I would have liked to carry that on, Chair, but I have another issue.
It's nice to be back. I see some things never change.
I want to turn to your second report, which has to do with the fiduciary duty of parliamentarians to the Canadian people to manage the public purse. As you know, I wrote you a letter a couple of weeks ago and asked you to update your F-35 report, and you in turn released a letter yesterday that asks DND to update their analysis. You specifically guided them to chapter 5 of their own guidelines. In there, you suggested, I believe—and I'm recollecting from the letter—that the cost per plane is somewhere in the order of $137 million or thereabouts.
The government has maintained throughout this that the envelope is $9 billion. That's locked in stone: there is no money other than $9 billion, end of story. Their analysis is based on a $75-million or $80-million plane. Yet very few countries seem to be staying with that number. The argument that DND puts to us as parliamentarians is that they're going to buy in the sweet spot of the analysis. This becomes a function of numerators and denominators. I was wondering whether you could take a little bit of time and explain to us as parliamentarians--and, by extension, Canadians--why that purchase in the so-called sweet spot is, as I would call it, fantasy. You might use another word, but in my judgment it's fantasy.