the motion debate is resumed at the next meeting of the committee for a vote, he will resist it strongly.
“If they try to close it down, they’ll be getting a fight from us,” Mr. Allen said. “I would assume if that motion is there, and obviously I don’t know, I would certainly be paying attention to Tuesday’s meeting if they’re trying to do something along that line, I’ll certainly be there fighting.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Tim Naumetz
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