Thank you very much, Chair.
Our approach is that definitely conflicts exist and will continue to exist and that the pursuit of peaceful means of resolution of conflicts is preferable to the resort to violence, and so we talk about the reduction to the resort to violence.
We also believe that Canada, as a wealthy nation with no existing threats to its territorial integrity, has an incredible array of choices about where it might invest to both secure the monitoring of territorial land and waters and also contribute to longer-term investments in international peace and security. We say there should be a military capacity, and that military capacity should be properly equipped for missions that we choose to define and also define how we want to participate in them.
The range of threats, as I've indicated, that even are supported through the Canada First defence strategy, that we are currently facing and foreseeably facing into the future, are of a nature that a joint strike fighter with stealth technology probably will not be used. In fact, some comparisons have already been made in this room throughout the day. The CF-18 came into place, we have this range of possibilities, we couldn't predict them all, and we can't predict into the future. In fact, even at the height of the Cold War, which is a significantly different strategic environment than we are in now, fighter aircraft were rarely used in the full capacity to which they were designed.
So we are a placing a question for this committee. More analysis and public debate should take place: what is the nature of those threats, and is the JSF the place to invest the dollars we have available, which we acknowledge are not unlimited?