Mr. Speaker, the hon. member needs to be reminded that we inherited from his party a $42 billion deficit. As a result of that, we had to cut expenditures in all of our departments and programs to get the budget in balance.
That meant a 23% reduction in the Department of National Defence. We had to implement that by looking for more efficient and effective ways of providing support services for the Canadian forces. We have been very humane and fair in our treatment of employees giving them incentive departure packages and finding other employment opportunities for them.