We see that the Parliamentary Budget Officer did a baseline study by looking at other countries and costs. It factored in an inflation cost per year.
In fact, if you take a close look at the report, you will see that, for the years 1994, 1995, 1996 and 1997, it calculated the expenditures by adding an increase for inflation. It compared the current structure of the Canadian armed forces to the one that was in place in 1994. In so doing, it concluded that the funding was not sufficient. However, if it had concluded that the structure of the forces was similar to1997, it would have drawn a completely different conclusion, meaning that the funding was sufficient.
Another problem is that something else was overlooked.
The minister talked about the cost of the 2% budget increase. In fact, in 2017-2018, it will go up by 1%, but there has been a 2% increase since 2008 already. That is already in effect, but it was not factored in.
In addition, the administration and managerial decisions have not been taken into account. We often look at the budget available and try to eliminate the less important activities and reinvest in our priorities. In fact, we are now reviewing our activities. However, that is not taken into account. When that happens, we can—