Madam Speaker, I listened very carefully to the minister's comments, and it seems to me there are some figures or details he either failed to mention or mentioned so quickly that I did not hear what he said.
Before putting my question, I just wish he would agree that as far as bases, colleges and infrastructures are concerned, Quebec has always been short-changed. There is no comparison between what happens in Quebec and what happens in the rest of Canada.
For many years, the policy at National Defence was to compensate for this imbalance with substantial military contracts that made up for the lack of military infrastructure in Quebec.
The international situation has changed, however. So much so that the Bloc Quebecois does not protest when a contract is cancelled, as in the case of the helicopters, because although this contract would have gone mostly to Montreal, we preferred to see the money invested elsewhere. We never objected to the cancellation as such.
There is also the new procedure for distributing these contracts across Canada. In any case, will the minister confirm today that Quebec has only 13.8 per cent of all the infrastructures? That Quebec has only 15.8 per cent of defence spending in Canada although it has 25 per cent of the population?
I did not hear him mention those figures. But when he closes bases or colleges in Quebec or cuts as little as 5 cents or a dollar, he adds to the imbalance in this respect.
The figures I mentioned, 13.8 per cent of military infrastructures and 15.8 per cent of defence spending, while we have 25 per cent of the population, if the minister can confirm those figures, would he agree that he is adding to the imbalance by making budget cuts that affect Quebec?