Very quickly, having submarines is a capability where we have been trapped by a bad decision made long ago. We've invested millions and millions of dollars with little to zero return, on the basis of a World War II image being repeated, on the basis of, “Well, look, everyone else has submarines, so we need them as well”, on the basis of other factors. They were cheap. I could go over it at length.
This relates to the F-35 decision, a question that was asked to me, and I think there's an important linkage here. When do you cut and run? We've been trapped by all the past investment in this that we really can't escape from it. Let's hope and pray that in fact this operational capability will be useful and valuable to us down the road.
We'll be operational, first of all—truly operational—and valuable to a Canadian strategic interest down the road.
My fear is that in fact we have been trapped. If you were to ask me, the arguments made for Canada and submarines are more driven by naval images than they are by really strategic requirements relative to available resources.
I am not convinced, for surveillance reasons, they're of any use to us. I'm not convinced we're going to be sending our conventional submarines to sneak around the coast of China or Southeast Asia—to look at what, to do what? I'm not convinced about using submarines to look at fishing trawlers and take their picture—and, what, bring them back to court? We're not able or willing, and it's strategically dangerous to try to develop an air-independent propulsion technology for submarines, to stick them in the Arctic and play cat and mouse with the strategic fleets of the United States, Russia, and, in the future, China. I think that's problematic for us. We have to think that through.
On the value of submarines in the surveillance of our territory, I think it can be done with lots of other more cost-effective technologies, but I don't think we can escape from it.