Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In the report, in exhibit 6.6, we lay out the various costs and their estimates that National Defence has prepared to date. You will note in there that the estimate of personnel and operating costs has not been completed. This is important because the Chinook is a new helicopter for National Defence. They need to put in place about 500 people to maintain and support it. These are new technical requirements. They have to put those people in place, and the costs of all of that have not been fully been estimated at this point.
We can recognize that at times it may be difficult to do estimations early, but there should be some indication, again, given to decision-makers. If the department doesn't know what those costs are and doesn't receive proper funding, they themselves have indicated that they will have to go back and either reduce operations or reduce training, or look to other areas to obviously find the funds for these operations.