National Defence committee  In fact, I talked to Mr. Lajeunesse yesterday. He is the president of the Aerospace Industries Association of Canada. They are very excited. They are very committed and hopeful--I was going to say the word “confident”--that they are going to be able to be successful going forward

National Defence committee  I don't think we could be emphatic or specific and say they would never have any. Canadian companies have some technology niches that are very good. Perhaps some joint strike fighter multinationals would still come to Canadian companies for some work. Most of the current contrac

National Defence committee  Sir, if the classical IRB policy applies, it is based on the actual contract value only for our 65 fighters. Almost all of that would be direct Canadian content, and the remainder would be made up from indirect offsets provided by, in this case, Lockheed Martin and its partners.

National Defence committee  Yes, sir, thank you. I thought I did respond to that. The first portion—which Mr. Slack helped to negotiate, and who is here—very specifically prevents the MOU participants from imposing IRBs and industrial offsets. There are no offsets allowed under the MOU. The second portio

National Defence committee  The sentence says, “...this will not prevent the Participants’ industries from establishing arrangements with JSF Contractors regarding work outside the scope of work of this MOU.” To me, I read that—and perhaps I'd have to get legal advice—to say that we're not handcuffing com

National Defence committee  It doesn't say it specifically in the MOU. If you wanted to do a competition, as we currently do, with Industry Canada policies—which require in a commercial contract that the contractor deliver IRBs of 100% of the contract value in Canadian content, dollar for dollar, and we're

National Defence committee  No, sir. You clearly could stay in the MOU and do another process, but you cannot impose any IRBs then on the company you bought it from.

National Defence committee  Well, we anticipate.... We've already got $850 million worth of contracts and we anticipate up to--

National Defence committee  Absolutely, they're not guaranteed.

National Defence committee  It's two things--

National Defence committee  Absolutely, it is, sir.

National Defence committee  It is. Let's say you bought joint strike fighters commercially. You got the price from the U.S. government, $6 billion or whatever it is, and you bought them from Lockheed Martin. You would want to get IRBs from Lockheed Martin because you are not getting the industrial particip

National Defence committee  No, the reality is that it's stopped. You would want to be able to have negotiations--

National Defence committee  I think I already have, sir.

National Defence committee  I can only speak for myself. From a personal view, I would feel very uncomfortable. But as I also said, there's a difference today in the sort of a one to one chance of coming home alive; 15 or 20 years from now that chance of coming home alive is one in twenty. That's not an acc