Madam Speaker, clearly, there is a lot of mystery involving this whole process and not enough clear answers just based on what we have heard this morning.
We have a recent Auditor General's report dealing with the helicopters. It found that the Department of National Defence broke its own rules and that there is a big mess involved in that contract. So I do not know why we would think, for a moment, that the procedures would be any clearer or better with this type of process. We have the whole issue with Canada wanting to spend $9 billion for 65 F-35s, at a cost of about $138 million apiece. Yet we have Australia paying $6 billion, which is $3 billion less, for 100 of the jets. So their cost would be around $60 million each.
When the Liberal critic was asked a direct question about this issue, he could not confirm why there would be a difference in the pricing. The people who are supposed to be in the know do not seem to have answers to very fundamental questions here.
It just gets back to the question of why do we not take this back and have an open process to decide what we are going to buy and buy the best best-priced product that we can find?