Government Operations committee  What this allows us to do, because of the horizontal nature, because we're not in contract to build a joint support ship yet as they learn lessons on the offshore fisheries science vessel about certain design components, we can task them right away to look at the joint support sh

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much for the question. Through a number of projects, what we were finding—and a bit of perception, a bit of reality here about the nature of some of the military requirements as they were stated and whether they were specifying a specific product, whether they we

Government Operations committee  Yes, series production, but once again—

Government Operations committee  I'm sorry to interrupt, Mr. Blaney, but I must point out that, a year after we start construction of the first ship, we will start the second. The same is true for the three Canadian Coast Guard vessels: two are currently being built.

Government Operations committee  I'm sorry, I don't have the date with me.

Government Operations committee  Thank you very much for the question. We have already started acquiring all the materials. We started to acquire long-lead items and we will continue to do that this fall. We're moving through completing that again. In this particular case—

Government Operations committee  I would point out that we don't have to wait for one ship to be completed before starting the next one.

Government Operations committee  At the end of 2017 or the beginning of 2018, we will start building the first vessel.

Government Operations committee  Three years.

Government Operations committee  I can't speak on behalf of the government. What I can tell you, by being a participant in the F-35 program, is that I have people who work in the joint program office. We also have specific officials who have key roles in, for example, the chief executive officer's organization,

Government Operations committee  I would say it is a factor. It has clearly been delivered and is in use with some of our allies, as are other aircraft. However, when we talk about off the shelf, I would say that a key component of it, in the vernacular I would use, would be around margins, the ability to grow,

Government Operations committee  At this point, again, decisions have not been made. We continue to provide information on it and have not been provided with the kind of decision, I would say, on a broad way forward, which would then cause us in any procurement to then do a bit more of a detailed look at what th

Government Operations committee  Most of the capabilities we're talking about, whether of fighters or ships, are almost half-century decisions. The future fighters that we acquire over the next 10 years will probably fly for 30 years beyond that, if not more. I think it's therefore really important to make sure

Government Operations committee  Again, I can't speak for the government other than to respect their decision-making process. I can tell you that departmentally it's a very active file, with the minister asking us a lot of probing and appropriate questions, and we're developing a lot of information for him. It i

Government Operations committee  I have some of the information. I'll provide you with what I do have. It follows a model that has been used in other international procurements. One that I'm very familiar with is the NATO Seasparrow project, which similarly was done internationally based out of the U.S. under t