I tried to say in my remarks that I thought all of the objectives were reasonable, so I start from that premise.
Regional development in and of itself has absolutely nothing wrong with it and we should pursue it whenever we can, but one of the things that I believe Canada—or the defence department in particular—is not very good at is prioritizing. We try to do a little bit everywhere and sometimes we pay the price for that.
The main thing that needs to be done is to have an open discussion of these issues, because we don't do that. We simply decide that we're going to proceed with the rules as they exist now, and then a whole raft of people get very upset, the government feels compelled to defend and nothing changes.
We have a system of ministerial accountability, so I'm not suggesting that the chief of the defence staff should be allowed to go off on a tangent on his own, but surely there's some way—through a cabinet subcommittee or a subcommittee of the House or something—where these cases can be made publicly. I really do believe that in most cases it's specific to the individual acquisition.