Thank you, Mr. Chair, and through you first to Colonel Ménard, I can't allow the air force to have the upper hand with Latin, so non nobis sed patriae, not for ourselves but for our country, which was my regimental motto.
I take some exception to what Ms. Murray said, in terms of characterizing certain things as cartoons. I served from 1978 to 2011 and lived through the decade of darkness. I had bad equipment, went from private to lieutenant-colonel, was driving the equipment, maintaining the equipment, and General, you're absolutely right: it's equipment and it wears out. We're very robust. The only thing I'm grateful to the Liberals for is that we learned to do a lot with nothing. Even today we're still 26% higher in budget than they ever were.
The Aurora, as you rightly pointed out, is one of the best aircraft going right now, in terms of surveillance and doing the job that it's doing, in the theatre it's in. We're very proud of all that, and the air force has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of our government in terms of the J-class Hercs and of course the C-17 Globemasters. We're very, very happy about a lot of those. And the Chinooks of course, have been an absolute godsend in particular to the infantry. We're very, very proud of the equipment and the record that we had.
But General, you're absolutely right. Things do wear out; they do need to change. We're in a lot of theatres of war, and I know from talking to many of my allies with whom I'm still very close that the name of Canada on the world stage amongst our military allies sits very high and very proud.
I thank you and Colonel Ménard for the work you have done in making sure Canada stays foremost in the minds of our allies. Thank you for that.
General, just given the developing air threats and the current operating environment that we have, what do you see as something that may be most threatening to us in North American airspace?