Minister, I wanted to get a clarification. Under NORAD we had scrambled some CF-18s. According to Major-General Prévost, who appeared here on February 17, it was only a matter of minutes before Canadian CF-18s would have intercepted the balloon in Yukon. However, the F-22s were there ahead of us, and the U.S. fighter jets took it down.
However, if you look at some of the other information that came out here from the Department of Defense in the United States, they also said that when the balloon entered Canadian airspace it was Canadian CF-18 fighter jets and CP-140 Aurora aircraft that did a closer examination of that asset.
Why wasn't it shot down at that point in time, rather than bringing those fighter jets home and then scrambling F-22s to take it out?
Was it a capability issue?