Here is the latest from Lawrence Martin from today’s (4 Jan 07)
Globe and Mail, reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070104.COMARTIN04/TPStory/TPComment/?page=rss&id=..COMARTIN04
No competitive bidding please, we're Canadian
LAWRENCE MARTIN
Competition? Who needs it? Most other advanced democracies, but not this one. Not even with a Conservative government in office and not even if it's costing us billions.
Our Defence Department is on a hell-bent-for-leather spending spree. With Afghanistan as a rationale -- a dubious one in that most of the new goods won't be used there -- there's no stopping the shopping. There's $3-billion earmarked for search and rescue aircraft, $3.4-billion for cargo planes, $5-billion for Hercules transport planes and $2.7-billion for Chinook helicopters.
Nominally, there's been competitive bidding on these contracts. But, in practice, the system is set so that the outcome is essentially guaranteed. The military puts out such detailed specifications for the required hardware that only one bidder need apply.
Critics argue that the practice contravenes Canadian convention and that the resultant waste is wanton. They say, for example, that the government, in paying $5-billion for 17 Hercules transports, is shelling out at least $2-billion more than need be. With real competitive bidding, they say, the supplier would have had to reduce its price sharply to land the deal.
On average, the critics say, studies show that competitive bidding results in savings of about 30 per cent. That would mean a whopping $4-billion on the aforementioned contracts.
The Liberals, who were charged with a billion-dollar boondoggle themselves, smell a major controversy, maybe the first Tory scandal, in the works. If not that, they certainly have something to chew on. This is a government, after all, that boasts of fiscal prudence.
The Grits say that, in 2005, Paul Martin was presented with many of the same military procurement options as Stephen Harper's Tories but that he stopped the process in its tracks. "Mr. Martin wouldn't accept sole-sourcing on contracts," said Eugene Lang, who served as chief of staff to Liberal defence ministers John McCallum and Bill Graham. "He was adamant. I remember him saying to us, 'I'm not going to let the military determine how we buy things. There are broader issues at play here.' "
The Liberals worried about repercussions. "We thought we'd be sued," Mr. Lang said. "We thought there would be international repercussions. At home, we thought we'd have provinces on our back and industries in Quebec on our back for not giving domestic suppliers opportunities."
There in a nutshell, some would suggest, is the difference between the Martin and Harper governments. Mr. Martin allowed everyone to pick things apart until he was afraid to move on a file. With Mr. Harper, it's make the play and damn the torpedoes.
On military procurement, the war in Afghanistan gave Mr. Harper the opportunity. In such an atmosphere, who could say no to rushing forward with a non-competitive process? How dare we not support our troops by giving them all the possible equipment they need? But critics say that reasoning simply doesn't wash because most of the new hardware will not be ready for deployment for at least three years -- and Canada's Afghan mission is set to end in 2009.
Before the Conservatives took office, there was stronger civilian oversight at Defence. But those checks have diminished. The procurement process is now dominated by Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier and the lead military lobby group in Ottawa, CFN Consultants, which is run by Paddy O'Donnell. The two men have a tight partnership; General Hillier worked under Mr. O'Donnell when Mr. O'Donnell was vice-chief of the defence staff.
But Liberals who complain about the way the system now operates are not exactly standing on terra firma. Jean Chrétien insisted on competitive bidding, but it was his government that put the Defence Department through a decade-long marathon of political meddling and unconscionable delays in the purchase of helicopters. It left our military to the plight of whirlybirds described by a pilot as "ten thousand nuts and bolts flying in loose formation." The military eventually got around to specifying which chopper it wanted, but its choice, the Cormorant, turned out to be deficient as well.
Today, circumstances have changed. Everything's being done in the perspective of war. That's a situation -- check the Pentagon's history -- that can lead to appalling abuse. To prevent it happening here, sufficient checks and oversight -- of the type we fail to see in Ottawa today -- are mandatory.
lmartin@globeandmail.com
First off, I agree with Martin that, generally, competitive bidding by
qualified bidders is the way to go. It does save money.
On almost every other score he is off base – most likely because in defence procurement, as in almost all matters related to foreign and defence affairs, he is
waaaay out of his lane.
To begin with, his ignorance of how military operation s work is, once again, on display when he says,
” With Afghanistan as a rationale -- a dubious one in that most of the new goods won't be used there -- there's no stopping the shopping.” He is,
I suspect willfully forgetful of the fact that
all these items were on the pre-Afghanistan Liberal DND
wish list. Acknowledging that fact would simply get in the way of an opportunity to take partisan shots as the current, Conservative, government.
There was not
civilian oversight at DND when the Liberals were in power; there was, as Martin acknowledges, absolute and highly improper
civilian interference with the
military requirements definition process aimed at steering procurement actions to or away from Liberal
targets.
The ‘broader issues’ which Martin says, Eugene Lang says Paul Martin said were in play is
code for pork barrel politics – something
both Conservative and Liberal governments have practiced, far, far more often than not, with defence procurement. Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin wanted to buy new aircraft – just as soon as they had figured out how to add a few layers of Liberal friendly, Québec based
management to the procurement process.
When he says
“ The procurement process is now dominated by Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier ..” Lawrence Martin demonstrates just how disconnecetd he is from the reality of life in the
Pearkes Building (NDHQ) and the
Langevin Block (Privy Council Office). Do military requirements matter? Yes. Can the military
situate the requirement to ‘steer’ to towards one piece of kit? They can try. Are there
checks and balances? Plenty.
It is important to understand that General Hillier, despite being the ‘biggest, baddest and best' CDS in decades, is a
relative lightweight in Ottawa – compared, at least, to PCO Clerk Kevin Lynch, Defence DM Ward Elcock and even ADMs (Pol) and (Mat) Vincent Rigby and Dan Ross.* These each have at least as much ‘say’ in procurement issues than Hillier – arguably more in the cases of Elcock and Ross, certainly much, much more in the case of Lynch. Hillier’s staff minions
might have skewed the military operational requirements to favour one system over another – certainly the Chrétien inner circle was convinced military staffs could do and did that. It is improbable, in the extreme, that much skewing would have passed muster up through the ever sensitive (to both political demands and to threats to their own, civil service, turf by the uniformed services) bureaucrats.
For most of the recent aircraft procurement deals the sole issue has been availability – there are, quite simply, no
available competitors for the
Chinook,
Hercules or
Globemaster.
Is the
Spartan the
right aircraft for the mission
s it will be required to fly over a 30± years life cycle?
I have no idea. Not my area of expertise.
Is Lawrence Martin correct that Hillier and Paddy O’Donnel
run defence procurement today? Not a chance; he’s blowing smoke - either partisan Liberal propaganda smoke or, more likely, personal, anti-military and anti-Harper smoke. But its smoke, all the same, and, it’s brown smoke because Martin is so full of sh!t his eyes are the same colour.
----------
* Bios at:
Lynch - http://www.pco-bcp.gc.ca/default.asp?Language=E&Page=clerk&Sub=Biography
Elcock - http://www.dnd.ca/site/bio/bio_dm_e.asp
Rigby - h
ttp://www.forces.gc.ca/admpol/content.asp?id={4C52B113-392B-4DA6-9CF9-8ADFE906AE63}
Ross - http://www.forces.gc.ca/admmat/mat_office/bio_e.asp
