Thank you.
It seems to me there's been a lack of urgency and focus on this issue. Notwithstanding the technical expertise involved in this, in the scheme of things, artillery shells are not complicated compared to air defence systems and many of the other pieces of equipment that Ukraine needs. They've been around for some period of time, so if we're having difficulty and are struggling to ramp up production with this, I have serious concerns about our ability to scale up on anything that's more complicated, which would be virtually the entire range of other war-related materiel.
The other piece to this is that we have a standing offer and supply arrangement of long standing with Canadian companies that produce this materiel. Not only is it relatively simple in the scheme of things, but we have long-standing commercial relationships, which we should be able to activate relatively quickly, but we have been struggling to do so up until, I guess, about last week, with the mentions you had before committee.
The third thing we should look for as we're looking forward.... I don't think there's any likelihood that the demand in Ukraine specifically is going to attenuate for this materiel. I think the conflict has shown us quite clearly that Canada needs to have significantly more of our own stock, as well as a significantly enhanced ability to ramp up production if this is likely to be the type of conflict we see in the future.