Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke on her speech. Also, having accompanied her to Bosnia, I know she has a great interest in the military. I am glad she finally has seen the light on the spending because it was not that long ago that the former leader of the opposition of her party indicated in Hansard in 1995 that he did not intend to dispute any cuts that were made to the military. His party even went further. The chair of the public accounts committee indicated it wanted to cut a billion from the defence budget in the taxpayers' budget of the party.
I take this opportunity to congratulate the Alliance Party. Obviously its road to Damascus has had many turns. However it now is calling on the government to spend about $9 billion extra on various things and I look forward to its conversion to military spending.
In 1998 the leader of the opposition indicated that he would hold the line on defence spending. I am very pleased that we are now are all singing from the same book. That is wonderful and I want to congratulate the member on her conversion to increasing military spending. Could she tells us how much she thinks the military budget should be increased and for what it should be used?