You have to make some tough choices. As we've just heard from Marcus, there are cyber-attacks and cyber-influences when it comes to social media discussions in this country. The question is, who should do it? When it comes to some of the things Marcus was talking about, that's a role for the Communications Security Establishment, CSE. It's not really a role for defence, although defence has to be apprised.
One aspect of that, which we need to pay a lot more attention to, is not just infiltration of social media but attacks or penetrations that steal our intellectual property. It's important to remind the committee that one of the reasons why Huawei is one of the greatest telecommunications companies in the world today, if not the biggest, is that they did a great job of stealing a lot of Nortel intellectual property. That has found its way into Huawei equipment.
However, when it comes to our armed forces, we're on the right path in acquiring a new surface combat capability. That's going to be hugely important. At the same time, it's going to be very vulnerable to hypersonic cruise missiles and hypersonic weapons. That's also true of our partners. We definitely need those 88 new fighter jets. We should have done that a long time ago.
Our problem is not the direction in which we're moving, but the fact that we're moving far too slowly and far too inefficiently. Every time there's a change in government, some program gets cancelled and things get put on the back burner, only to resurface in a decision four years later. We can start with Mr. Chrétien's helicopters there.