I thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Before I get started, I just want to correct the record and what the previous member said. Since taking office, our government has increased military spending by 27%.
We can compare that to the decade of darkness, back in the days when our soldiers actually had to take off their fragmentation protection vests on the tarmac as they entered a plane to leave the area of theatre, and the incoming soldiers had to put them on at that time. We saw our soldiers go into Afghanistan in forest greens as opposed to arids, when those from other countries were wearing arids. I remember General Andrew Leslie saying at the time that it was so our soldiers would “stand out”.
That's not to mention the aspect of the lack of strategic lift. We saw that once we had the Chinooks in place the level of casualties decreased dramatically, because our soldiers weren't walking along the road where they were struck by IEDs. That all goes back to the cancellation of the EH101 contract by the Liberals, because there were three different helicopters in that contract, three different versions of the same one: the one that was search and rescue, another being the maritime replacement for the Sea Kings, which we still haven't seen yet as a consequence of that cancellation, and of course the utility, the strategic lift. By having variations of the same one, we wouldn't be stuck with the problem of not having parts. They would have been more interchangeable.
Today we have far better access to programs as well as equipment, and we're protecting our soldiers for the jobs we ask them to do, but with respect to Professor Sloan, the questions I have are with respect to cyber-security.
We've been told in this committee that the Canadian Armed Forces are focused with respect to their own assets, so instead of being offensive, they're mostly concerned with taking care of our own infrastructure as well as communications systems. Are you suggesting that we use cyber-security or cyber-technology in a more offensive manner as a part of our offence?