Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about what is critically important for Canada.
We're here to talk about Canada's defence industrial strategy, of course, and I would like to begin my comments by addressing what I see as one of the major challenges, if not flaws, of the efforts we have. I applaud the fact that we have finally gotten serious about the development of a national defence industry strategy. We almost have to go back to Canada's shipbuilding strategy to find an equivalent effort, but this is of a much greater magnitude.
My greatest criticism of the strategy is the assumption on which it is based. It provides some very strong pillars and provides us a direction for how we should be thinking in the context of addressing the Canadian military industrial strategy, but it misses one of the most critical elements that I think we no longer have time to put off. It is based on the assumption that we have more than enough time to prepare [Technical difficulty—Editor].
I would contend that many of the changes mentioned in the introduction and in the statement of the three ministers at the beginning of the strategy, in which they are talking about changing geopolitics, are being underestimated. In fact, the impact of the geopolitics is so great that Canada does truly—