I think the F–35 is a good example here. It is clear that the air force requires a certain number of aircraft, and, as you say, the indications from the government currently are that there is a fixed figure for how much will be spent on the next-generation aircraft. I think we need to add a little bit more nuance to that conversation in the following way.
To date, the message that's been sent out is that come 2020, the CF–18s will no longer operate. That's not actually quite true. We could find ourselves in a situation where $9 billion buys you, let's say, 50 or 40 F–35s and therefore the government, in order to backfill the capability that it's no longer having, needs to maintain the CF–18s in service for an extended period of time. So we should not be under any illusions. The air force will have the number of aircraft it requires to do all sorts of missions. The question is, will they all be F–35s, or will the government be forced to maintain some CF–18s to do various other operations?
That's a short-term solution simply because the cost of maintaining those CF–18s over the long term is going to be extremely prohibitive. The idea, I think, in the air force's mind is that we can wait and wait until new funding finally comes in and then replace all those additional aircraft. So $9 billion may be the amount we're planning to spend on the F–35s within the next decade, but how many we actually buy over the next two or three decades in order to eventually replace all our aircraft is an open question.
It gets back to your point. I disagree slightly with the Rideau Institute, in that we've never been at the front end of bombardment campaigns—we had been in Libya, I think is a good example, and Kosovo is another—where if you choose to have that capability, if you believe it is important for Canada to have fighter aircraft capable of taking part in front-line operations alongside the United States, Great Britain, and France, then that is a capability that you want to maintain and to procure. That is ultimately a policy question. Is that a significant pillar of Canadian defence policy or not? Is that something that we absolutely believe the Canadian Forces need to be able to do?
There is no objective answer to that, really. It's a question of what priorities you see for the Canadian Forces in the future. That's exactly the kind of conversation I hope this government and others will have; namely, what can we afford and what do we actually want to be able to do? Because if you don't think that's an absolutely necessary role for the Canadian Forces in the next 50 years, then you might select another aircraft or a less capable aircraft.