Madam Speaker, this is a very fine and articulate theory but what about practice?
Here is practice, and my question to the member opposite will be based on it. Last year, the Canadian government signed a contract for armoured vehicles worth $2 billion, that is $2,000 million. This is not peanuts. This very big contract was awarded without a call for tenders to, naturally, an Ontario manufacturing industry, which in turn subcontracted the turrets to a California company for $500 to $600 million, still without a call for tenders.
I know that in Saint-Jean, on the outskirts of Montreal, Oerlikon, which specializes in this type of equipment, could have fulfilled this contract at a competitive price, since there was no call for tenders. But it was not to be.
My question for the member opposite is this: Why did we choose to give our own taxpayers' money to workers in California rather than to workers on the outskirts of Montreal?
I want a concrete answer, not only rhetoric.