National Defence committee  I'll try to be quick, since we don't have a lot of time. Simplifying the specifications would be a major improvement with respect to the time we need to put together a response. I mentioned earlier the RFP we have with another country that's 35 pages long, versus RFPs that are hundreds of pages here.

National Defence committee  You heard in the first hour before us that they had a study from a consulting firm. They got the information from the RFI, and they thought that with this information they could make a decision that the P-8 is the only one, which is totally untrue.

National Defence committee  Maybe Anne-Marie can also complement that, but some countries are clearly having conversations with us. They say, “Here's the airplane we want. Here's the capability we want the airplane to have. Here are all the systems we're looking for.” They give us the range they need to fly.

National Defence committee  There has been a transformation over the last few years in our industry. Bombardier builds business jets. They are not as big as the big Boeing and big Airbus jets. They are the best performing jet in the world. They are the ones that fly farther, faster and higher than anybody else's.

National Defence committee  Absolutely. This is a better product. Our airplane versus the CP-140 Aurora today or, especially, the P-8 will burn 40% less fuel. Imagine, after years and decades of operation on a daily basis and thousands of hours of flying, how much fuel burn we're going to be saving and how much more environmentally friendly that solution is.

National Defence committee  I will start and then let Anne-Marie answer, because she's the one who actually leads the bid team at Bombardier that receives the proposals from all around the world. Clearly, there was a flaw in the process here. PSPC went out with an RFI, which we answered in good faith. As a very responsible company, we said we can do A, B, C, D...all the 13 criteria they had.

National Defence committee  We've never seen this before. It's unheard of. I've never heard of another country doing things this way.

National Defence committee  It's important to move as quickly as possible, but the short answer is yes, Mr. Savard‑Tremblay.

National Defence committee  That's a great question. Clearly, I think we see—because, as I said earlier we're working with other countries—that unless other countries have the capability themselves, like we have here, they may decide to sole-source. Overall, other countries don't have.... As I said, five or six countries in the world can build and design airplanes, make them fly and certify them.

National Defence committee  As we said earlier, there's clearly a lack of working together before the need happens. Right now, I think it's a bit of a reaction. I still don't understand, even in the situation we're in today, why that reaction exists. As I said, we just spent $2 billion on the CP-140s today, which have been there since the eighties, to extend their life to 2035.

National Defence committee  Thank you.

National Defence committee  Yes, we said we could during the first half of 2022.

National Defence committee  Of course. We’ve been working with the United States, among others, for many years. We have extremely well-known programs. The name “Bombardier” resonates in the Pentagon, because some of our aircraft are used in Afghanistan. They each fly around 5,000 hours a year and have different capabilities.

National Defence committee  We saw clear processes that were a little less complex, which had sometimes been initiated upstream. Before all that, we had conversations to understand what countries were looking for. In Canada, there is a process that consists of sending a request for information, which clearly states, in article 1.9, that it will not be used to select anyone.

National Defence committee  No, never. None of the American consultants who conducted this study and who have an office here in Ottawa called us to find out what we were capable of producing or not. Mr. Pyun, do you have anything to add?