Madam Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. By cancelling the EH-101 contract and not replacing the Sea Kings, the Prime Minister has put our men and women in danger.
On more occasions than not the Sea Kings are not capable of fulfilling their missions. That means the frigates they are on are put in danger because they cannot fulfill their missions. I had a nephew who flew the Sea Kings until he got married and had children. Then he thought it was a risk he really did not want to take anymore.
It is completely unfair of the government not to provide the equipment needed to allow our men and women to do their dangerous jobs as safely as they possibly can.
In terms of strategic airlift, the defence minister just committed on behalf of Canada, or at least he has indicated he is going to, to a NATO rapid reaction force of about 20,000. It is a good idea. We should be committing to do that. There is no doubt we will have to buy strategic airlift and C-17s are probably what we will have to buy. If we make this commitment to NATO we had better be able to deliver because with the rapid response requirement, there will be no welshing on our promise under this circumstance.
Then we will have the planes for the earthquake in B.C. which is going to happen sometime, and it could be in 200 years, it could be next year. The people in that area deserve to know that should that happen at least we can get our military people in there to help deal with the disaster and the mess that follows a situation like that. At least then we would have the ability to get our troops and their equipment to the next ice storm as needed.