Thank you for being here, Mr. Macdonald.
In recent years, we have seen the emergence of expenditure plans spread over a number of years. Take, for example, the 2008 budget for national defence. It showed $60 billion in purchases and $140 billion in maintenance spread over 20 years.
The problem is that, in his interim report, the auditor general told us that, since there were significant overexpenditures on the purchasing side, they were dipping into the maintenance budget. That explains why brand new helicopters were grounded because there were no spare parts.
I can assure you that, when Parliament passed those budgets, we were not buying helicopters so that we could watch them rust on the ground.
Is there a better way, in your view? How can we get a better handle on these expenses?