Thank you for the question.
You're correct. In the context of the medium support vehicle system project, there was a request for proposal that had to be cancelled just prior to closing. It became an interpretation of the authorities in place and whether or not, in our estimation, we could have continued and sought what were the ultimate authorities further on once the RFPs had closed. There was a differing view, and in respect for those who interpret that, we wound up cancelling that RFP.
We've done a lot of work since then, and as a result of it. My colleague mentioned, for example, the two-step process. We've had problems there where, by virtue of a very narrow interpretation of mandatory requirements, bidders put in financial information in a large bid, and it differed somewhat from one page to the next, and we wound up having to throw out their bid.
A number of those things have come from that experience in projects like the one you describe.
We equally now have a defence industry advisory group, where again Lisa and I sit with industry. We have a fair bit of work under way in areas such as intellectual property. We're working closely with the associations to make sure that we hear from them about what's going on. Our minister has launched his defence policy review. He has also included questions about defence procurement to ask industry and Canadians...notwithstanding everything we already have under way, what else could we do to continue to improve it.
Key to that is we really are working quite heavily on opening the dialogue so that we can hear best practices and understand the points of friction from industry.