What are we doing different from our allies? This actually came up about four years ago when we asked it in this very committee.
Belgium took a year to decide on a fighter jet; Denmark took less than a year; Finland, three years; Japan, one year; and Poland, less than a year. Why does it take us six years to get to a point where we might delay it another year?
I refer back to this committee: “The Government...remains committed to building a more agile, better-equipped military, while ensuring best value for Canadians”. That was regarding the fighter jets. That was from June 2016. Now, six years later, we could be looking at another year's delay.
What has gone wrong here with our procurement process? You talk about how proud you are of the process, but it has been six years, with perhaps another year added on. We have pilots dropping out of the RCAF, and the PBO and the AG slamming the process, and we can't even get a simple answer as to when we're going to have a decision made. What is the problem here? What is the issue?
I realize it's complicated, but it has been six years, when our allies, with much smaller procurement departments, can make a decision within a year. Here we are, six years in, and it could be another year on top of that.