These are two totally unrelated questions. I'll deal with the first one first.
We're very confident in the national shipbuilding procurement strategy. We're seeing good success so far. Both Vancouver and Irving in Halifax have invested heavily, not with taxpayers' money, in renovating and building the physical capacity and infrastructure to do the shipbuilding.
In fact, some 300 new jobs have been created in Vancouver at Seaspan. They're expecting 700 more over the next several years of the contract. I was there as we cut steel on a first test block several months ago, and we expect to be cutting steel on the offshore fishery science vessel this summer.
As well, in Halifax already we're seeing tremendous progress. We have every reason to believe they're going to be successful in cutting steel on the AOPS, Arctic offshore patrol ships, by September.
I think it's going really well. Obviously the industry had been allowed to languish for many years. In fact, we had virtually no large shipbuilding industry in this country. You can't go from zero to a hundred right out of the chute. It has taken time to build the proper facilities, for the proponents to develop the in-house expertise that's necessary, to develop the contracts to do all these things, but I'm really confident that we are rebuilding the shipbuilding industry in Canada. It's going to be around for a long time to come. We're building strong companies with strong capabilities.
The naysayers can go on waiting and watching; I think we're going to disappoint them. We will succeed with this and we will create—