National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank you for inviting me to testify today. I would also like to thank you for your dedication to issues relating to national defence and the Canadian aerospace industry. Héroux-Devtek is a public corporation founded i

National Defence committee  If I may, I'll take this question. In part of my speech I spoke about the IRB versus the way the F-35 has been structured. The way the IRB works, we can have 100% of the value of the contract. From what I understand, Canada will buy 65 airplanes, and the approximate cost of thes

National Defence committee  Will you take this one, or...?

National Defence committee  It is true that we are working on the JSF in the United States, but we are also working on it here. As for our Canadian content and the value of contracts signed by Canadian plants, it is important to understand that we designed and developed the systems. For example, the uplocks

National Defence committee  Okay.

National Defence committee  Actually, this is an American debate. It is difficult to know how much the United States' deficit will affect the program.

National Defence committee  Discussions are still under way. No decision has been made.

National Defence committee  We are going to. I think that this will be a very important program. It could be more important or less important; we don't know. The idea is this: what we manufacture or what Mr. Guitton manufactures, in terms of production, will represent 100% of what Lockheed Martin will need

National Defence committee  Maurice is talking about markets. We were the first on the moon. We built the landing gear for the lunar model back in 1961.

National Defence committee  That's a good question. We had a very early start on the program. I think we were trying to move on this program from 2001, when we started initial discussions with Lockheed Martin to participate.

National Defence committee  As you know, Canada by that time had made the decision to invest in the program. A company like ours has capabilities like Maurice's and Tom's businesses and many others in Canada. But we are one of the largest suppliers of aerospace products and we do more than 50% of our total

National Defence committee  Excellent.

National Defence committee  As I said earlier, we estimate at this point that over 20 years this will create and sustain around 2,500 jobs. We have proposals in now such that we believe if we do get this work we could double that.

National Defence committee  Probably around 40.

National Defence committee  Yes, today. That 2,500 would mean about 125 of our employees per year. So today it's around 40.