Well, it's your response, but it certainly doesn't explain why the department was undergoing plans to have the kind of competition we are asking about now and obviously spent some considerable effort undertaking. This retroactive suggestion that the decision as to who would actually build this JSF being made in the year 2000 was in fact a competition for what Canada needed....
I mean, this is what we're talking about. We're not talking about who is going to build the JSF; we know who is going to build the JSF. We're talking about a competition for the replacement of our F-18s. We obviously have a problem here with what kind of competition we're talking about.
The JSF has been referred to as a particular type of plane, in fact a niche plane with a role as a battlefield interdictor, intended to attack and destroy hostile battlefield ground forces after the opposing air defences are stripped away by more capable, and now cheaper, F-22 Raptors. Even though it's a fifth-generation aircraft, it doesn't have the same capabilities as the F-22, nor apparently is it a capable plane when compared with the fifth-generation jets being developed by the Russian Air Force--one that's in production now, the Su-35S, and another one that's being test flown; I think it's called the PAK-FA.
I've seen criticisms of this program and the F-35 program, and you talked about the safety of men and women flying these. If we're talking about air-to-air defence within Canada, given a situation where if we only have the F-35 and these Russian planes can actually outperform the F-35, what do you say to that?