Mr. Speaker, in the red book we never discounted the need for search and rescue helicopters. We said that combat helicopters for ships would be studied in the defence review. The hon. member was part of a committee that recommended we buy new helicopters.
What is important is that the Conservative government wanted to spend $5.8 billion to develop a state of the art helicopter that we did not need and could not afford. The solution that we are proposing is going to save considerably more money, well over a billion dollars and perhaps $2 billion. That is not bad economics as far as I am concerned.