I'll just add a couple of words to that.
We are all a product of our history, and the history of the Canadian aerospace industry was determined in the 1960s by the government of the day to be in the civilian realm. We were a manufacturer of military aircraft and we decided not to do that any more, but it was still decided, wisely, I think, in retrospect, that this country benefited from having an aerospace industry and that it was worth fostering that aerospace industry in the civilian realm. That is why we had programs such as DIPP, TPC, and SADI. I believe this is our approach in our country that has worked.
The question of military procurement of course is not frequently raised because military procurements of aircraft happen once in a generation, and we happen to be at that generational moment. It's a question that forces itself onto policy-makers and onto the industry. It would be far from me to try to offer advice to policy-makers, but from an industry's point of view I think there are a couple of things worth saying, certainly from the point of view of my company.
One is that this is a global industry, and we actually happen to be part of that industry. It is very important for us at least to have a fair chance to bid when opportunities arise—not necessarily to be favoured, although that's another issue, but certainly to have an opportunity to bid. This has occasionally been a challenge for us where procurement decisions were made where it was not necessarily open to us even though functionally, as Nathalie said, we had the capacity to produce as a company and as an industry.
The last thing I would say from our own company's point of view, if I can address that very narrowly, is for us the capacity to participate in offset programs or programs of that kind has to be reasonably selected. For us, the great comparative advantage in our industry is access to technology, and the degree to which these programs can bring us to a higher level of technological sophistication, add to our knowledge, and help us to partner with others to bring our technological capacity to others in these global supply chains would be to the good.