Mr. Speaker, I would ask the member to take note of the fact that the main political thing here is we are not against an increase in defence spending, if it is money spent on the kind of vision, so to speak, that I laid out in part in my speech. I laid it out only in part because I did not have the time to deliver the entire vision.
What is significant is we are saying that we are part of the consensus that something has been underfunded, that something needs to be addressed in terms of the Canadian armed forces. I have no illusions, and people in my political universe should not have any illusions about this. If we were to create the kind of Canadian armed forces that the NDP wants and put them at the service of the goals that the NDP has in mind, this would not necessarily be cheap. This could actually be very expensive.
What I am trying to do is transcend the old debate between this party wanting to spend less, and that party wanting to spend more. I am trying to get beyond that debate, which has kind of an obvious partisan dimension to it, in which we both appeal to our traditional constituencies. I want to get beyond that debate and ask what it is that we want our Canadian armed forces to do.
It may well be that even though the hon. member and I have a different view of things, both views will require more money if they are going to be done properly.