Thank you.
Thanks, Mr. Ross.
You talked about the life expectancy of an airplane like this of around 40 years and you talked in terms of the F-18 and how when it came on line around 1980 no one could have imagined Kosovo, Kuwait, or Afghanistan. And beyond that, nobody could have imagined the fall of the wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
I would assume that as this process is engaged, the Department of Foreign Affairs conducts a review, an examination of what it would imagine the world to be over the next 40 years, even though one is always going to have surprises. But you do the best you can to try to imagine what those needs are going to be. I would also assume that the Department of National Defence does not determine the foreign policy of Canada but would participate in the review that Foreign Affairs would do. I would assume that after Foreign Affairs had done that review, it would be up to the Department of National Defence to develop a plan as to how best one could prepare for those next 40 years.
Is that correct? Is that the process? And if that is the process, where is that Foreign Affairs plan? Is it something you can table with us so we can have the benefit of that? That's a central question to the whole question about the F-35. What is it that we would imagine for the years from 2020 on where this kind of very expensive technology would be used?