National Defence committee  It will be my pleasure.

National Defence committee  Sir, technically we don't have to make a decision to physically withdraw. But what we experienced over the past year...as the consortium of companies and the U.S. government were consolidating and bringing together their global supply chain to produce aircraft, Canada had not com

National Defence committee  The Canadian companies had done very well already--very well.

National Defence committee  There was a difference between the development portion and the long-term production portion. In the development portion, Canadian companies have done very well, but that's a different story, and clearly we got more than our share.

National Defence committee  Absolutely. We didn't get the last $500 million until after we signed. It was $350 million prior to making a commitment. The $500 million--and it's increasing and will continue to accelerate upwards--occurred after making a commitment to buy, because the real opportunities are in

National Defence committee  I'm not sure if it's doable to envisage what threats we would have that, say, 25 years ago....

National Defence committee  I'm wandering into a very classified intelligence area here, and I have to admit that I'm not specifically aware of the detailed analysis that goes on there. But there is very significant effort given to anticipating the threats from perhaps Russia or China or Korea and who they

National Defence committee  It's in Canada's interest that the current pricing scheme stay the way it is. If you, for example, averaged out the price now for the most efficient and least efficient and brought it all up, it would actually come up a little bit. We don't want to pay that price. We have planne

National Defence committee  I'm not aware of a detailed Foreign Affairs assessment of future threats. I do know that the intelligence agencies in the country, including DND's Chief of Defence Intelligence, do contribute to that type of analysis. I'm not personally involved with Foreign Affairs in that proce

National Defence committee  The U.S. government has specifically made a decision not to pass any of that cost on to the partner countries, and in fact additional time and money for the testing will come entirely from the Pentagon. That's been pretty clear from the beginning.

National Defence committee  There are a number of issues associated with that. There would be a cost increase at the end of the day if you only had one fifth-generation fighter to procure and you had to do it under foreign military sales. There's an actual cost increase in the acquisition program, as I talk

National Defence committee  Yes, Ma'am.

National Defence committee  That's the view that Mr. Lajeunesse feels fairly strongly about, that it's not just about joint strike fighter, it's about the reputation of Canadian companies internationally and the opportunities on aerospace programs. And that makes sense. It's difficult to penetrate the aero

National Defence committee  We are not familiar with the technical capabilities at this point of the Russian fighter. Perhaps my intelligence community is more familiar with it. It makes it virtually impossible to be interoperable within NATO and NORAD. The supply chain of maintaining those aircraft from a

National Defence committee  I think if you expressed a specific interest to the Russian government, you would probably get access to some information.