National Defence committee  But as soon as we went in, then we realized—I think there was a sort of flagship signal—that we'd sent them in with those Iltis jeeps, and then we figured out that we were at war and we started spending. In fact, we were unprepared for that—that is true—but everybody was unprepared for 9/11 and what ensued.

National Defence committee  One minute? In that case, my last point will be on the F-35 project. As opposed to all other economic benefit programs, the F-35 is incomparably better. I cannot say the same thing for other dimensions of the F-35 in terms of the strategic value, etc., but economically, all the Canadian companies that were part of this consortium...because the government intervened and opened the gates for Canadian companies to bid on the project.

National Defence committee  Right, but we are doing the same thing. It costs our taxpayer in the region of an estimated 20% extra on every major procurement.

National Defence committee  Now, there is no hard-core study on this. The Parliamentary Budget Office had some numbers concerning the ships. Historian Granatstein had some estimates; I don't know how he obtained them. As for the way we work in terms of economic benefits, and this is a very advanced economy, our policy seems to be to buy domestic whenever domestic is available.

National Defence committee  The first point was that there are three examples to that kind of view. Currently we're spending around 1%, down from 1.4% maybe seven or eight years ago. The first example is General Hillier's famous statement—everybody knows it—about the dark ages in the 1990s, but we were cutting everything.

National Defence committee  I wanted to draw your attention to three points, the first three you see on your screen, and then if time permits we can touch on comparable countries. I don't know what the committee expected, but the first point is that currently we're spending about 1% of GDP on national defence.