The navy needs ships. The navy needs ships that are first-class fighting ships. They need to be able to afford enough of them to have a meaningful fleet.

The Type 26, which is the basis for CSC, may be an excellent ship; I'm actually not sure. There are concerns that have been raised about aspects of that ship. All ships have problems, but if it's going to cost that much money, then we're not going to be able to afford them. The British have given up on having to buy their original-sized fleet.

Let's say that we can emulate U.S. yards in our productivity and our quality. I would love to think that we can do better, because we're Canadians, so of course we can do better, except when it comes to hockey teams.

The U.S. equivalent at the moment, the new Constellation-class frigate, is costing about $1.4 billion a copy. You can get 15 of those for $20 billion. Our PBO is saying $80 billion; our navy is saying around $60 billion, maybe. It's three times as much. Why is that? We must delve into this to figure it out. Otherwise, our navy is not going to be a navy. It's going to be six AOPS and a couple of other old ships.

We've got to do better than this. We have to give the navy the tools that they need. We're living in a dangerous world and a dangerous neighbourhood. That's the challenge we have to meet.

How do we get from the $60-billion and the $80-billion fleet to the $20 billion fleet? What are we going to do to achieve that? Can Canada afford a $60-billion fleet?

Think of what $40 billion can do in terms of affordable housing, infrastructure, child care and all of the other things that are important to people, such as pharmacare and dentistry. How far does $40 billion go? It goes a long way.

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