But the NDP opposition and a former government procurement chief who is calling for a competition to replace Canada’s aging fleet of jet fighters say the terms of the review are a slap in the face for Auditor General Michael Ferguson, whose office has already reviewed the same procurement actions and who last April issued a highly critical report to Parliament on the F-35 acquisition, including an allegation that National Defence withheld $10-billion in operating costs from the public.
The critics were skeptical—considering the government’s continued insistence the F-35 stealth warplane is the best fighter jet for Canada’s defence needs—that the outside review will result in Cabinet deciding to cancel the acquisition and might instead challenge the auditor general’s findings.
Public Works has not yet published or posted a request for bids on the contract, which is separate from another contract to be awarded to a private-sector accounting firm to review new cost forecasts for the F-35 acquisition.
National Defence informed the Cabinet prior to the 2011 federal election a fleet of F-35 jets would cost a total of $25.1-billion to buy and operate over 20 years, but the department and the government claimed publicly that the cost would be only $14.7-billion.
Mr. Ferguson revealed the government withheld more than $10-billion in operating costs, and Defence deputy minister Robert Fonberg told the Public Accounts Committee that Cabinet made the decision not to disclose the hidden costs to the public or Parliament. Experts told an NDP roundtable on the F-35 last week that the cost—with F-35 testing and production costs soaring—will likely be between $40- and $50-billion for the lifetime of the aircraft.
But questions were also raised at the roundtable about whether the Public Works secretariat will have access to all the information on which the government based its decision to acquire the F-35.
The Hill Times asked Public Works whether an interdepartmental committee of senior bureaucrats and its secretariat, which the government established in response to the auditor general’s report, will be able to obtain National Defence operating requirements for new fighter aircraft and access to the government defence policy that justified the choice of a stealth attack warplane to replace Canada’s CF-18 Hornets.
“The National Fighter Procurement Secretariat will ensure that a validation of all of the steps taken to date in the acquisition process is conducted and independently verified by a private sector company with a view to completing the exercise during the winter of 2012,” the communications branch of Public Works said.
The branch was responding to questions on behalf of the secretariat and the board in charge, which is led by the three deputy ministers who ran the F-35 project during the steps that led to the procurement decision and which sparked the rebuke in Mr. Ferguson’s April 3 report. “The company will determine how to fully conduct this exercise in accordance with the terms of reference (Cabinet set out for the secretariat),” said the email from senior communications officer Sebastien Bois.
A government review and possible challenge of a report from the auditor general, an agent of Parliament, would likely be unprecedented and unacceptable to the opposition parties. “I find it really hard to really understand what the government is trying to do,” said Alan Williams, a former assistant deputy minister for procurement at National Defence who has been a vocal advocate of an open competition to select Canada’s new fleet of fighter jets.
The auditor general’s report accused Public Works of failing to demonstrate “due diligence” as it caved into National Defence arguments in June, 2010, that a federal law requiring competitive bids for the procurement could be waived because the Lockheed-Martin F-35—being built with the cooperation of a consortium of nine countries including the U.S. and Canada—was the only fighter jet that could meet the requirements National Defence had set out.
Mr. Ferguson also found National Defence "failed to exercise due diligence." Both departments challenged the findings.
Mr. Williams said the wording of the terms for the contract to review the acquisition process, including at least one specific phrase that appears in Mr. Ferguson’s report, indicates the government intends to have the outside firm go over the same ground. “We observed that in the lead-up to this [F-35 acquisition] announcement, required documents were prepared and key steps were taken out of sequence. Key decisions were made without required approvals or supporting documentation,” Mr. Ferguson’s report stated.
The email from Public Works states: “The goal of the exercise is to review the steps taken to date in the acquisition process of this project to ensure that relevant government laws, regulations, policies, procedures and directives are being adhered to and to determine whether they were performed in the correct sequence and to clearly explain this to the Canadian public.”
Further, “The validation exercise will determine whether everything required to support a decision has been done and in the event that any outstanding gaps are identified, it will suggest possible corrective actions,” the email says.
The Auditor General's office declined to comment on the outside review of the chain of events that led to the acquisition decision.
“In terms of the new secretariat, we have not done audit work on it, therefore we are not in a position to comment on its activities or any development related to it,” spokesperson Ghislain Desjardins told The Hill Times.
NDP MP Matthew Kellway (Beaches-East York, Ont.) said the outside review of the acquisition steps, likely going back at least to 2006, are part of the government’s “political management” of the F-35 controversy.
“Somebody has realized ‘hey, we can re-do the auditor general’s report and call that into question, quite possibly, as a means of trying to manage with this politically,” Mr. Kellway said.
“That would be entirely consistent with the way these guys have conducted themselves. Every independent officer of Parliament has been demonized by this government from the PBO [Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page] to the auditor general,” he said.
The government promised to table the new review of the costs in Parliament 60 days after receiving new estimates from the F-35 program office. National Defence received that information in Washington last May 1, but a report has been delayed to late November.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: TIM NAUMETZ
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