No, not the defence minister as far as I know, but it certainly includes the foreign affairs minister. Money has been allocated to all of them so they can all go into the leadership race using taxpayer money. The government fails to understand that much of the spending is low priority spending and that it needs to set some proper priorities.
This particular budget has been billed as a defence and security budget so one would expect the government to show the very best it is going to offer for some time in the area of defence and security. Let us look at what in fact has happened.
The government has talked about, and this a figure put out by the finance minister, $7.7 billion for defence. I thought that was in line with what the Canadian Alliance had asked for. Well it is not because $2.2 billion of it will be financed through a new tax at airports. Then there is another $500 million, which brings it down to $5 billion, which is what the finance minister pointed to. I looked at this figure and thought it was kind of in line with what the Canadian Alliance had pointed out was needed, but no, that was not the figure because that $5 billion is not per year, it is over a five year period. The government is spending about $1 billion per year on security and defence, which is less than the money it gives to CBC. That is unacceptable. That is in a budget that is designated as a defence and security budget.
If we listen to what the government says, the defence portion of the budget is about $1.2 billion. In fact a couple of government members threw out the figure of $1.6 billion or $1.7 billion, but $1.2 billion is the figure that most point to. The fact is that amount is over five years. About $600 million of that is not spent on the military at all. It is spent on OCIPEP, the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness, and on other civilian uses.
When it is all sorted out and the $200 million and some that goes to fund the war in Afghanistan is taken off and the incremental costs of war are taken off, we are down to the bottom line, which is that the military portion of spending in this budget is less than $.1 billion per year.
Let us measure the budget against what the auditor general has called for. Last week the auditor general said that to hold the military at its current level, to provide proper maintenance and operation and to replace the equipment that has to be replaced over the next five years, $2.2 billion has to be spent each year. Instead, the government has allocated $.1 billion per year.
The Conference of Defence Associations, which is a group of people who care about the military, broke it down to exactly what the military needed and said that it needed $2.2 billion per year. The government instead promised less than 5% of what the auditor general and the Conference of Defence Associations asked for.
In the area the government has billed as its top priority in the budget, the defence and security area, the government has clearly failed. Am I saying that none of the spending is good? No, I am not. Some of the spending is well targeted and will be extremely helpful but if this is the government's response to the serious concerns of Canadians when it comes to defence and security, but in particular to the area of defence, then people should start asking themselves why.
If I may say just one more thing, the auditor general had it tagged when she was questioning people in the defence department and they said that the government had told them they really did not have to sustain a combat capable military. That is the bottom line. The government had told them it did not really expect we would be in dangerous situations so it was cutting back on the combat capability. That shows a clear failure on the part of the government. It is not to be trusted with the Canadian military, a sad commentary indeed.