Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for being with us today.
In the 2005 budget the previous Liberal government announced $13 billion of new investment in the Canadian armed forces. That was the biggest investment in the Canadian armed forces in 20 years, which of course spans the previous Progressive Conservative government's period as well as the Liberal government's period. I would remind you of that.
As Minister of Public Works after that, I actually played a role in terms of some of those procurement decisions and in fact worked closely with the previous industry minister, who is now your Minister of International Trade. One of the things he fought for as Minister of Industry at that time, and successive governments fought for, was a significant level of in-service support contract and provision by the Canadian aerospace industry. In fact, the Canadian aerospace industry has built a global expertise in in-service support because successive governments recognized the importance of protecting it in these contracts.
Your government has made a decision to depart from that approach and is in fact contracting ISS through the original equipment manufacturer, the OEM. That is a significant departure from the previous government's approach and in fact the approach of successive governments.
FrontLine Defence magazine, in a recent article in February 2007, says this:
Canadian companies will be denied the ability to directly and independently support DND on these programs.
It goes further:
The years invested in building this component of the Canadian industrial base are being jeopardized by the current ISS procurement strategy by placing Canada's world class Aerospace ISS Industry under the control of foreign American companies...Overall, this new process is not only a threat to thousands of Canadians jobs but it also increases the sovereignty and security risks to Canada by reducing our independent capability to maintain our own military assets.
I'd like your response to that. It sounds to me as if this is the worst government decision in terms of Canadian aerospace since Diefenbaker killed the Avro Arrow.