Mr. Speaker, over the past several months the standing committee on defence has heard about the atrocious living conditions and the quality of life our military personnel are experiencing. The only real reason for this is that successive governments have overworked and underequipped the members of our forces and have left them grossly underpaid.
At one of these committee meetings Colonel Jim Calvin reported that a fully trained private after three years services, married with two children, has only $49 of disposal income a month.
At the same time we heard the solicitor general brag that our prison system is one of the best in the world, a system which provides inmates with the use of golf courses, big screen TVs, pool tables, et cetera. But most astonishingly, our inmates receive in some cases a monthly salary of $157. This is more than three times what military personnel are forced to get by on.
The bottom line is that our convicts are being given more consideration by our government than our military personnel. How can we ever hope to recruit young people to serve our country, knowing that those in jail are treated better? They have to stand and—