The F-35 can fit into smart defence if an individual country decides that it's their contribution to an overall NATO effort. Therefore, the idea of smart defence is specifically that not all countries should do the same thing. Quite the contrary: different allies should undertake or invest in different capabilities so that you have an overall multilateral allied capability to undertake various operations. If we decide or if we see in the future that various countries abandon the F-35 and that the U.S. says we need to have this capacity, then maybe it makes sense for Canada to pursue it. On the other hand, if it turns out to be a very prohibitive program that the United States maintains and a few other countries do, then we could ask ourselves if that is the best investment for scarce Canadian dollars.
The idea is, does the F-35 fit in smart defence? It fits into it insofar as the overall alliance should have a fifth-generation fighting capability to be able to undertake these missions. Does that necessarily mean that Canada needs to have it? That is a larger policy discussion we need to have in terms of the overall capabilities we want the forces to have. From a purely objective point of view, you can ask if Canada should have the best possible military equipment. Yes, we can agree. However, the minute you start introducing opportunity costs and budget constraints, then you have to start asking: all else not being equal, is the F-35 the best investment of our defence dollars, versus single-surface combatants, versus new capabilities for the land force? That is the type of discussion I hope we can have.