I'd be happy to.
We stated a very simple, performance-based requirement in terms of payload, range, and manoeuvrability, that sort of thing, with our C-17s. We posted an advance contract award notice with Public Works and Government Services Canada where we stated to the whole world that this is our basic requirement and invited anyone who felt that they could meet that requirement to inform us. If such a competitive alternative proposal had been made, we would have entered into a full request-for-proposal process.
We didn't receive any alternative solutions. We're then able to go directly to Boeing and negotiate a price and a delivery schedule and the minimum unnecessary bureaucratic process. Often we have a lot of baggage that goes with a formal request-for-proposal process to cover the risk to the Government of Canada. In this case, we could go and deliver the minimum; that was really results and nothing else.
Our price was world-competitive. We know exactly what our allies pay for a C-17 aircraft, and the price was as good as or better than anyone's. We received amazing support from the United States Air Force. Without the support from the United States Air Force, they would not be in service and operating the way they are, because we get some maintenance support, off-loading equipment, spare parts, and so on, on an interim basis from the United States Air Force.
So it is almost a poster child of how to do performance-based procurement, if you have an off-the-shelf solution, and in this case only one vendor. If you have more, it's still effective. It still allows you to cut years from the process when you talk performance and not 100,000 pages of a technical specification telling a Boeing or a Sikorsky or a Thales how to build something that they know how to build and we don't.
We have spent years writing specifications and have gotten no results from those years of specifications. Nor could I ever explain to a cabinet committee or a parliamentary committee what those specifications meant.