I don't think we need a lot of excuses on ATIP. Part of a democracy is transparency, so access to that information and sharing it with Canadians is critically important. I'm hoping that the department and the CAF are addressing this in the most serious manner because the external monitor and others have really been critical of National Defence's getting back on ATIPs, including getting Order Paper questions back to us as parliamentarians. If we're going to have a fully functional democracy, that information is critical.
I'm going to go back to the CANFORGENS memo that both you, Mr. Matthews, and you, General Eyre, put out about expenditure reductions in the department. You're saying that it's a billion dollars. We already know that $2.5 billion lapsed in the budget last year. We know that the government allowed $1.2 billion to lapse in the budget the year before that. Now we're going to cut it back by another billion dollars. The PBO just came out with his report and said that there is too much tail and not enough teeth in the Canadian Armed Forces, and that only 31% of every dollar actually goes into military effect.
What are we going to do to make sure that we have more teeth and less tail and that we keep the sharp end of the stick? You know, when you talk about where our troop numbers are at, you're saying that there are 10,500 in the queue getting trained. We're short just shy of 16,000 members. I'm hearing from reservists that they aren't getting their skills in their trades, that they're not getting trained up fast enough. They're years behind, not months behind.
What's going to give here on a billion dollars this year, and how are we going to deal with the threat environment that we're in if we're going to continue to cut rather than invest in our Canadian Armed Forces?