Public Services and Procurement Canada has yet to figure out how to proceed on the troubled purchase of Standard Military Pattern trucks for the Canadian Army.
In July the Conservative government announced that Mack Defense had won the $834 million contract to provide 1,500 trucks.
But the Canadian International Trade Tribunal recently upheld a complaint from Oshkosh that the procurement was flawed. In its ruling the CITT is calling on PSPC to re-evaluate Oshkosh’s truck design. The Ottawa Citizen has reported that if that re-evaluation shows the company’s truck should have won the contract, then the CITT recommends the government compensate Oshkosh “for the profits it would have received had it been properly awarded the contract.”
There are also a number of other ways to deal with the situation, according to the CITT. But they all involve Oshkosh walking away with some cash to compensate the company for their involvement in this problem procurement.
Whatever the amount, the Department of National Defence is still proceeding on the purchase. “The Canadian International Trade Tribunal will not recommend that the contract awarded to Mack Defense LLC be cancelled,” the CITT ruling noted.
DND spokeswoman Ashley Lemire told Defence Watch that, “The Canadian International Trade Tribunal ruling is not influencing timelines on the MSVS Standard Military Pattern contract with Mack Defense. With respect to progress, National Defence has completed the first portion of the test programme, which was performed in France. We will be pursuing testing in Canada over the summer and fall of this year. In February, the Crown and Mack Defense agreed to postpone vehicle deliveries to the fall of 2017 to better align requirements verification with production. Other deliverables, such as trailers and Armoured Protection Systems, are scheduled to start delivery in the summer of 2017.”
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