Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister.
Minister, on October 25 you issued a press release entitled “RADARSAT-2: Safeguarding Canada's Sovereignty in the Arctic”. In that press release you said, “This satellite will help us vigorously protect our Arctic sovereignty as international interest in the region increases.”
Minister, much of that interest is coming from the Americans, and there have been some threats to Canadian sovereignty as late as December 2005, with the USS Charlotte, the American submarine, issue. Would you still have issued that press release on October 25 if you had known that a few months later the RADARSAT-2 would be sold off to the Americans?