Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to make a couple of observations, and I hope we have time for a quick question.
The industrial participation process, the contracting process, has evolved. The Canadian industry has evolved. The departments have evolved. The Canadian Forces have evolved. The opposition has not evolved.
When I started the...as part of the new fighter aircraft program in 1977, which became the CF-18, the plan there was phase-in plus 15 years and we'd be acquiring a new aircraft. That meant in 1988, plus 15 years, we'd be acquiring a new aircraft. This is overdue. We are getting on with it finally.
To quote Mr. Simms, an aircraft's speed capability is a measure of performance. By his logic, the CF-104, which is a Mach 2 airplane, will be superior to both the CF-18 and the F-35, and of course that is nonsense. Both airplanes, the F-35 and the CF-18, carry Mach 4 missiles. That's the point. Some of these comparisons don't show a total understanding of the situation.
We've been focused on the air sovereignty mission in the Arctic. That's only one mission that this aircraft is going to perform. The aircraft is going to perform many missions—all the missions the CF-18 performed and probably more. The fact of stealth doesn't actually make the airplane invisible. A Russian bomber or anybody else will actually see us when we fly up beside them. They will know we are there. They just won't see us approaching at nearly the range that we were used to before. So there is a tremendous lack of understanding of some of the basics of this kind of a program and this kind of an aircraft.
I have a quick question, probably for Minister Clement, through you, Mr. Chair. We talked about the competitive process. If we rolled the clock back and we started the competitive process, would that not equal delay? Would that not equal lost contracts? Would that not equal lost jobs? Would that not equal damage to the Canadian economy?