We have an ambivalent view about assembly lines. When we're looking at the investment required to actually set up a tooling to actually put the aircraft together in a country, there is a business case and a certain number of aircraft required to make sure that is actually a viable and sensible thing to do. For a large number of aircraft, you could actually move beyond assembly into manufacturing and part manufacturing, and take it to another level.
Simply assembling an aircraft is not a demanding task; it's something that we would offer Canada. For the number of aircraft involved, there are probably sufficient numbers there to warrant an assembly line, but that's only the start of the program of supporting the aircraft. An assembly line is one thing, but our intention would be that that was part of the transfer of information, so that you would take over the whole aircraft. You would take over the support.
We were talking about sustained engineering. That would be done in Canada by Canadian companies as part of a program of assembly, support, maintenance, and upgrades. That would be our intention. It's not simply final assembly. If there came a point where you wished to manufacture the aircraft or manufacture the mould line, that's really where the business case becomes a slightly more important issue for you to look at. That's where we'd work with you on the manufacturing, rather than assembly, on what you want to manufacture, what parts of the aircraft are appropriate for your industry, and whether you want to get into some of the newest technologies in manufacturing. All of this would be built into our discussions post-contract.
