Thank you, Chair. I appreciate it.
Gentlemen, it's good to see you here today. Thank you for joining us.
Professor Berkok, I want to probe a little into the point you made about the decade of darkness and your statement that it was a period of restraint generally. I have a couple of comments about that, and then I'd like to hear your view.
I think you're right. The Chrétien government was engaged in balancing the budget. Whether or not other programs or departments were cut, I don't think there's much debate that it was an awful time for the Department of National Defence, particularly when you look at the spending levels or the restraint that existed in this country both in the 1980s and the 1970s. But not all departments were cut. Aboriginal Affairs, for example, was spared the axe under the Chrétien government. As well, most of the program cuts were in health and education. Provincial transfers were cut by 30%, whereas many departments in Ottawa got off relatively lightly. There were some, like Industry, which was cut in half—subsidy programs—but I would argue that an industrial subsidy program is altogether different from looking at long-term military procurement.
Maybe I missed the point of that, except that you're saying it wasn't so bad because it happened to all of them, when in fact it didn't. I think if you just look at it in isolation, the 1990s were a decade of darkness for the Canadian Forces. Are you disputing that? What was your point there?