Mr. Speaker, there have been many cases of waste and misplaced priorities in the Department of National Defence and I thank my colleague for the opportunity to outline a few of the worst examples.
We start with the two new Challenger jets to fly the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers around. They were paid out of DND funds, even though the department itself advised that there were no problems with the existing aircraft.
Given the difficulty the military has had in keeping its 40-year-old Sea Kings and Hercules transport planes in the air and the problems that have been identified with the CF-18 fleet, the Challenger jet purchase is an example of Liberal ministers putting their own comfort ahead of the safety and effectiveness of Canadians troops. The unnecessary jets are being purchased from where? Bombardier, a huge Liberal donor.
It seems like the Liberals are raiding the military budget for their own political benefit which is shameful. This is part of a trend. The government gave another $65 million to Bombardier in the last two years for pilot training that was never received. It is a 20 year program so obviously something has to be done to ensure that hundreds of millions of dollars more are not wasted over the next 18 years.
This year DND has run up a budget shortfall of $439 million, of which $64 million has been spent on rentals. When we consider that every time the Canadian Forces deploys overseas, or even within Canada in the case of the ice storm and the Red River flood, it has to rent transport aircraft and cargo ships. It makes one wonder whether we would have saved any money if we had purchased the equipment ourselves.