Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I note that Mr. Brison, who is the member for Kings—Hants, just raised some interesting questions for you, Mr. Minister. I was wondering if you have any comment on the following statement:
I have learned since 1997 that politics can in fact be the natural enemy of public policy. In fact, for very short term political reasons sometimes, decisions are taken that have a very deleterious impact on Canadians in the long term. I do not think there is a better example of a case where public policy was sacrificed on the alter of political expediency than the case of the cancellation of the EH-101 contract and the decisions made after that, and I will list some of those. Of course my colleague from Saint John spoke earlier of the $800 million in cancellation fees. There are also: the Sea King maintenance and upgrade, $600 million; Canada search helicopter program, $790 million; long term service for that program, $1.7 billion; maritime helicopter project, again $2.9 billion; and the maritime helicopter project and long term service support, again, $1.7 billion. The total cost is around $8.5 billion as opposed to the actual cost for the EH-101s, which would have been $4.3 billion. Even with Liberal math, this does not make any sense.
This is from Hansard, March 1, 2001, from the member from Kings—Hants.
Mr. Minister, do you have any comments on the billions of dollars that were wasted under the EH-101 contract under the previous Liberal government?