Mr. Speaker, I do not believe a single word that member just said and let me tell the House why. As recently as a year ago these are the things he said about his government's record on defence:
—the government has been neglecting defence and as a result there is an absolute crisis...Its failure to give economic and moral support to our military is eroding not only our standard here at home but our stature abroad.
Further, he said that the men and women in uniform:
—have been giving much more consideration to our country than the government has given to them.
He also said:
For the last 10 years the government has underfunded and disrespected our military by not giving our people the tools to do the job.... Our people are wanting at every level. They have the desire and the will to do the job, but they do not have the tools.
He further said:
—the government has gutted our military and our manpower is so low that it does not have the ability to put the people that we require into the field to do the job of our nation.
Finally he said:
For too long we have been living off the coattails of our allies on the international security concerns that we all share.
Those are his statements in this place a year ago. That is a 180° turn from what he just said moments ago. That is why I do not believe a word he has to say on the question of our national defence.
He said that all had changed in the past nine months since he became a member of the Liberal Party. Surely he has changed 10 years, 20 years, 30 years of neglect that he spoke about. Yes, right. This from a government that just gave a throne speech that contained one completely meaningless line about defence. This from a government that campaigned using demagogy against our party for proposing substantial new capital investments in the military. This from a government that is still delivering the second lowest defence expenditure in NATO as a percentage of GDP. This from a government that is still delivering, according to the International Institute on Strategic Studies yesterday, one of the lowest relative defence expenditures among 164 nations that were studied. This from a government that is still leaving our men flying 45 year old helicopters and in submarines that cannot make it across the Atlantic without tragic fatalities.
How can he have any shame giving a speech like that?