It's not uncommon for AORs, tankers, not to be armed. Some of our allies operate their vessels in that way, and sometimes they've had to, as one might say, “button on” capability to a particular vessel if it has gone into an area where there's been a particular threat.
A decade ago I would have said that it was not a problem at all to have unarmed tankers, because we had destroyers that provided area air defence capability, and so one of our destroyers could have provided adequate protection for the tanker. We don't send our tankers anywhere without other ships.
Today, we only have Canadian patrol frigates available. They only have a point defence missile capability, and unless they're on the axis of the threat—between the tanker and a particular threat—they're really not able to defend the tanker.
In the short-term, absolutely, it will limit the ability to put the vessels in any kind of threat area. In the long-term, if we move forward with replacement ships that return that capability to Canada, then it wouldn't necessarily be a problem. But that may not be within the budget at the moment. We'll see.