Thank you very much.
I would say that this question is often asked, and it's amazing how often we have to come back with a similar perceived answer: the context--being able to have the context in a department like Defence to make a decision.
You have the threat that is evolving very rapidly, you have the technology that is evolving rapidly, and there is the way the government uses the armed forces when you look at the type of conflict we're engaged in now as compared with the type of conflict of the past. So there is a huge need to understand the context, to be able to translate the context into how technology can really help.
Is $350 million a lot? I invite you to look at our S and T strategy, and I would also like to invite you to visit one of our centres. I think it would be very useful for a committee like this to have a deeper appreciation of the breadth of all that is involved in the ability to conduct operations.
I would also suggest that when you look at the ability of Canada to evolve in the current operation in Afghanistan, it has injected a lot of technology on the go in an operation. Having the capacity to understand the environment and the science has allowed us to save many lives through this conflict. So there are many dimensions to this.
When you look at $350 million, half of which is spent in industry to advance the concept, the ideas, up to the product—because we are not into the insertion of products into the services, the commercial world is doing that—I would say you correctly realize that it's probably reasonable; it's not that big of an investment for a domain like this.