Madam Speaker, I want to thank my leader for sharing her time with me. She is totally committed to defending the interests of both our veterans and all active members of our armed forces who are experiencing very serious problems at the moment.
We have put forward this motion because we are aware that the present government has brought our armed forces back to the sixties and seventies. They are close to not being operational. This is strange because we expect a lot from our soldiers and their families. It seems to me that it is the duty of the House of Commons to care about what is going on within our armed forces.
Everybody is pretty much aware of this reality that is devastating our armed forces. It does not affect 10,000 or 50,000 people, but hundreds of thousands of Canadians. Our soldiers are directly affected by this devastating reality. Are their immediate families and their extended families. Practically all Canadians are affected by what is going on right now, by what we have been learning about life within the armed forces.
As the member of the Progressive Conservative Party for Chicoutimi, Quebec, I must say that there are soldiers in that region who worked extremely hard during the national disasters that hit our country in recent months and recent years. Members of our armed forces have been and continue to be our national heroes. However, this fact must be recognized in a tangible way; the government must act responsibly.
As this issue affects hundreds of thousands of people, indeed all Canadians, we think the time has come for a ministerial statement, either by the Minister of National Defence or the Prime Minister, to show all Canadians that we are committed to modernizing our Canadian forces and making them effective again.
We expect a lot from these people and I am positive they do not feel their services are considered essential. They are called upon for every activity, for every national disaster we go through. They are also called upon to travel to other countries, to give up being with their families for months at a time, with absolutely no recognition.
The government in power is waiting on the recommendations in committee reports. It does not need to wait; at the very least, it could start by immediately improving its management of equipment replacement. It costs about $1.5 billion a year just to replace and modernize our equipment.
There has been talk about many purchases that have been made without regard for the priorities that any soldier would be able to set. The supply department itself is extremely inadequate. These are things that could be done very quickly. Normally, recommendations in the auditor general's report can be acted on within the year. But instead the government is waiting on the standing committee's report.
Before the committee's final report is in, there are extremely progressive measures I think the defence minister and the government could take.
Canadian soldiers have been serving abroad for four years now, as well as at home. And who is Canadian soldiers' worst enemy? It is the budget slashing Liberal government.
Everyone agrees that there has to be rationalization, but the government has gone into the banking business. It has set aside $20 billion in a special fund at a time when our soldiers are underpaid and lack modern equipment. They are the laughing-stock of other countries. With completely obsolete equipment, they are the best soldiers in the world. That is what the government should do something about and pronto.
It all began with a purely political move, the cancellation of the helicopter contract, which had been carefully worked out. This contract cost hundreds of millions of dollars in delay, compensation and the whole business of renegotiating a new contract that is costing several millions more than the 1992-93 deal.
In addition, there are serious shortcomings with respect to activities such as training, that have not been taken into account. Also not taken into account were the cost of replacement parts and maintenance, as well as the $960 million because of postponing replacement of the old and now unreliable Labradors and Sea Kings.
And it goes on. I prefer not to speak about R&D. The contract was scrapped, a term the government understands. It promised us it was going to scrap free trade, even though it has been responsible for raising our export figures from $90 billion to $215 billion. It also promised to scrap the GST, another thing it has not done.
What it did scrap, however, was the helicopter contract. Renegotiating a poorly negotiated contract cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
The former national defence chief of staff has admitted that the Canadian army was ill equipped to fight a true armed conflict. Really now. According to the Globe and Mail , in 1996, the chief of defence staff said that the Canadian army is not equipped to wage a serious war, and the rank and file are justifiably dubious about the competency of the high command. We are not talking about 1939, before the second world war, but about 1996.
In the 1996 auditor general's report, it was pointed out that certain well-known deficiencies in their tanks made it impossible to keep the risk of missions on which the armed forces were sent to an acceptable minimum. This means that the Canadian generals—and this merits careful reading because there is a considerable responsibility here—sent thousands of soldiers to combat zones in Bosnia and Somalia, knowing that their safety was compromised because of serious deficiencies in their armoured vehicles. The auditor general said that even machine-gun bullets could go through them. And our military personnel were riding in these, an instance of unacceptable irresponsibility.
This is why our party has decided to make this an official motion today in the House of Commons, in order to try to bring about some rapid improvement if possible and, of course, to also continue to work, as our colleague is, within the standing committee in order to have an official report ready very soon.
As for troop morale, one need only look at the reports from the standing committee currently travelling across the country to see how devastating this situation is to our armed forces.
A senior officer based, not in Washington, at the Pentagon or in Silicon Valley, but in Bagotville, in my riding—no one will challenge me on reporting what was said there, I am sure—told me that the situation was “just this side of a crisis”. This means that the government should not wait for the standing committee's official report. There are plenty of reports available. There are reports by the auditor general, who recommended that our military be better equipped both in terms of personnel and of operational equipment. That much the government can do, and it should do it quickly.
Members of the armed forces sometimes come across instances of shameless squandering on purchases of various equipment, on which they do not dare blow the whistle for fear of what would happen to them if they were found out. This is not Russia, or the former Soviet Union. This is not right. I hope the government will take into account the recommendations made by both the auditor—