What we're looking at, I guess, is a backward bidding process, by the sounds of it, putting it back nine or ten years.
Mr. Ross, I believe it was your predecessor, Mr. Williams, who said:
The only way to know for certain which aircraft can best meet Canadian requirements and at what cost, is to put out an open, fair and transparent statement of requirements and request for proposal, and conduct a rigorous evaluation of the bidders' responses. The bid that meets the requirements of the Canadian military with the lowest life-cycle costs would be selected.
That's the formula for a standard operating procedure for government procurement, particularly when you're looking at choices and military needs.
It seems to me that somehow or other you're being asked, and your officials are being asked, to shoehorn into a government decision something that doesn't even look like this because the military needs weren't the ones that came out first, in the last six months, and said, “Hey, here's what we expect, here’s what we require, and how do we best achieve that result?”
It seems to me that somebody has made a decision that they want this particular fifth-generation aircraft and that everything else is being tailored to suit that decision.