Such an imbalance maintains provincial disparity in research and development funding. And the statistics are not mine, but the government's own. This imbalance has a direct impact on the provinces' rate of growth. In other words, this harmful policy has been operating for years. With this policy, some provinces get R and D funding, while others, like Quebec, get UI funds.
And it goes on and on, year after year, and the government keeps doing nothing about it. We have been denouncing this kind of thing for 15 years now.
Certainly cuts could have been made in other areas. Let me set aside my prepared speech to give you statistics I just received this morning.
Where could more cuts have been made? We, Bloc members, often suggested National Defence. In DND estimates, astronomical amounts could have been saved in forecasting errors alone. For example, $2.8 billion are supposed to be cut over the next three years. Our estimation was that $5 billion could be cut, but DND said this was impossible. The fact is that these forecasts were wrong, and here is why.
Take the closure of the base in Portage la Prairie for example. Savings of $411 million were expected, when in actual fact only $170 million was saved. A $241 million shortfall.
With respect to space training, we were told that the cost of basic training was $200,000 per student, when the actual cost is $700,000, or $500,000 more per student. They make this kind of forecasting errors and come and tell us that they will be able to save $2.8 billion. We cannot be sure of that, Mr. Speaker. There will be more unforeseen deficits.
Improving housekeeping in DND and several other departments would be one way of making funds available for research, research being the seed of successful new products that would promote rapid growth.
We will have a chance to pursue this at a later time.
For now, I suggest that these new statistics should give both the department and the government food for thought. The minister should go back to his drawing board, his operation table, his computations and come back with another set of estimates. This way, perhaps we will be able to see more eye to eye with the government in a few months.