Mr. Speaker, I know time is short but I would like to pose a quick question to the minister.
He said at the close of his remarks that he was hoping the debate today would not be conducted with a partisan litany of the record of the past. With all due respect, we do have to examine the past to make sure we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. That would be the reason that many people in the House are bringing up issues of inadequacy of the funding that the government has provided for our military.
I wonder how the minister can square his desire to see the debate conducted in a non-partisan way when members of his party perpetrated a terrific lie on the Canadian people during the election campaign when they ran television ads day after day that showed the Conservative Party of Canada was in favour of buying nuclear aircraft carriers for our military when they knew that was not true. They knew it was a lie and yet the Liberal Party did that day after day with ads on television. How can the minister now stand and say that he hopes we have the debate in a non-partisan manner?