National Defence committee  Absolutely. I have nothing but the highest regard for all of the bureaucrats in all the departments that participated.

National Defence committee  I could be. I don't know. All I can tell you is this. The documents that govern our relationship in the program are the ones that we all have. Unless they have signed an amendment to it, or unless there's a new agreement I'm not aware of, then the 2000 MOU is the governing document that governs our relationship.

National Defence committee  It could very well be.

National Defence committee  I'm not sure if I still do. I had.

National Defence committee  Absolutely.

National Defence committee  Change their minds?

National Defence committee  Well, I'm not sure they are. Michael, when he signed this MOU, said he foresaw a competition. I was foreseeing a competition. Michael is a bureaucrat working in the government. What he can say and not say is restricted. I'm not restricted. If I were in his position, I would say exactly the same thing.

National Defence committee  I may have said two of them. If there's a national emergency, of course, when we send our troops quickly to Afghanistan or do something like that, we may not have time, so you do it. So unforeseen urgency, seen in article 506(11)(a) in the agreement on internal trade, is the kind of thing.

National Defence committee  If you can prove that.

National Defence committee  The result announced October 7, 2001, followed a process of about five or six years, which emanated from within the Pentagon, to develop a program that kept costs down and looked for a replacement for the next generation aircraft. The U.S. had a lot of programs under way at the time, and they finally decided that they would try to establish a program—

National Defence committee  Okay. The basic answer is that the U.S. worked for four or five years trying to get commonality of requirements between its navy, air force, and marines. They produced three different varieties of this with their operational requirements and with the U.K.'s input, because they're a level-one partner.

National Defence committee  This was not done. None of this was done. Zero.

National Defence committee  Well, before you're going to spend $15 billion or $20 billion, there's a fairly rigorous decision-making process. At the end of the day, it's the minister and the government—the minister, through the government and cabinet—that would say that we are now authorized, as in fact I'm sure they went through and authorized things.

National Defence committee  This gets into the overlap question. Let me make this one point, as Monsieur Bachand knows and mentioned. There is no minister accountable for defence procurement. This is the case today. This was the case when I was ADM. And I think it's a travesty. There is no one minister you can pinpoint for the success or failure of any defence procurement.

National Defence committee  Okay.