Madam Speaker, I remind everyone what we are talking about today. We are talking about a supply day motion of the Progressive Conservative Party, sponsored by the member for Saint John. The basic crux of the motion is:
—to eliminate the barriers in the Letter of Interest to the aerospace industry, which impede a fair and open Maritime Helicopter Project.
I am very grateful the member brought it forward. Comox air force base is in my riding and I am delighted to represent a riding encompassing this special place.
In 1990 the budget for the Department of National Defence was more than $12 billion. It had 85,000 members. The budget was slashed by the government to $9 billion. It is now at $10 billion and its ranks have shrunk to 58,000. This week there are noises from the government that it will add another $600 million, basically for deserved wage increases.
Given the value of the dollar and the 11 year timeframe, is it any wonder our military has been asked to do more and more with less and less? Throughout this whole episode since 1993, the government has been paying lip service to supporting the military when in fact it has been callous and irresponsible in its actions, particularly in terms of equipping our armed forces personnel for the jobs at hand.
I was a candidate in the federal election in 1993. How well I remember the Liberals making a huge issue of the EH-101 cancellation. They never suggested we did not need helicopters. They simply suggested it was the wrong one. Where are we now, eight years later? Not a single maritime helicopter replacement for the Sea Kings has yet been ordered.
Search and rescue helicopters will be delivered to the west coast. We will have five in Comox this year and we will have the operational training centre in Comox. Search and rescue capabilities will be filled over the next year and a half, none too soon.
The Sea Kings are ancient. They are a national embarrassment. The $600 million paid to cancel the 43 Cormorant helicopters ordered in 1993 was a problem at the time. Cancellation was a problem because Canada really needed new helicopters then. We need them now more than ever.
The search and rescue helicopters ordered in December 1997 are the same helicopters that the government cancelled in 1994 at great cost to the taxpayer. the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence questions whether we have a problem with this process. Yes, we sure do, because we are not naive.
I will quote at some length from Greg Weston, Sun Media national political columnist. I would rather do that than plagiarize. He encapsulates very well what is common knowledge in national defence and political circles, both nationally and unfortunately internationally. This is an international embarrassment. He states:
Now, buying Cormorant helicopters from the same British-Italian consortium that got $600 million of public money for (the Prime Minister's) cancelling of the original contract for Cormorant helicopters—well, the political optics of this were not lost on the bright lights in the Prime Minister's Office.
Enter (the Prime Minister) and Company. According to one classified document, retired Ontario Chief Justice Charles Dubin was hired by the justice department to give “a legal opinion—in connection with the procurement of search and rescue helicopters”. He found nothing to justify voiding the Cormorant bid.
The Department of Government Services hired the accounting firm KPMG—
This is a respected outfit. He continues:
—to conduct an “independent validation” of the bid process. In a document marked “for government eyes only—sensitive,” KPMG reported that the bid process represented “one of the best procurement evaluations we have seen”.
Finally, sources tell us that the PM appointed—his trusty deputy PM and all-purpose political fixer to head up a secret cabinet committee, presumably to ensure that bidding was fair, open, honest—and not won by the Cormorant.
In December 1997, (the Prime Minister) headed south for his usual month of golf, reassured by the military that the Cormorant bid was history. But a funny thing happened on the way to the contracting office. (The Deputy Prime Minister) had to phone (the Prime Minister) in Florida to tell him the Cormorant had won. (So apparently had the Defence Department which had so effectively bamboozled the PM.) (The Prime Minister's) response to this news was described to us as largely unprintable.
In early 1998 (yes, after the election) the Liberal government decided to call bids for another 28 multi-purpose military helicopters, bringing the total new fleet to 43—the same number the Tories had ordered and (the Prime Minister) had cancelled five years before. This time (the Prime Minister) and Co. left little to chance.
In one memo to Air Force Commander L. C. Campbell, a fellow officer began: “Assuming there will be a competition to select the new maritime helicopter, it is quite possible that the Cormorant might win it”. He then asked: “Even though the Cormorant is politically unacceptable (“political suicide” as you said), how do you ensure that it does not win a maritime helicopter competition?“ And: “If the Cormorant were to win a military helicopter competition on its merits, wouldn't we again be in the same position of being accused of tricking the government?”
Finally: “Do you think the Cabinet would just opt to select the second place finisher if the Cormorant were to be winner of a competition?”
Does the parliamentary secretary now understand why we are suspicious, why we are not naive?
The bottom line is that this knowledge within the Department of National Defence, in political circles and for anyone close to this subject is the motivation for this motion. The government thinks it is politically embarrassing for it to allow an objective, unbiased, non-partisan analysis of the Sea King replacement proposals and insiders are aware that the fix is in.
The men and women in our armed forces and Canadian taxpayers deserve to be treated with respect and the government needs to take a principled position, not a political position, on such an important issue. Shame on the government. Shame on the Prime Minister's Office for allowing this to become a political exercise, for leaving our military in the lurch without replacement maritime helicopters and for corrupting the process.
The member for Saint John, the mover of the motion, has been eloquent this morning on this issue, as has the Canadian Alliance critic. I support this motion.
I have other points I should like to make. If the initial EH-101 contract had been filled, all search and rescue and shipboard aircraft, none of which are flying now, would have been flying four or five years ago. When a Sea King crashed in Saint John in 1994 the then defence minister, who is now the transport minister, asked Colonel Cody, then the base commander at Shearwater, to keep a lid on the community with the promise there would be a replacement by the year 2000. Colonel Cody complied, but when the promises went unfulfilled, in retirement he felt compelled to speak out.
Retired Canadian forces officers and Atlantic Canada senators have formed Friends of Maritime Aviation to speak out against tardiness of Sea King replacement. Collectively the retired officers have flown more than 10,000 hours in the Sea Kings. The blame rests with the Prime Minister.