The reason I asked that is because obviously our defence industry is critical to our sovereignty and our security. Being a small country of 37 million, our defence industry has about 80% of its revenue driven from exports, not from sales specifically to the Canadian government and in support of the Canadian Forces. So export permits, obviously, are fundamentally important to that revenue, and the numbers from 2016 were that it's over a billion dollars annually.
What I understand is that there has been a significant increase in approval times for export permits, even to those countries that are on the automatic firearms country control list and are even NATO allies. Our defence industry is suffering at the moment because of this increase in the time frame it takes to have these export permits approved.
I'm wondering if you could give me an idea of why there is an increase, and if there has been any kind of policy or delegation of authority approval change in the process in the last three or four years.