I'd be glad to answer that.
As you know, Mr. Garneau, CAE's revenues are half civil and half military. We definitely are very interested in military procurement around the world. But as we found out in the past.... There's a French expression that “Nul n'est pas prophète dans son pays”. It turns out to be exactly the opposite for military contracts.
As I'm sure most people who read the papers are aware, CAE lost some very important contracts years ago, going back to 2002 or 2003. At that point we received a letter from the Government of Switzerland saying, “Thank you very much, but do not respond to the RFP. We will not consider you because your own government has not accepted to give you the job.”
So not only is it important to have contracts here, when CAE is the global leader in simulation around the world...and that includes on the defence side. We were very proud, on the CAE-led team for the OTSP for C-130J, to be able to train the pilots who would be flying those aircraft. But the consequences of our winning this were manyfold.
First of all, it saved over 300 jobs across Canada, and I do mean across Canada. Two, it allowed us to continue to develop our expertise on this. And not least, number three, we have had calls from other governments around the world asking us to please meet with them to explain to them how we are looking into the military training for the C-130J. It's quite innovative; we link a series of simulators together and people can really practice. This is war, this is not just for fun. You see a plane going, and you see some other planes that are attacking it. We have ways to network them together and make it work.
This is opening other contracts, other major contracts, for CAE. Those simulators are done here in Montreal, and benefit all countries around the world. We have Cascade as part of the group, we have Bombardier, we have xwave--we have a lot of companies in Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario, and the west working on those contracts.
For any company you have in the defence world, you must—must—be supported by your government. And I repeat, it was a very strong competition. Believe me, we lost sleep over it many times. But it was fair.
I'll give you an example, Mr. Chair, if I may. There's a troop in the States known as the 160th regiment. I don't know if you saw the movie Black Hawk Down, but these are the guys. We're their biggest supplier. Forget the Buy American Act; these guys buy the best in the world because their lives are at stake every minute they're on a mission. They chose CAE.
So we're very proud that the Canadian government, after having the competition, has agreed to give us the contract. We think our Canadian troops will be very well trained, and we're proud of that.