Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, the debate is on a motion, introduced by the third party, in which the Minister of National Defence is asked to extend the mandate of the commission of inquiry to cover all armed forces and not only the military unit in Somalia.
I would like to explain the situation and the position taken by the Bloc. For several months we have been asking the government to consider the importance of establishing a commission that would investigate the situation prevailing in the forces at this time. The government, however, has decided to establish a commission that will cover only part of what we see as the real problem.
This is a very serious matter, and Canadians and Quebecers have doubts about the credibility of those in charge of the Canadian Forces and whether they are doing their job, and they wonder whether all this could be improved. I worked in education for more than 21 years. In my riding, we had four cadet corps, two army and two navy, and I think the people who are involved in these projects do a good job.
Now, however, people are not so sure, but I think we should not blame the entire military. As I said before Question Period, it is likely that only some of the people who make the decisions should perhaps change the way they do that. The Bloc Quebecois supports the motion of the hon. member for Saanich-Gulf Islands, and we think it would be useful for the government or the Department of National Defence to expand the scope of the study so that all this could be cleared up.
I think Canadians are now asking questions about the quality of Canada's defence. As you know, this year Canada has projected a deficit of $33.5 billion. On the Standing Committee on National Defence, the Bloc Quebecois suggested cuts that would trim the Defence budget to $10 billion, but the government refused.
The government is going to make cuts. It will cut $1.6 billion over three years, while we requested a cut of $4.8 billion over three years. Right now, the Government of Quebec is about to bring down its own budget. In that budget, ministers will each receive an envelope, and they will have to operate their departments with the funding provided in that envelope.
I think the Canadian government could have done the same thing. When we sat on the joint committee with the senators, we were told that Canada was going to buy submarines. Fortunately, this is no longer the case. This is not a time of expansion, but rather of reduction. This is a time of streamlining and of making what we have as effective as possible.
In the spring I had the honour and the opportunity to visit our forces in Bosnia-Hercegovina. We were able to visit Canadians stationed in Gorazde and another group in Visoko. We were able on site to see that the Canadian forces were doing a good job there. Now what people want is an investigation to see what could be improved. We are told that morale in the military is low at the moment. Therefore would this not be a good time for the government to set up a commission to look into all of this?
As I was saying, I am on the Standing Committee on National Defence. Since becoming a member, I have noticed that the committees-there are 22 of them-sit a lot during the week. What is the real role of the committees? Is it not time in Canada for us to review the role of our House committees? The committees sit several hours a week and simply make recommendations. Unlike in the American system, our committees prepare documents, and often these documents, after having been produced at great cost, are simply shelved and never heard of again. It is as if the committees were used to assess popular opinion and to find out what people were thinking. However, the people on these committees, whether in government or in opposition, work very hard. We have people from Canada and Quebec appearing before us to express their points of view. Very often, however, these committees have no real power unfortunately. The power lies in the hands of the ministers and cabinet. I think it would be a good idea, as we suggested in our committee, for committees to have more power so that the government and the opposition could together develop a coherent Canadian policy.
In the past 15 years in Quebec, military investment has been insufficient. There has been a shortfall in Quebec of $650 million a year. Quebec is not receiving its fair share. They say that 23.5 per cent of Canada's defence budget comes from Quebec. But only 17.4 per cent of the total budget for defence and defence research goes to Quebec. As a direct result of this budget, Quebec will lose 15,000 military and civilian jobs. And this will create a spin-off and an indirect job loss of 25,000, in addition to the 40,000 other jobs lost each year, a 40,000 job shortfall for the past 15 years. While Ontario gets 73 per cent of the defence research budget, Quebec must be happy with a meagre 12.4 per cent. That is unacceptable, 12.45 per cent of research spending for Quebec when 73 per cent goes to Ontario.
Only 15 per cent of all of Canada's military facilities are in Quebec. The closure of the Saint-Hubert base, which was announced in the last budget, will cause a loss of 600 jobs. Six hundred people are going to be out of work. The total number of casualties from the staffing cuts in Bagotville is 285 employees.
We cannot help but notice that, despite commissions, despite studies, despite committees which try to strike a balance, Quebec is getting less and less, and that is unacceptable.
Last year, the Government of Canada made probably the worst decision it will make during its four year mandate, and that was to close the Saint-Jean military college. And I must say that I have often encountered senior departmental officials who tell me in private and who will continue to tell me that it should not have been done. But they did it anyway. They closed the military college. I am telling you this not to reopen the debate, but to make the point that there are 13,000 bilingual positions in the armed forces, of which 7,000 are filled by unilingual anglophones. Of the 13,000 bilingual positions, only 6,000 are filled by Quebecers or others, and because we do not have enough bilingual members of the armed forces, the 7,000 other positions are filled by anglophones.
They talk about having a bilingual policy, but it is just a ploy. If they ever were really serious about it, they never would have closed the Saint-Jean military college because that was really where they trained bilingual members of the armed forces. We will see, but I do not think that Kingston will be able to fill this need.
I would also like to discuss defence conversion, because the budget makes no mention of it. There are more than 650 defence conversion businesses in Quebec, of all sizes. Quebec has lost 10,000 jobs since 1987 due to defence conversion. Between 1990 and 1994, 7,391 industry jobs were lost. It is unacceptable that a government which claims to be responsible, as this one does, has neglected to develop a policy on defence conversion.
The Bloc Quebecois will support the motion put forward by our hon. opposition colleague because it is consistent with the official opposition's repeated requests to broaden the mandate of the inquiry on the deployment of Canadian troops in Somalia.
Both the official opposition and the third party have asked questions many times, but we never received any answers. In our opinion, this commission should have been mandated to also look into all the other disturbing events not only in the disbanded Airborne Regiment but also on the base at Petawawa and everywhere else in the armed forces.
According to rumours, which are confirmed by videos and other evidence, some members of the military go around their bases displaying white supremacist flags and wearing Ku Klux Klan armbands. This is totally unacceptable. If ordinary soldiers behave in this way, it is because they are allowed to do so. Their behaviour is accepted and may even be encouraged.
I think it is important to find out if our military bases and what they teach our young people encourage racism, because if such is the case, it is unacceptable. That is why the Bloc will support my hon. colleague's motion.