I have just a couple of points on that. This wasn't laid on the Canadian public on July 16. The Canada First defence strategy has been out there since 2008. We've run elections on it. There was nothing secret about it. The joint strike fighter, the next-generation fighter aircraft, was in there as part of that, along with shipbuilding and everything else. So to suggest that this was somehow secretly foisted upon the Canadian public is just absolute nonsense and absolutely false.
The contract is $9 billion for the acquisition of 65 airplanes, for weapons, simulators, infrastructure, and training. I don't have the exact figure, but with the F-18 program, about 60% to 65% of the program cost was airplanes and the rest of the program cost was for the type of things I mentioned.
The other $7 billion that people like to throw in and call it $16 billion is for long-term support. I'll point out that the long-term support contract for the F-18 wasn't signed until about six years after we started flying the airplane. These support programs are done in collaboration with allies. We have nine partners in this program. It's going to be a collaborative process. It's going to be similar to the process we followed with the CF-18 support. It was very effective with the CF-18 and it will be very effective with the F-35, and in fact, to segue to that for a little bit, it opens up Canadian industry. It opens up opportunities for Canadian industry to participate not just with 65 airplanes, but with a worldwide fleet of up to 5,000 airplanes.
Canadian industry is very competitive. The rules and procedures around what used to be called industrial and regional benefits have changed. We are adapting to those changes and Canadian industry is very good. Avcorp, for example, as I mentioned, just signed a $500-million contract. We're buying a number of simulators. I suspect that CAE—and this isn't to be taken as anything other than a guess—is the biggest simulator builder in the world and I suspect they will do very well in simulators for the F-35. It goes on and on and on.
Canadian industry is very competitive. They will do very well, as they have already done well in contracts related to the F-35. Actually, 82 companies have benefited from contracts signed since I'm not sure when.
On the issue of the contract, people need to be clear, and that's why we need to bring in people from Public Works, and so on. The contract itself is not signed. The MOU has been activated. The contract itself is signed somewhere down the road. The lead time on all this is to allow us to get airplanes when we need them, around 2016, to allow us time to phase in the F-35 as we phase out the F-18. It is exactly the same process we followed with the CF-18 when we phased out the F-5, the F-101, and the F-104 and phased in the CF-18. This is nothing new; it's just the next stage in this process.
So we welcome all those people and more. If anybody else wants to come and share his or her expertise and opinions on this, we welcome that.