Thank you, Madam Chair. I had my five-minute timer all ready.
Thank you to the witnesses.
As I sat here and listened to the testimony today, I found it interesting because, obviously, I know this committee is studying results and the AG aspect, but we have to think back to 2010 and some of the policy choices around building some of this capacity in Canada.
Mr. Matthews spoke to this during his testimony, about the fact that we came into this about a decade ago with very little shipbuilding capacity in this country. I guess I would just remind my colleagues, having had the chance to visit the Halifax shipyard and Irving, about some of those immense challenges of trying to build that capacity in-house. Particularly given the pandemic—I know with my own constituents although I can't speak for other MPs'—there's a lot of increased focus on the capacity that we want in this country, whether that be agriculture, pharmaceuticals or otherwise.
I'll start with Mr. Swales, if that's appropriate; he is the principal on this.
One thing we're lacking here, Mr. Swales, in this conversation, is the perspective of the actual ship—the private shipowners who are building these.
During your audit, I assume you had conversations with the senior management of these shipyards. What is their perspective in terms of the timelines, because the AG report certainly highlights the fact that perhaps we were all a bit ambitious about what necessarily could be achieved on the existing timelines.
What was their perspective, in about 30 seconds?