Public Accounts committee  That's exactly it.

Public Accounts committee  Yes. The Government of Canada has policy regarding sole-source contracts. Pat, do you want to add to this?

Public Accounts committee  I'll say a few words and then I'll turn to Pat. All of these contracts predated how we are approaching it now. We locked in kind of a fixed level of support, then you pay the increment. A lot of that would have been to make sure that we have more than enough support so that, if

Public Accounts committee  No, no, I understand.

Public Accounts committee  Just on the point of how long you do that will depend on the asset. On the surface combatants, when we do life-cycle costing, it's going to have to be 50-plus years, depending on how long we're going to use those ships.

Public Accounts committee  That's a completely understandable, good way to look at it. Now, that's for doing repair work on your piece of equipment. For us, to do life-cycle costs, it's not just the repair work. We do track repair costs, but when we get into the full life-cycle costs, it means the operati

Public Accounts committee  Maybe I'll ask Werner to answer.

Public Accounts committee  They have been fully costed. Yes, sir.

Public Accounts committee  Werner, do you want to speak to that?

Public Accounts committee  Well, I think I would make a couple of points. It's a very good question. One, as we've indicated, we're going to always want to continue to improve our contracts for maintenance and support. There was a previous government policy on how to do this in 2006 or 2007. It gave us a l

Public Accounts committee  Exactly. We're working with a firm that's done costing work with our allies as well, so that we're benefiting from the global experience to enhance our costing. We have a very robust in-house large team, probably the largest costing team within the federal government. We're using

Public Accounts committee  The fighter replacement project that refers to is the full replacement that the government has announced. Those were costed under the former government when the policy was to look at buying F-35s. That's not the interim fighter; that's the full replacement of the entire fleet. In

Public Accounts committee  Mr. Chair, I think I've answered the question. I've explained the government's position. All of that analysis and work is being done and will be done before the government decides whether to purchase an interim fleet.

Public Accounts committee  I'll touch a little bit on the costing, and then ask Pat to speak to the contracts. I totally agree with you on costing. A lot of the work of national defence had originally been more in the acquisition costs. Looking at the previous work of the Auditor General, particularly aro

Public Accounts committee  I think if you read the actual announcement of the government, it did not say that it had decided to buy. It had decided to enter into discussions with the U.S. government and with Boeing to look at the possible purchase of 18 interim aircraft. Part of the reason we're not makin