Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for the question and for his very kind comments. As he knows, it is not every day that one gets a kind comment around here. So I will take it while it is coming.
When we were sitting as the defence review committee, the hon. member and I, we did look at morale in the forces. I think the state of morale was partly caused by economic circumstances. Particularly, we heard about problems in the lower ranks because of the pay structure. We heard about a lot of real problems because of lack of equipment. I can tell the hon. member and all members that practically as long as I have been in the House that has been a complaint from the military; they do not have enough equipment or the right equipment.
Today that is changing somewhat because the new ships, which we had a chance to visit and to have a good briefing on, are state of the art. We learned in Bosnia, that our armoured personnel carriers needed upgrading. We need new ones. The committee, as the hon. member knows, was very supportive of that.
We were very supportive about other items such as helmets and flak jackets. We took into consideration all the things that we heard from the people in the field, not someone coming in to brief the committee sitting on Parliament Hill. We travelled with our military for four days. We slept in the same quarters with them. We ate with them. We travelled in the personnel carriers. Members from both sides of the House had that opportunity.
It was very important because it impacted on the minds of committee members that if we are going to ask our troops to go abroad into difficult positions, whether it be cultural difficulties, the hatefulness that you run into in UN peacekeeping duties, that those people have to have equipment in order to perform their duties.
I am sure the hon. parliamentary secretary will agree with me that by and large on the committee we had unanimous support for this type of thing. The members worked very well together. The report is certainly one of the best reports that has been brought into the House on defence matters, not only in our time but certainly in years past.
I encourage the members of the committee to be very positive in the future in holding more committee meetings because, as I said in my remarks, we must continue to discuss the problems that arise, to take corrective measures and to make recommendations. We made many recommendations in that report. Many of them are already included in the white paper that was brought in by the government.
I want to point out to the hon. member who brought the motion before the House today that this is all part of the ongoing scenario. A committee brings in a report, we meet people firsthand and we agree they do have problems. Together we sit down, write a report and make recommendations and the government accepts those recommendations. Also, I am sure that more of them will be studied and taken into consideration in the future.
I want to thank the hon. parliamentary secretary who was very good to deal with on that report. He is well informed. We were very fortunate to have him as he is a retired admiral. The hon. member for Saanich-Gulf Islands is a retired colonel. I must say to the hon. parliamentary secretary that I was-