Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister, for being here.
It's funny: my furnace never breaks down when I am at home; it always breaks down when I'm gone, so your comments about being away and taking care of your family are very important, for sure.
In your opening remarks, you talked about the vision for defence and what we need to get our troops and our forces the appropriate tools. I'm going to look at the navy side of things at this point in time and the Canada surface combatant plan we have in place with Irving Shipbuilding.
We understand that November 30 is the final deadline for proposals to be submitted. There's been some expression of frustration with the process, given the combination of the 50 changes in design that were requested of the bidders and then, of course, regarding the intellectual property they have to voluntarily give up as they make their proposal. How are you dealing with that, and how many of the bidders we had at the start are still there and are going to be putting proposals in place tomorrow?