Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Page and your colleagues, for trying to bring some reconciliation to the numbers.
I think at this point DND, AG, and PBO essentially agree on the core numbers. The real issue has been whether the $10 billion gap has been communicated to Canadians, and for whatever reason the government chose not to do so.
Moving beyond that point to trying to stay all on the same page, I think you make a very valid point when you say that the handbook is the Canadian handbook, the U.S. handbook, the Queen's handbook, the Pentagon's handbook, and the intellectual framework for cost analysis is what is agreed by all parties: there can't be much variation going forward.
The question then becomes, as we are price takers and not price makers for this particular asset, how you reconcile Mr. Fonberg's numbers earlier this week, in which he said that he thought the plane was going to be about $75 million to $85 million—and I think he's using the $85 million number—when in fact the selected acquisition report of December 31, 2011, says it's going to be $137 million. That's $85 million versus $137 million. Even given that we're getting the cheaper version, if you will, how do we reconcile those two numbers?
The second issue was raised earlier. It has to do with the costs of flying this asset, which seem to be significantly higher than for the F-18s. The F-18s, I understand, cost somewhere in the range of $18,000 to $20,000 an hour, whereas this one costs $32,000 an hour. Are we in a situation wherein you can buy it but you can't fly it? The government seems stuck on this notion that the only amount they're going to spend is $9 billion.
I'd appreciate some reconciliation of how we get from $85 million to $120 million to $137 million, and how we reconcile using legacy costs for projected future costs.