Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments. I have the utmost respect for my colleague from the New Democratic Party for the ongoing work that he does as the defence critic for his party. I had the opportunity in the last Parliament to work closely with him on the defence committee. I know that these issues of concern for our men and women in uniform are as near and dear to his heart as they are to mine and many of our colleagues.
I just want to agree with his rebuttal to the statement by the parliamentary secretary when he asked whether he, and by extension all of us as parliamentarians, would be supportive of an integrated approach that the government may or may not put forward. I would suggest as well that what we have seen from the government over the past decade is far from an integrated approach to defence, diplomacy or foreign assistance and development. A hodge-podge of knee-jerk reactionary policies has been put forward, rather than any sort of vision on how to address not just the needs of the defence community, but those other needs that he spoke of as well.
We just went through an election campaign and all of us had the opportunity to participate in all-candidate forums in our constituencies. I know that he personally believes in a strong military in Canada. He personally has spoken many times about the need to have, as our motion states, combat capable troops not only to protect the sovereignty of our own nation, but to assist other nations as well. I wonder if he could explain the NDP policy in this regard.
The new Conservative Party of Canada was very clear during the election campaign on what we would commit. We said that we would commit $1.2 billion up front to provide the needed financial assistance to get our military at least to turn the corner. We recognize that is not enough, but we wanted to move toward, as quickly as possible, the NATO average as a percentage of GDP.
There was a lot of confusion in my constituency about exactly where the NDP stood. It never put any numbers down as to what it would commit. One thing the Liberals do is to talk in flowery terms of how they will support our men and women in uniform. However, it is quite another thing when it comes to actually making the commitment in writing of what will be done to accomplish the things the member talked about during his remarks. What specifically is his party prepared to commit in order to ensure that our troops are combat capable? How many dollars will the NDP put on the table?