Thank you, sir, for the question.
We have contributed about $200 million to the program through the memorandums of understanding with our eight partners. Just to be clear, it is a United States government program; we're not buying from Lockheed Martin. The only way to purchase them is from the Government of the United States. If you're not in the partnership, you must go through foreign military sales and pay all the fees associated with foreign military sales.
It is possible to withdraw from the MOU and eventually come back and try to purchase them through foreign military sales at that increased cost. If you withdrew, there would be some penalties that would have to be negotiated, because the cost-sharing agreement right now among the nine partners is based on the agreed contributions of the nine partners to the design, development, and testing.
Our current commitment is $551 million over 40 years. If we pulled our $551 million out of the partnership, that would have to be made up by our colleagues, and we would have to negotiate what portion of that--and it would probably not be a small number--we would have to pay.
The other dimension I would mention is that the number of industrial opportunities for the country is proportional to the number of aircraft you buy and the contribution you make to the MOU. The potential of $12 billion of direct Canadian participation in building them would not end instantly. The existing contracts and orders would stay, but they would not be renewed. For example, if you were buying 50 sets of landing gear from Héroux-Devtech in Montreal, there would be no follow-on order for landing gear from Héroux-Devtech. They would let that die. So there are two parts to that.