Thank you very much and congratulations on being elected as chair of this committee, Mr. Norlock.
I thank the witnesses for their presentations, which were very interesting. I greatly appreciated your comments on the military ship procurement process. I represent the riding of Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, right next to Quebec City. The Lévis shipyards were not included in that procurement process. So we were penalized as well.
I would like to talk a bit more about the delays in the military procurement process and on how prepared our Canadian Armed Forces are. You talked about one of the main risks for Canada in 2014. The first page of your report says: “Absent a better financial structure, the Canadian Armed Forces risk becoming limited to continental defence with reduced expeditionary capability”.
You started talking about the issue, but I would like you to elaborate on it, because we know that all three of our services have problems. I am referring to ships, army trucks and fighter jets, which have not been replaced yet and who knows when they will be.
Could you talk about the concrete impacts of all those delays on the military procurement process and the state of preparedness of our armed forces?