Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I think if we want to have a definition of a breath of fresh air, it is the two witnesses today. Thank you very much. We are really and truly appreciative.
The reason we have this session is to seek solutions. We're not just here, as we say in French, définir le sexe des anges. We are here because we want to have that agenda of vigilance. We believe we should work not only on the issues, but on the perception too, because when we're talking about integrity or accountability, we also need to manage the perception if it's still there.
Mr. Bland, the reason the Liberal Party questioned the acquisition of four C-17s is that we believe we can use the money otherwise, and we should have a definition that includes the word “access” instead of “acquire”. If we work as a coalition and if the air force has had some options in the past to lease, I don't see why we should spend billions of dollars when we won't possess the intellectual property for the industry. If the people from DND want to work with the equipment, we have the ITAR and we have all those issues.
I'd like to ask you one question. It strikes me when we talk about mission, of course, that our role for the armed forces is based at the domestic level. We have the politics of our geography. There's also the issue of international responsibility. Do you believe we should just create an armed force like that? Why can we not have Canadian Forces based on what we want to do at External Affairs or domestically?
How would you definite it yourself? If you're the Minister of Defence, for example, and you have to make a decision to build up your Canadian Forces, how do you make it happen? It's kind of abstract in my mind to say that we won't create an armed force because we want to fulfill our duties with NATO, with peacekeeping or peacemaking and at the domestic level. I didn't quite understand what you meant by that.