Public Accounts committee  Sorry, as I alluded to earlier, I think as we move forward, if we could agree on the way parliamentarians will be presented cost of acquisition--here's the way they will be presented operation and support cost, on a total life cycle cost basis; here's our reasonable estimate for

Public Accounts committee  Sir, I see actually no logic, as a budget officer, to use 20 years when we know that the real life cycle is going to be probably 30 years, potentially more.

Public Accounts committee  Sir, Canada is. Even if we look at the CF-18s—and we have a fighter pilot at this table right now—we know that they've been in service for over 40 years, so why would we use a 20-year number?

Public Accounts committee  Taxpayers are going to buy the—

Public Accounts committee  The Department of National Defence, sir.

Public Accounts committee  Sir, the one that DND uses should be the one that's consistent with Treasury Board policy. It would vary for different types of equipment.

Public Accounts committee  They've used it in the past. If they use it, does that make it right?

Public Accounts committee  If you want a Parliamentary Budget Officer to provide independent estimates, and we would work with Treasury Board policies that we would hold accountability officers accountable to, the Parliamentary Budget Officer will start with Treasury Board policies.

Public Accounts committee  Sir, if I may add very quickly, just to put in a plug for the Department of National Defence officials, we would say the numbers they presented to cabinet on a full life cycle basis looking at operation and support were quite close to what was provided very recently by the select

Public Accounts committee  No. Actually, sir, that's one of the reasons that when we looked at different models and we looked at the experience of the F-35 when we took on this project, we thought a cost-estimating relation of the kind of project that picks up these escalating costs.... There's a chart we

Public Accounts committee  Sir, we would need to be told working assumptions and when we expect the delivery to be.

Public Accounts committee  Sir, we have used assumptions, which we highlighted in our report. If we were asked to do an additional report, we would need an update on what the expectations—

Public Accounts committee  We were purchasing the plane from our American colleagues. I think the Auditor General suggested that perhaps even a better estimate would be 36 years. We thought 30 was appropriate. It's what other people were using.

Public Accounts committee  As I said earlier, we'd prefer it. We would like to use multiple models. We started out looking at two different models. Almost half of my team is sitting at the front of this table. We think it's important that DND also use multiple models. We use high-level models that test r

Public Accounts committee  No, we excluded all development costs.