Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I very much appreciate, Mr. Ferguson, those last few remarks because anybody who is watching this—and I know there are people who follow these kinds of matters carefully—would recall we went to where this became a cause célèbre in the recent past on the F-35. It was a huge factor, billions of dollars. It would seem that we're getting closer, but we're still not there. We seem to be getting closer.
I'll turn to page 16, paragraph 7.59:
In certain cases, the contracts reflected a reduced number of flying hours or a start-up period before reaching the expected steady state. We found that actual usage was below original expectations due to a lack of personnel and funding for operations and maintenance. In the 2015–16 fiscal year, actual equipment usages compared with their expected steady states for the CC-130J Hercules aircraft, Globemaster aircraft, and Chinook helicopter were 62 percent, 80 percent, and 39 percent, respectively.
Common sense dictates that, if you don't use it as much, you're not going to achieve the savings. Somebody talk to me about this. I understand there are a lot of things connected with that, budget cuts and that. Is there not some mechanism that...? For instance, does the minister know when they make a decision to reduce personnel or funding? Are these kinds of things brought to them? This has a domino effect down the road. That's what I'm trying to get at. I'm trying to understand how things could be so far off, but also, is this connected to other decisions that have an impact on it?