Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Ms. Hogan, in the United States there was a six-month investigation done on military spending. It was done by 60 Minutes. That prompted several senators to ask the Secretary of Defense to do an internal audit. The audit found that the military procurement process was plagued with arbitrary price inflations from the industry itself. It cited two major factors from its investigation, namely, the consolidation around a handful of industry players, and a massive reduction in public servants dedicated to evaluating procurement projects.
At some point, some of these companies were boosting their total profits by about 40%, and sometimes as high as 4,000%. There's a U.S. federal law that says that it will not allow military equipment to be sold to international customers at any price less than the U.S. pays.
Would you extrapolate from that, as we look to purchase American equipment from those same producers, that they would then inflate the price of what Canadians would be buying?