Kevin Lamoureux

“Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound. I rise today to speak to Bill C-40, the strengthening Canada’s defence sector act. When this debate opened, the Secretary of State for Defence Procurement read the House a long list of what the Defence Investment Agency has achieved. Then he said something that I agree with completely: Some were contracts, some were preferred suppliers and some were arrangements, and we should not confuse them. He is right, so let us not. A preferred supplier is not a contract. A contract is not a delivery. Let me be clear about where Conservatives stand. Procurement in this country is too slow. Our men and women in uniform have waited too long for the equipment they needed yesterday. Going faster is the right goal. We do not object to going faster. We object to going faster with nobody watching. We know it can be done. During the war in Afghanistan, a Conservative government bought C-17s, Chinooks and new Hercules quickly using the urgent operational and national security exceptions that already existed. That speed came from political leadership. It did not require handing unchecked power to one person. This is the third version of this agency in a year. It started inside Public Services and Procurement Canada. Six months later, the government buried a plan to make it a stand-alone entity in an omnibus budget bill. Before that plan has even passed, it wants a Crown corporation instead. That is three structures in one year. How is that for Liberals making themselves look busy while accomplishing nothing? There is no shortage of decisions, and how they were made tells us exactly what this bill would make routine. Let us take the fighter trainer as an example. Since March 2024, the Royal Canadian Air Force has not had a lead-in fighter trainer. The Hawks are gone. The 419 squadron is on hiatus, and our future fighter pilots are being trained in Italy, Texas and other locations around the globe. How did the government pick a replacement? It was not through an open competition. The Prime Minister launched negotiations for the Italian M-346 with Prime Minister Meloni on the sidelines of the G7, even though Canada had received proposals from American and South Korean manufacturers. It may well be a fine aircraft, but a leader-to-leader handshake is not a procurement process. Under Bill C-40, a government-to-government deal would be one of 17 ways a minister could skip competition entirely. Then there is GlobalEye. The government named Saab’s GlobalEye as its preferred airborne early warning aircraft at CANSEC in May. It is a capability that our air force badly needs, but according to reports, the decision came as a shock to the RCAF itself and to other manufacturers ready to bid on the contract. Saab did not meet with National Defence or the air force about operational requirements until weeks after the announcement. The technical assessment that followed found real shortfalls: limited radar coverage, no air-to-air refuelling capability and incompatibility with NORAD’s secure data network. That is why Conservatives have asked the Auditor General and the Parliamentary Budget Officer to investigate. If this is how decisions get made while Parliament still has some oversight, imagine how they will be under the bill that would remove it. This bill would create a Crown corporation that we are told would operate at arm’s length, but the minister can direct it to do or not do any procurement activity, and the bill says it must comply. Ministers keep the control. The House loses the line of sight. We have seen what happens when public money flows through a body the House cannot see into. The green slush fund handed out public money with too little oversight. Bill C-40 would build that same kind of body and hand it $1 billion at a time. Plainly, this bill would hand a new associate minister oligarchic powers to direct a corporation with a billion-dollar fund, to have it lend money and buy shares in companies, and to do it all while the House is kept at arm’s length. This is not reform. This is concentration. The secretary of state defended clause 9 by calling it an “unambiguous tie to the government”. That is exactly the point. This is not at arm’s length. It is a minister’s hand on a billion-dollar fund. The government is promising a once-in-a-generation build-out-of-Canada defence economy, so let me ask a simple question: Who is better prepared to build, maintain and sustain military equipment than the people who use it? They are mechanics, technicians, logisticians, pilots and project managers who have run operations under conditions that most private sector managers will never see. On the veterans affairs committee, we hear in study after study that veterans’ skills are not recognized and that the government has no measurable targets, and there is nothing in the bill and nothing in this strategy to change that. There is no target for veteran-owned businesses and no credit in contract evaluation for hiring veterans. There is nothing. Let us look south. In the United States, Congress set a statutory goal that 3% of federal contracting dollars would go to small businesses owned by service-disabled veterans. In fiscal year 2023, American agencies did not just meet that goal; they beat it, awarding more than 5%, or nearly $32 billion U.S. We do not have to look south to know targets work. The secretary of state told the House that defence procurement met the government’s 5% indigenous procurement target last year. That is good. It proves that a target can be set, measured and met in Canadian defence procurement, so why is there no target for veterans? Conservatives want our armed forces equipped faster. We just want it done in the open and done for the people who served. That means having a minister who answers to Parliament. The bill says, “The Corporation must do as the Minister directs”, which is wording we would not find in any other law in Canada. Direction should come from cabinet on the record, not from one minister’s say-so. It means using the tools the system already has. We did it in Afghanistan. That is why Conservatives have called for a dedicated secretariat in the Privy Council so defence contracts get cabinet’s priority. Speed comes from political will, not from new Crown corporations. Conservatives would cut the process, not cut Parliament out. After a decade of Liberal neglect, our sailors, soldiers and aviators do not need a new bureaucracy or a minister with a new title. They need a procurement process that equips them for the modern threats we face. I am concerned that Bill C-40 would remove the parliamentary oversight that this agency badly needs and would open the door to waste and mismanagement. We have seen where this leads. The greens slush fund was an arm’s-length body handing out public money. Bill C-40 would be the same kind of body. That is why Conservatives have concerns and will be seeking clarity at committee. I would be remiss not to spend my last minute of this speech recognizing those who served with the Snowbirds. I was at their last air show in Moose Jaw, something that obviously I was proud to witness and that inspired not only me but Canadians across this nation, but something that was very disappointing. It is another example of a procurement boondoggle on the Liberal side, as we do not have an aircraft to replace the Snowbirds, to transition from one to the other and to continue having a team that shows the professionalism of our Canadian military. I look forward to the questions and comments that will come from my colleagues from both my side and the other side.”