I deeply and sincerely appreciate the work of this committee in trying to bring to light some issues that are of ever-increasing importance to the average, everyday Canadian. Unfortunately, it's a tough job, because most Canadians, deep down, know nothing about defence. Quite frankly, I don't think the government has done a lot to lead the people of Canada into exposing to them the consequences of failing to meet obligations that we promised.
Let's not forget that. We promised in 2008, at the Minister of Defence level, and we promised in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 that we'd meet it. Oops, in 2023, we said we're not going to meet it until 2032, which is an arbitrary number chosen by the Prime Minister to get him out of a really tight jam in his visit down to Washington.
There's nothing in the fiscal framework that indicates the Government of Canada is serious about meeting that 2%. It doesn't count unless it's in the fiscal framework. Where's that ammunition contract? Talk about an easy sell. That's representative. That's typical. People have lost sight of the actual output required by the Canadian Forces. That's what we should be measured on. Quite frankly, that's what our allies are measuring us on.
When we whine that we can't meet 2% by 2024, the rest of NATO doesn't care, because we promised that we could and we would, and here we are. I think it's going to get surprisingly tough for us over the next couple of months as we get asked a lot of really hard questions in the context of North American defence, NATO contributions and North American free trade—all of which are linked, but a lot of Canadians don't see it that way.