Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate the support of the hon. member and his party. He worked very hard on the joint committee and he should be commended. I thank him for his consideration.
With respect to the reduction in force personnel from a projected 66,700 as envisioned in the 1994 budget to an end state of around 60,000, we believe that much of the capability can be maintained simply by moving a lot of uniform people out of administrative positions of downsizing, of rationalizing, of privatizing certain services, of doing things efficiently to make better use of the personnel we actually have.
With respect to the specific point about those aspects of combat capability that we are losing, we are sort of trimming at the edges. Obviously the big one is that our fighter capability will be reduced somewhat from about 72 that are in service now to between 48 and 60. We have some flexibility depending on the financial requirements that I will be discussing with the Minister of Finance. It will be largely in that area.
My colleague, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, has made it clear that from now on we just do not have the resources to take part in every peacekeeping mission. It is very expensive and we have to evaluate each request on its merits and look at what we can do and what we can afford to do.