Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Yorkton--Melville. That is one of those Saskatchewan ridings and a very good one I might add.
I am here to respond to the Speech from the Throne, as are all the members who are speaking today. Being the official opposition defence critic, I will talk about the military. If I were to talk only about what was in the throne speech about the military, I would have to sit down right now. There was one sentence, and it did not say much. It was a motherhood statement. That was in the written text.
The Governor General did make a few comments which I thought were important and which were added in, on the efforts of our soldiers and the marvellous service of our army, navy and air force in the area of Afghanistan. But that was it. There was nothing concrete at all about the military in the throne speech. That omission tells an awful lot about the government, as did a report presented by the Conference of Defence Associations and the Auditor General's report on one aspect of military spending.
After the Conference of Defence Associations made its presentation today I responded to it. Eric Sorensen, a reporter for the CBC, asked some tough questions about defence funding. They were very interesting questions. He did not back off. He asked me if I were the Minister of Defence would I spend more money on health care or on the military? My response was that it was a bogus question.
First of all, the Canadian Alliance identified in the past more than $7 billion of low priority or completely wasted spending by the government every year. That is money spent on political friends for projects that are not productive and other types of programs. The taxpayers' association identified about $11 billion in low priority and wasted spending.
However there is something even more fundamental than that which has to be said. Defence and other security spending is different from any other spending in the government budget. It is different for at least two reasons.
First, it is the first responsibility of the government, above all else, to provide security for the nation, to protect the sovereignty of the nation, and to ensure that the citizens of the country are safe and secure. The government has forgotten that with its lack of effort over the last nine years and the way it has allowed our military to deteriorate.
There is something else as well which has to be considered. We have members talking about more money going to health care and other important social programs. We have the government with all of these ideas that were thrown out in the throne speech, and granted we do not know what they really mean, but it looks like an awful lot of spinning. Liberal members must ask themselves how will they raise the money for these programs.
I would like the members opposite in particular to think about how that can happen because Canadians are starting to recognize this. If it were not for our military and other security provided in the country, I would argue that our economy would not be able to operate in a way which would produce the money that funds all these social programs. Without a strong, capable military, and without the other security spending, there would be so much unrest in our country that our economy would not function in a way that would allow us to maintain our status as a wealthy nation. That is something that the government has forgotten. It has not been talked about by the government and I have come to the realization that it does not understand that.
That was the first question from Eric Sorensen. The second question he asked me was: if the government refuses to put substantially more money into defence then how would I reallocate resources?
If we look at the military, there is no area that we could tear out and throw away and still maintain an effective military. There is no large, substantial area we could cut out of our defence budget and not put our overall military at risk of collapse, even more than it is. Those are the facts. There is no area we can cut out.
However, there are ways that money could be better spent. That is the case for any department. It is the case in the defence department as well. The Auditor General did a good job of pointing out one of those areas. The Auditor General put out a report today on NATO flying training in Canada. It is in chapter 4 of her report. This NATO flying training program was intended to provide training to Canadian and international military student pilots to fly helicopters, F-18s and various other types of planes that our military has and that other NATO allies have.
This untendered $2.8 million contract was given to Bombardier by the government. We talked about that at the time. The government tried to justify it, but it was unjustifiable. It was a sole source contract, untendered, given to its political friend, Bombardier. That is bad enough, and it is unacceptable. The government should answer to that.
We find out today from the Auditor General that only 41% of the training that was paid for by Canada was used. That means 59% of the pilot training that was paid for by the government went unused, and yet the payments still had to be made. That is $65 million, according to the Auditor General, in the first two years of operation which were completely wasted.
The contract was set up so there was no requirement to perform or deliver. That is the government. I do not blame the military for that. I blame the government and its political process through Public Works, a process that it uses all too often to award contracts to political friends and does not require those friends to deliver. That is exactly what happened here. We can see that there are areas where the money must be better spent, though there are no areas that can be completely cut out.
Mr. Sorenson went on to ask: If the government will not spend more money on the military, then what would I do? My response, and the only response, was “I would elect a new government”, because that is the only thing we can do.
The government has refused to provide adequate funding to the military. We all know that. Various groups have made that point clear. Many Liberal backbenchers have made the same point, to the extent that the House of Commons committee has asked for a 40% to 50% increase in the military budget.
Approximately $5 billion to $6 billion a year must be added to the base budget three years from now. That is a lot of money added to the budget, but that is what the Liberal dominated House of Commons committee came up with. That is what the Canadian Alliance has proposed for some time, that we increase spending on our military, with $2 billion immediately added to the base budget, and move it toward the NATO average. Yet the government has not responded to that.
The government has been dishonest in the way it has presented spending on the military. I want to refer to the Conference of Defence Associations and what it says in its report. It is absolutely right. These are things that our party has pointed out before. Of the $1.2 billion that the government talks about that it spent for security, it talks about it all the time and the defence minister in his answer says that, only $510 million was assigned to supporting Canada's military. So the real number is $510 million, and some $200 million of that was to fund the war in Afghanistan.
The government often says that it allocated $5.1 billion to defence since 1999. This is the Conference of Defence Associations saying this. What the government did not say, according to the Conference of Defence Associations, is that much of this amount has been assigned either to non-military objectives or to the services and operations deficit. Only $750 million has gone to military use over the past five years.
Canadians deserve honesty in reporting what spending actually has gone to the military. The government has not provided that and it should do that as a bare minimum to show some respect to Canadians.
There is virtually nothing in the throne speech. One motherhood statement on defence is not enough. We need $2 billion in the next budget and then let us talk about what we want our military to be. It is going to take more money in the future.