Mr. Speaker, since 2006, the government has put our men and women in uniform first by significantly increasing the budget for national defence. This is the single largest investment in our armed forces in a century.
The strategic shifting of funds in question is not unique to this year’s budget. The government is simply realigning the funds with the new expected delivery timeframes of our major purchases. Since the Department of National Defence did not spend the money this year, the economic action plan will ensure that all this money will remain available to the Canadian Armed Forces in future years. Defence retains sufficient funding to proceed with all of its procurement plans in the future.
Over the period 2014 through 2017, the Department of National Defence has experienced variances from earlier forecasts, including aircraft requirements, $1.7 billion; Canadian surface combatant, $0.2 billion; joint support ship, $0.3 billion; Arctic offshore patrol ship, $0.3 billion; and the family of land combat vehicles, $0.5 billion.