Mr. Speaker, the government does have a responsibility to run the armed forces and it is running them into the ground, as we have seen week after week here in the House of Commons.
I started out with a different attitude. I begged the minister to show me the documentation on how he could save some money. I said: "If you can save some money and you lay it out for me in a document, and I am not talking about a one-page press release, I am talking about showing me how you can save the money, if you can save the money and still fulfil the role of the armed forces then hey, I am a Reformer and I will go for it. Let us do it. If that will save some bucks I am all for it".
This is not about saving money. That is why Colonel Daigle said in his analysis, the memo sent to the minister on which bases should be closed, that CFB Chilliwack should be retained. He went on to say they will not save money shutting down CFB Chilliwack.
General Clive Addy said you cannot do your job if you shut down CFB Chilliwack. The last five base commanders, all of them engineers, all who have seen the development of CFB Chilliwack and realized the role it plays in the greater military, the whole engineer training school and so on, have written to me and have all said the same thing, that this base should not be closed.
It should be retained and you cannot save money by sending people to Gagetown or to Edmonton and ask them to use ground engaging equipment in December. You cannot ask them to practice their grading techniques in January. You cannot ask them to build a road or practice their bridging techniques on February 5. You cannot ask them to build Bailey bridges and to practice their rafting on March 4 in Edmonton.
Right now they are trucking all our guys from Edmonton back to Chilliwack to practice their bridging and rafting. As a matter of fact, to move their equipment in they damaged the bridge and it is going to cost $100,000 just to fix the bridge. It is not a good move. It is not a good move militarily. We heard that from General Clive Addy and others.
It is not a good move economically. We have heard that from our own access to information documents and from the government's own analysis. It is not a good move even right down to the idea-I do not want to make this into a national unity issue-of understanding what is going on in the regions of the country. It is important that the military have some institutional knowledge of British Columbia.
It is interesting and I hate to say it is typical but as an aside they changed the boundaries of my riding. It is now going to be called Fraser Valley. I phoned Elections Canada in Ottawa and I said I needed some maps to let me know exactly what it is I am looking at. The response from the people in Ottawa was: "Fraser Valley. Where in Alberta is that?"
I get the same feeling from this government when it comes to issues related to British Columbia. It is like the official who phoned me up one time on a speaking tour and asked if they went to Vancouver Island could they drive the George Massey Tunnel to get back to the mainland by quitting time. I deal with this all the time.
On my phone consistently are messages saying: "I am sorry I did not catch you in the office, Strahl, what is the matter with you?" Of course the message is 6.30 a.m. Why? Because they do not even understand there is a stupid time change in this country. On that side of the House they do not understand that the country does not end at the Rocky Mountains.
On military endeavours the Liberals are making a serious error. They recognize that B.C. should have a constitutional veto because it is a separate region. I do not want to get into a whole national unity debate. But they seem to understand at least that there is a region called British Columbia and it is separated by the Rocky Mountains. It is a hard doggone thing to get across in the middle of a landslide or an earthquake or in the case of a natural disaster.
However, the Liberals do not have clue one when it comes to understanding that the military needs an institutional knowledge of
what takes place on that side of the Rocky Mountains. They are going to pay a price for this. I hope that Canadians and British Columbians do not pay too big a price for the ignorant decision of this federal government.