Madam Speaker, at the risk of annoying my colleague a bit more, I repeat that what is transparent is the fact that there was political interference, as clearly demonstrated by the whole process. This shows that the government wants to exclude companies, and I think that EH is one of them. The company benefiting from the situation is Eurocopter. I have here the letter of interest and this is what it says:
For the purpose of the evaluation, the lowest priced compliant proposal will include the price of the BV—
Therefore it is obvious that we are talking about the lowest bid.
I would like to teach the hon. member some mathematics. The Progressive Conservative Party wanted to purchase 50 helicopters, at a total cost of $5.8 billion, or $100 million per unit. The Liberal government decided to cancel this contract and, in 1995, to buy 15 helicopters at a total cost of $790 million, or $60 million per unit.
This is why we talk about the Cadillac version of 1993 and the Chevrolet version of 1998. Today, I am talking about the Lada version. This is the version we will be getting, because the EH model cannot be built to the contract specifications, that is 28 helicopters for $925 million, which would represent a cost of $50 million per helicopter. They definitely will not be able to meet these criteria. The government knows it is excluding EH by specifying that it will go with the lowest bid.
This is why I am saying that one thing is transparent: after the meeting between the Prime Minister and the President of France, a fresh wind blew toward Europe. But, once again, the government dropped Canadian content and taxpayers in Quebec and Canada will have to bear the cost. There is no doubt about that.
I repeat, there obviously was some political interference, and Canadian content was dropped.