Thank you, Minister, and thank you, Mr. Chair.
We are looking at this, obviously, as something to fill the gap between vigorously waving at people who are suspected of being a threat and shooting them. So we are actually looking at this as a way to protect the health of people who are around our soldiers on a high-risk mission as opposed to endangering their health.
We have done three sets of testing on the equipment. We will do further testing. We're going through medical reports on this kind of laser system, but just to show you what it's really designed to do, it's best employed and designed to flash off the windshield of a car. It doesn't go into the eyes per se. It creates a razzly-dazzly light on the windshield of the car, which gets somebody's attention immediately, and that avoids, perhaps, our having to take a shot at them because they have not paid attention to our warning signs, our waves, or our vehicles, etc.
We will continue with the testing. We'll ensure that the medical testing is done, either through our own medical testing or using other tests that have already been done internationally, and then we will ask our judge advocate general of the legal system to rule on that to ensure that we meet all the things that we have signed on to, as a country, with the Geneva Convention. We are not going to be using something that clearly would be against international conventions that we've signed on to, etc.
But sir, I'll just say that we're not after something here that's really “out there” doing something that's going to harm people deliberately. What we're after is something to save people's lives, to give our soldiers tools besides waving and shooting, and that's something we don't have right now.
If this is promising and allows us to do it, we'll obviously proceed to acquisition and can provide you details then, but if it's not, we clearly won't.