Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for those kind words and for allowing me the floor.
Ms. Cheng, on pages 1.45 to 1.49 of volume II, in the summary tables, you've outlined the $7.4 billion in lapsed spending from various government departments.
As Mr. Allen did, I'd like to focus on one of them just for the moment, which is National Defence. Obviously military procurement is something that's particularly important for a government to do well. It provides our men and women in uniform with important equipment and makes them safer, obviously, and allows them to do their jobs. It can help create jobs and spur research in Canada. Yet this government has talked a lot more about procurement and equipment than it has actually delivered, especially when you think about the ships they've been talking about lately.
In 2006 the Prime Minister promised that three Arctic icebreakers would be in service by the end of 2014—that would be this year. That promise, of course, became one icebreaker by 2022, and six to eight smaller Arctic offshore patrol vessels.
Now the Parliamentary Budget Officer is actually telling us that with the current budget, the government can only afford four Arctic offshore patrol ships, and only three if they delay another year. In a case like this, where we're seeing $1 billion lapsed from the defence budget, and we're seeing this pushing off of these expenditures, and apparently reductions in what we're going to get for those expenditures, what does that mean in terms of greater expense to the taxpayer, in terms of value for money?