Thank you very much for the question, Mr. Chairman.
I'll be quite brief. The Canada First defence strategy in many ways, from a National Defence/Canadian Forces perspective, was a breakthrough approach to modernizing the Canadian Forces, their equipment, and infrastructure to grow the force and ensure they were ready to do the missions asked of them by the Government of Canada.
One of the major breakthroughs was the commitment to a 20-year funding line, which was adequate to deal with the growth of the Canadian Forces by establishing 70,000 regular force members and 30,000 reserve force members. But from a capital procurement perspective, the breakthrough in the Canada First defence strategy was a commitment to a 20-year funding line, including a 2% per year escalator, to make sure the funds were in place to cover--along with other things like accrual accounting--the actual cost of the then expected capital equipment required to modernize the CF.