I thank the member for her question, Mr. Chair.
I can add bit more to what my minister just said.
The national security exception is a provision found in most of Canada's domestic and international trade agreements. It allows us to exclude some procurements from the obligations we would find in these trade agreements.
The Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces must only invoke the national security exception if compliance with a trade agreement can be expected to pose a risk. Many of the procurements facing us at the moment are overlapping with that risk. We value them and evaluate them, and case by case, we provide an agreement or support for the national security exception.
I personally review them all for all the defence and marine procurements. They are well justified. If you look at today's world and today's environments, you will see there are a lot of risks out there, so it makes sense in many of our procurements to apply it.
I have two more things. The application of the national security exception—