Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed that my hon. colleague did not answer my question.
The bulk of my speech refuted the government's claim that there was a past competition, that we were already committed to this, that we had already made the decision and that we were part of the competition. The member did not answer the arguments, and there were lots of them and they were pretty strong in my opinion. He did not try to answer them at all because he cannot refute them.
The member mentioned the present ADM. I have great respect for all the officials at the department. I am not a member of the defence committee but I happened to be there on the day that Mr. Ross, who is the current ADM, suggested that the 2006 MOU said that if we had a public competition it would force Canada to withdraw from the MOU. I asked him to point out where in the MOU it said that and he replied that it was in section 7.6.
Later in the meeting I read the MOU to him and said that it had nothing to do with what he was saying. I said that it had nothing to do with forcing Canada to withdraw from the MOU. I asked Mr. Ross to point out where it said that but he could not say. He said, “It doesn't say it specifically in the MOU”.
Mr. Ross acknowledged the fact that the MOU signed by the Conservative government does not actually require us to stay in the contract in order to have the industrial benefits for our country that our companies have been getting. We had 144 of them before the government announced it was going to buy that aircraft.
The member ought to reconsider his question. I wish he would address the one that I posed to him.