Mr. Speaker, it seems to me that what the hon. member for Saint John and her colleagues are saying is quite true, that this was the object of some politics in 1993. I remember it very well.
There were good reasons to be against the EH-101 contract, but the fact remains that the Liberals having cancelled that contract and having paid a very hefty price for doing so, then did not do what should have followed from that, and that was to act expeditiously to get some other helicopters. That is the main point here, not trying to relive 1993.
The biggest fault of the Liberals is not that they kept that one election promise. They kept it not because they are promise keepers but because they wanted a few high profile promises to keep so they could then break a whole bunch of other promises with impunity. However that is neither here nor there. The real tragedy of this is that they have taken eight years to replace the EH-101s and we are still a long way off from replacing those helicopters.
That is the real tragedy, the real crime which has been committed by the Liberal government. The people who depend upon those helicopters in the armed services and people who might depend upon them in various situations will still be waiting years from now thanks to the fact that the Liberals did not complete the process. When having cancelled the EH-101 contract, they should have then proceeded expeditiously to replace them with other helicopters.