I touched on this, but let me make it explicit. Defence procurement is the single largest discretionary item in the federal budget. Generations of politicians have seen opportunity in this. Defence spending is not governed by international trade agreements or international foreign investment agreements. You actually have an enormous amount of leeway. This can be used for regional development, for the promotion of high-technology industry, and also for political purposes: for rewarding or encouraging certain regions to vote in certain ways. I'm being very frank here.
In normal circumstances, all of those additional considerations could coexist with the need to build new ships for the navy. In fact, those kinds of considerations were present when we built the Halifax class frigates, for instance, fabulous ships built more or less on time. The problem is that, because of successive delays, we're now in a crisis situation with regard to the joint support ships and with regard to the Canadian surface combatants, particularly those surface combatants that will provide area air defence, the replacements for the destroyers. We don't have any destroyers right now. We need that capability.
We need to pull the plug out here and get moving. The additional considerations that we used to be able to play with—the politics, the industrial development, and all of that—need to be pushed back a little bit further than would normally be the case.
Again, I hate to say this, because you would want to have a comprehensive vision of how to do industrial development and regional development as part of defence procurement, but I don't think you have the luxury to do all of that right now. The decision to buy an off-the-shelf design for the Canadian surface combatants makes sense if you want to expedite this procurement. If that was the purpose—and I think it's a good purpose—then don't allow the local industrial lobbies to slow you down as they fight for more and more Canadianization. It's harsh to say that, but buy these ships as they were more or less intended, as proven vessels, and get them in the water. Then we can move on.