Thank you for the opportunity to respond. I would like to say a few words about the supply chain.
It's important to understand that all of the allies who were involved in developing the program have agreed that there will be competitive bidding by the subcontractors to build the plane, so no country is going to have automatic offsets in this model. But what you lose there, you gain with the global supply chain. Instead of forcing, through offsets, a dollar-for-dollar account, as the honourable member has suggested, for the 65 planes that Canada is ordering, you in turn get to bid, as a Canadian contractor, for the 3,000 planes that are part of the alliance that is building the plane, plus the other 2,000 planes, so a total of 5,000 planes that are going to be ordered throughout the world.
That's the upside. The upside is you're part of the global supply chain. You're not building for 65. You might be building for 5,000 planes over the next 40 years, and that is a very positive upside.
I've talked to our industry, and our industry has told me they're ready to compete. They want to compete. They will win the contracts. They are winning the contracts. They're already doing so. Avcorp is a good example, with that $500-million contract the week after we announced that we're in for the F-35s.
So yes, it's different from your normal procurement, but the difference is a positive difference in our access for our great Canadian aerospace companies to the global supply chain.