Mr. Speaker, the imagination of the hon. member is impressive but not realistic. When developing new technology for highly sophisticated navigational systems, the contract must be flexible to some degree. In some instances you may be paying substantially less than expected if progress is better than anticipated beforehand. Sometimes you may find yourself having to accept less or pay more. We were in that situation.
I assure him, as he has made reference to the auditor general, that the auditor general received all that information. But I should point
out that we simply cannot compare the purchasing of technology which has not yet been developed, not yet in existence, with the purchase of some other product off the shelf of a supermarket. It is simply not possible to have the same approach.
Inevitably, situations will arise where the development takes a lot more time or costs a lot more money than people-before they know what they are really into in that regard-anticipate.