Madam Speaker, it is with a mixed sense of both pride and concern that I rise to speak tonight on the issue of sending Canadian armed forces peacekeepers to Ethiopia and Eritrea.
I would like to advise you, Madam Speaker, that I intend to share my time tonight with my colleague for Richmond—Arthabaska.
In the history of the United Nations' peacekeeping efforts, few countries share the type of legacy earned by the people of Canada. Our Canadian peacekeepers are the most requested in the world, known for their fairness, their dedication and their great skill and ability. Our peacekeepers have challenged those who would challenge freedom and liberty, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or the Middle East.
At no time in our nation's history has our service to global community or our sense of duty and responsibility ever been questioned. Whenever human rights and democracy were threatened, Canada has stood in their defence. Whenever tyranny and genocide have ruled, Canada has sought them out and ended their reign.
Given the importance of this debate tonight, let me be perfectly clear. I will not dispute the merit of sending Canadian armed forces peacekeepers to Ethiopia or Eritrea, but I will oppose with my very last breath sending our armed forces to any point on this globe if they are either unprepared or ill-equipped. As my colleague from Nova Scotia has stated, many of our men and women in uniform have been sent before as peacekeepers and they have been ill-equipped and unprepared.
I was at a family resource centre on one of the bases in Nova Scotia. I want the Minister of National Defence to know that I was really impressed with that family resource centre, but they had to have a place for little children so they could feed them, because our men and women were taking them to the food banks. They had to have counselling there because the fathers were away for months at a time. The government did not give one penny to that resource centre. The people on the base had to go out into the community and raise the money in order to put that family resource unit together. It was unbelievable. When they told me about this I was really in shock to think that we had allowed this to happen in Canada.
I have often stood in the House and said that when we order our men and women in uniform into harm's way, we must not increase the risk by supplying them with resources and equipment that are insufficient for the tasks we have assigned them to do.
I am confident that hon. members are aware of the uncertain state of our armed forces. In the last seven years Canada's defence budget has declined steadily as the operational tempo of our armed forces has risen. When I speak of our military's operational tempo, I speak of the ratio of time spent in deployed missions by our men and women in uniform.
This is at the very heart of what we debate here tonight. In the 1993-94 fiscal year, the Department of National Defence had a budget of $12 billion. Perhaps this was not ideal but it was respectable. Tragically, by the 1998-99 fiscal year the department was cut to a shameful $9.4 billion. In this past decade the defence department's budget has been cut substantially, by 23%. In this same time our military has been called upon to battle both the worst of mother nature's arsenal and the worst of the world's tyrannies.
Sadly, the cuts to the military's budget have been unavoidably followed by cuts to the numbers in their ranks. The number of CAF personnel has been reduced by about 20% in the same period as the budget cuts. The reduction in the number of civilian employees at the Department of National Defence has been a staggering 40%.
That said, fewer people with fewer resources are being assigned a greater number of missions and more work. The House knows as well or better than I that when we use terms such as missions and work we mean risk and danger.
Just this past weekend the chief of the defence staff, General Maurice Baril, confirmed in the Ottawa Citizen that there was likely to be an additional reduction of 2,000 to 3,000 men and women in a process that he called readjustment. General Baril alluded to a grave prediction that up to 10% of all the bases in Canada will either be shut down or sold off.
The best training in the world for young people is in the cadets reserve and then right into the military. They learn respect for their fellow Canadian, their fellow man, and they learn respect for their country. If we wanted to turn our country around, we would put more of our people in the military. We would give the military more money for the budget. We would give the minister more money for the budget. We would give Maurice Baril and whoever needs it more money.
Those men and women can never come up on this Hill with placards when in uniform and fight for what they need, but never do I want to see any of our people in the military taking their children to a soup kitchen.
That is with the understanding that about 50% of the defence department's infrastructure is aging rapidly and will need to be replaced within the next 10 years, at a heroic estimated cost of about $1 billion. That is why they talk about closing bases.
Those are just the details that are known. Those are just the facts and figures that any Canadian can learn by picking up the newspaper. Imagine what might be hidden away beyond the reach of the Access to Information Act.
It was around this time last year that we began to see the very real need for our help in East Timor. The House will recall the flurry of activity on the part of the Minister of National Defence at that time, when out of pure uncompromising necessity he had to limit our commitment to other parts of the world to make Canadian participation in East Timor possible.
I am a proud member of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs. It is very close to my heart. I attended committee meetings late last year when the chief of defence staff and his officers came and told us of the need to limit our international commitment until we had the resources to afford them.
My colleague for Richmond—Arthabaska is more knowledgeable than I in matters related to foreign affairs. I am certain he will have a greater understanding of and appreciation for the desperate situation now facing the Ethiopian people, but my duty here tonight is to speak for our armed forces and my responsibility to the House is to defend the best interests of the men and women in uniform.
If the merits of this mission are outweighed by the risks to our troops, then the cost is too great for our country. If the branch of peace can be extended to those desperate people, if a better life can be afforded to them by our action, it would be cruelly un-Canadian to turn our backs.
I will finish my remarks here tonight as I began, by praising the hard earned and well deserved reputation of Canadian peacekeepers. Here tonight it is under the watchful eye of a protective God that we dispatch them to help plant a Canadian seed of freedom in a land scorched by the fire of war and soaked by the tears of a crestfallen people. We pray for their safe return.
Godspeed and good luck.