National Defence committee  That's a very good point, sir. There are two problems with that. First, under current government contract regulations, when you clearly have only one supplier you actually should directly negotiate with that supplier. In this case, you would do it through the PMOU. The other serious issue with that is the time it would have taken, during which the global supply chain for joint strike fighter production would have effectively excluded Canadian companies to billions of dollars of detriment.

National Defence committee  Perhaps I could start, and Mr. Slack could give you some more specifics on studies that the partner countries and the joint project office have done. In a more global sense, we expect it to be in the same range of $250 million annually that we spend on F-18s or any other similar aircraft.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will ask Mr. Slack to also comment. As the project manager, he's been involved in the program for 13 years, right from the beginning. Now, right from the beginning, when we initially signed that first MOU, as I said in my opening remarks, we put full-time people into the joint program office in Washington.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. No, we did not have a separate, unique Canadian proposal. We reviewed effectively the joint multinational requirement, of course heavily and initially drafted by the United States Navy and the United States Air Force, and had input and comment. There was a feedback loop: are we meeting the needs of all the participants in the program?

National Defence committee  In May 2005.

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, obviously Mr. Williams is no longer accountable for defence procurement in the Department of National Defence. As Madam Ambrose outlined, when it's crystal clear and based on substantive analysis that there is only one choice that meets the operational requirement of fifth-generation capability that will be operationally viable for 35 years, that is entirely within the contracting regulations of the Government of Canada and is the appropriate way to proceed, clearly, when a competition would have lost time and industrial opportunities for Canadian industry and not resulted in any other outcome.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. There is no contract in place today. The discussion, as the minister said this morning, is under the partnership MOU for production, sustainment, and follow-on development, which includes the terms and conditions through which a partnered country could acquire aircraft.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think the minister more specifically committed to a fair, open, and transparent process. Government officials, as I said in my opening remarks, had been watching and doing an analysis of both the statement of requirements and what was available more broadly in the marketplace.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sir, I'd just point out that the announcement of Lockheed Martin as the winner of that competition was not necessarily a fait accompli that Canada or any of the partners would acquire the aircraft. It gave us access to the information as the concept and testing and trials proceeded, but we needed to closely monitor that to determine whether it was going to be successful.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Today, while responding to some of your questions, I hope to be able to clarify some of the information that has been circulating and to confirm that the F-35 is the right choice for Canada and for the Canadian Forces. The F-35 is the only fifth-generation fighter available in response to the Canada First defence strategy.

National Defence committee  We have contracted a world-class maritime design firm who are working with our maritime engineers, and it's keel up, 100%.

National Defence committee  Yes, sir. We will do a triage on all of that materiel there. If it's beyond economical repair, we will either destroy or dispose of it, donate it to our allies, sell it to other allies perhaps. With stuff that we don't have requirements for, or that costs more to bring back than to actually donate or sell locally, we do the latter.

National Defence committee  No, it's significantly higher than that.

National Defence committee  If I could refer to my notes, we will receive two this spring, May and June. We'll receive three in November and December this year, and we'll receive the remaining 12 in 2011. I think the last one is the beginning of 2012. And the total acquisition cost is $3 billion, but that's not just with Lockheed Martin.

National Defence committee  We're actually down to less than 48 months now. I'm being conservative in what I publicly say. I'm not sure we can do much more when we've gone to performance-based procurement. In the past it took five or six years to write a technical specification for something that actually turned out to be kind of a Frankenstein solution that no one had ever built.