Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm very happy to be here.
I have a few specific questions.
Mr. Chairman, there's a lot of interest in my province of Newfoundland and Labrador in the joint supply ships contract, because one of the preferred bidders, after a very lengthy process, was the Marystown shipyard, along with the Victoria yard.
Vice-Admiral Rouleau suggested that the bidders had become non-compliant. What we heard in our province was that the amount of money that was on offer to do the job was not upgraded. Based on the fact of the length of the bidding process and the qualification process, costs had gone up in the meantime and the budgeting amounts didn't meet that.
Is there a plan to go back to these preferred bidders, who had qualified after a lengthy process, to see if there's some way of doing it with them? Or are you going to start from scratch now and go through another lengthy process to get these ships built? I understand everything's agreed to that we need.