National Defence committee  Why not? In a competition, all the players sharpen their pencils to give us the best deal. That's why you compete.

National Defence committee  That argument makes absolutely no logical sense.

National Defence committee  I know very little about that, other than what everybody else knows about stealth and lethality and those kinds of issues. Having said that, that's not my job. I'm not second-guessing the need for fifth-generation. I just want it to be publicly shown why that requirement, as well as every other one, is necessary.

National Defence committee  No, I am. I didn't say I wasn't. You are going back and forth. First you were saying if I could run a competition and they could meet the requirements, they would be disadvantaged. I'm saying no. If a competition were held and they could meet the requirements, they would have a cost advantage because they know what Lockheed Martin's aircraft is going to be.

National Defence committee  Look, I've seen this many times. You can always take any program and say if this, then that excludes all other competition. I've seen it in many cases. The issue is why do you have to have this “if”? What happens if you don't have this “if”? Then what's wrong with that? Can you prove to me that you need this “if”?

National Defence committee  That's right. And to follow up on Mr. Dryden's and Mr. Bachand's comments, you put the role of the military at the top. That's the basis of everything. What is the role that we see for our men and women in the future? How does our air force play into that? How do these jets play into that?

National Defence committee  I'm not going to make the same mistake that I'm counselling people not to make. I don't want to pre-judge one requirement or make judgments about the requirements. I've always left that to the military. What I always did, though, was try to make sure that they can be justified in light of the roles they have to play.

National Defence committee  That's right. The whole point of a competition, the reason you go from one car dealership to another, is in order to try to play one against the other. When you go into these things you never know who's going to win. I've always found that there is always one company, more than any other, that really wants the $16 billion, $15 billion, or $20 billion contract and they will provide the best technical bid and they will also have, by far, the lowest price.

National Defence committee  Absolutely.

National Defence committee  I know when we bought our F-18s.... I think I have the figure here or something like that. When we bought our recent Chinooks, it was $1.2 billion to buy them, and $2.2 billion for support for 20 years. Given that we'll keep them for 30 years, it's $3.3 billion, so that's two and a half times or something like that.

National Defence committee  It's possible. However, I think the $9 billion is more than just the initial acquisition. I haven't seen the breakdown of the figures, which is also something we should see. But if the initial figure was $5 billion for them, then it could be $10 billion to $15 billion, I would say, over the long term to support these.

National Defence committee  That's correct. And by signing--

National Defence committee  Sure. Why can't we?

National Defence committee  But no one is suggesting that you withdraw from the MOU.

National Defence committee  No, let's be clear. Not buying the aircraft has nothing to do with withdrawing from the MOU.