Mr. Chair, thank you for the question. My colleague Admiral Finn might have some additional context for this.
Certainly, our helicopters, our rotary wing assets that we have, are supporting our activities not only for the land force but obviously in the maritime domain. They are essential, in fact, to the operational ends of the Canadian Armed Forces. They give us unique capabilities, whether they be at home or, as we've seen, in places like the Philippines, say, where all these kinds of operations require mobility for the purposes of resupply, for humanitarian relief, really, and for disaster response. Obviously in a domestic context, they're essential to complement our overall search and rescue response, both in our domestic land territory and in the maritime domain.
The Chinooks, of course, are primarily heavy lifters. Not only are they doing heavy lifting for army assets, but we could see them being employed in Canada's north. They obviously could be used for all of our domestic response. Also, in international operations, we would certainly intend on employing them in that context as well.
They've all been consolidated in one garrison in Petawawa, just to the north of here. That was done for economical purposes. When we first thought of acquiring these assets, we thought that maybe we'd have them in two main bases, but we opted for one main base for them, based on the ability to really sustain that fleet and to provide them for all of the operational requirements of the Canadian Armed Forces.
I'd like to turn to my colleague, who can talk a little bit more about the maritime helicopter patrol, as well as what we've done with the EH101s, to give you a little bit of a sense of what we're doing with those assets and how we're bringing on the MHP.