Mr. Speaker, that is absolute nonsense. That is not what I said. That is what he thinks he would like me to have said.
Let me give a couple of instances. When we had the ice storm here we had 4,000 personnel in overseas missions but we could still put 16,000 troops on the streets of this country to help Canadians citizens.
On the eve of the millennium when we were concerned about the millennium bug, we had 3,000 people overseas but we still had 25,000 troops, 11,000 reservists, ready to help their fellow Canadians.