My sincere apologies, Madam Speaker.
At the time these aircraft were acquired in the early 1980s, the government bought 138 fighters, with a plan to fly them for 20 years, yet here we are today, over 30 years later, and we are still flying these jets. The passage of time and usage has taken its toll on these aircraft, and our original fleet is now reduced from 138 to 76 airplanes.
There is no question that the women and men of the Royal Canadian Air Force have done and continue to do great work with the resources they have been given. The Canadian Armed Forces is also doing a tremendous job risk-managing our ability to simultaneously meet our NORAD and NATO commitments with the current fighter fleet. However, the reality is that we now face a capability gap in meeting these commitments. The challenge is that the older planes are less reliable and are more difficult to maintain. Maintenance hours relative to operational available hours have increased significantly, and to keep the aircraft both operationally capable and safe for our pilots, they must regularly be removed from the flight line more often to be serviced.
Maintenance of any aircraft is important, and unquestionably, the government will continue to apply additional resources to the CF-18s and is doing so now. Even with the application of additional resources, there comes a point at which the risk becomes too great for the government to accept. If we do not move quickly to supplement and replace our fighter capability, we will be left with limited flexibility to respond to both domestic and world events and limited capability to fulfill our multilateral obligations.
We have been clear that the risk of relying solely on a more than 30-year-old fighter fleet is one our government is not willing to accept. To be a reliable partner and ally, Canada must ensure that we meet our NORAD and NATO commitments. Canada's fighter capability now and in the future must be able to defend Canada, defend North America, in partnership with the U.S., and support international operations. There can be no debate. We must act now to ensure the current and future viability of our fighter fleet.
As this government announced on November 22, we are taking a three-step approach to addressing the capability gap.
First, we announced that we will launch an open and transparent competition to replace the CF-18s. Given the time it will take to conduct such a competition to acquire a permanent fleet, we must also explore an interim solution to supplement our current CF-18 fleet. That is why, on the same day, it was announced that we would explore the potential acquisition of 18 new Super Hornet aircraft to supplement the current CF-18s for an interim period, until the transition to the permanent replacement aircraft is complete.
As part of this exploration, we are in discussions with the United States government and Boeing--