Mr. Speaker, I hate to sit here on a Monday afternoon and have my colleague across the way subject the House to some misinformation. The fact is the Reform Party at the time was fully in agreement with the major budgetary cuts the government made in 1994-95.
Canadian Forces base Chilliwack was one that was certainly a candidate for closure. She states that because Chilliwack is no longer operational, in the case of disaster this will be awful for British Columbia. We just went through a disaster with the forest fires and the fact is 2,000 defence personnel participated in fighting those fires. They had no problem getting into the interior of British Columbia and many of them came from the naval base at Esquimalt.
Also, there are thousands of troops, as the hon. member from Edmonton just stated, based in Edmonton. The hon. member should know that in this day and age we can quickly transport troops by helicopter or by plane to various parts of Canada when there are dire emergencies. Whether it was the floods in the Saguenay, or the floods in the Red River, or the forest fires this year or, as the Minister of National Defence said this afternoon, in the case of any requirement being made by the government of British Columbia for the current flooding in B.C., the Canadian military is there and will be able to get on the job.