Mr. Speaker, I will follow up on the inane comments by the parliamentary secretary, the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, who stood and bragged about what his new-found party, the Liberal Party of Canada, has supposedly done for the military.
He quoted the Prime Minister and the ex-minister of defence who was defeated in the last election campaign. They went out east and made some grand announcements last spring and talked about all of the equipment they were going to provide our military some years in the future. Our defence critic touched on it just now.
It is easy for a government to project spending way off into the future on some hardware. It is much harder for it to commit the dollars today in this year's budget or last year's budget to meet the operational needs of our men and women in the military.
The hon. parliamentary secretary knows it. He used to speak vehemently and passionately about this when he was on this side of the House, but how quickly he has forgotten that. It angers me to no end when I hear this type of nonsense being perpetrated by the member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.
The men and women in our military know better. They knew it when the budget came out and they were short $600 million in the three services this past spring for their operational needs. Then the Prime Minister had the gall to stand up and talk about building some ship years into the future. That is going to be little solace to the needs of our men and women of today. He should know better.
I would ask my hon. colleague to enlighten the House and the general viewing public a bit more about the hypocrisy of the government.