Madam Speaker, the hon. member is getting way ahead of himself. I clearly indicated that we should not be getting into procedural debates. I also indicated that it is premature to talk about a hypothetical situation. We really do not know what will be required. I will not speculate on what is required in terms of the long term or even the short term campaign against terrorism.
We are in consultation with our allies and with the United States and as it is determined what role we can play we will, as best we can, be happy to provide that information, subject, always, to national security.
With respect to the strength of the Canadian forces, as has been said time and again, we have a recruitment challenge as every other country does, the United States and other countries. We are down to a total strength of about 58,500. Our effective strength--I noticed some article on that this morning--is lower than that but that is because we have a number of people who are in training. At any given time people are going through education courses and various training activities.
I must also say, on an optimistic note, that our recruitment is way up. Recruitment numbers this year are up substantially over last year with our new recruitment program. Our attempts also to retain current military personnel, together with the recruitment, will help us to bring our numbers up.
It is also worth bearing in mind that while these numbers are lower we do have a lot of new equipment and technology which means the force projection of those numbers is greater than what the force projection of those numbers would have been, certainly 10 years ago.
The hon. member talked about budget cuts again. Back in the days of the deficit, way over there on that side of the House, in that party in particular, they were saying cut government spending. I did not hear them say cut government spending but do not cut defence.
I was here back in 1993 and I never heard that at all. It has become convenient for them to say that nowadays but back in those days they were saying cut government spending. Everybody was saying it. Nobody said exempt defence. Nobody said exempt health care or exempt anything else. Everything was put on the table and the budget cuts were based so we could get our fiscal house in order. We have been able to do that. Other countries have done that as well. Many other countries, including the United States, cut their defence budgets but now our defence budget is going up. We have invested some $3 billion more in the last three years.
In terms of equipment, the member conveniently forgets that we do have a lot of good, modern equipment. Yes, we have some equipment that needs replacing. Of course the Sea King needs replacing. However we have new Coyotes that are the envy of many other militaries and were requested recently by the United States and other countries to be part of the operation in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
We played a very frontline role in Kosovo with our CF-18s. We have more precision guided munitions on order and if we were to engage in any conflict, we would need to make sure we had the necessary equipment to do that.
However, it would be very premature to talk about that. The member talked about the cut in the number of CF-18s. We have cut them down to a level that is still higher than what the white paper on defence policy of 1994 said we required.
I do not think the member has his facts right at all. We have more pilots now than we had at Kosovo. We may not have the same pilots, as there is always a turnover, but we have good pilots.
During an interview the other day involving the former supreme allied commander, General Clark, he said that the Canadian pilots were exceptional, that they were top class and that they continue to be top class. We have and have always had great training programs in this country. These are some illustrations. The member has a lot of his facts wrong.