Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Welcome, Minister, to our committee and to your new role as Minister of National Defence.
I'm going to start with a general question. You're coming here looking for about a billion dollars of new money, yet the consistent reports from your department are that you don't spend the money you have. Last year, for example, $2.3 billion less than what was allocated was spent, and going back every year for the last five or six years, there's been in excess of a billion dollars of money not spent. I guess the first question is, why do you need any money at all if you can't spend what you have? Are you prepared to acknowledge that you have a problem in your department with the inability to either budget properly or manage properly?