I want to refer to report 5 on Canadian Armed Forces housing.
This one launched me too, I have to tell you. We found out that the government can't buy planes, can't buy helicopters, can't buy submarines, and now we find out it can't even buy houses.
What really gets me is that it's not as if housing military staff is something new, like it was a new mandate, like we're moving them out of pup tents and we're going to put them into buildings, and this is the first time we ever thought about it and it didn't go that well. It seems to me we've been doing this sort of thing since about, I don't know, 1867 maybe. We've had some kind of responsibility for armed forces personnel. In my view it ties into the fact that, again, we spend a lot of time talking about boom, boom, war, war, bomb, bomb, equipment, equipment, but at the end of the day it's the people.
There are too many scandals around veterans, people who have gone off to war while the flags are all waving, the band is marching, and everyone is happy. They go off to war, and they come back broken, hurt, and they're not dealt with properly. To me, this is the same thing.
They may not be veterans returning from war, but they're still veterans and they're still wearing the uniform of the Canadian Armed Forces, and they deserve to be housed decently.
How the hell can it be after all this time that the Canadian Armed Forces still can't properly house our armed forces personnel? That's a question I hope we get to ask.
Thanks, Chair.