Mr. Speaker, this is not a trivial matter, because it has to do with the overall position of the Government of Canada with respect to what the Auditor General said.
The Auditor General said that not all costs had been fully divulged. He said that to compare the training costs on the F-35 with the training costs and the maintenance costs on the CF-18 was completely unrealistic. He said there was no accounting for the question of attrition and the number of jets that would be lost over the life cycle. He said that life-cycle accounting had to be done.
We now have the deputy minister of National Defence saying to the people of Canada that the Auditor General is wrong. Who speaks for Canada? That is the question we are asking with respect to this matter.