Mr. Speaker, I want to be clear. We have heard from the Conservatives and I guess we are now hearing it from the Liberals. They want to know how much are we going to spend. This is not a bidding war. We need to know what we are going to do. The Liberals clearly do not know. They are hedging. We heard from the defence minister that we would have a full blown review and then that we would have a review just within the department. I am not sure what that meant, and we are not even sure if that is happening at this point.
It would be irresponsible for any party to stand in the House and say that it will spend $1 billion on this. I know I want to spend somewhere in the range of $100 million to $200 million on housing and better remuneration for the lower rents. I know I want to do that but I cannot say what the exact number is. Will that figure change if we take on those additional 3,000 or 5,000 in the reserves? Obviously it will go up.
Do we support the replacement of the Sea Kings? Obviously we support that. My colleague from Nova Scotia has been very strong and adamant on that, in spite of the incompetence that has been shown so often by the government on the issue and the length of time it has taken.
However it is irresponsible for anybody to stand in the House today and say that he or she will spend this amount of money. It was irresponsible for the Conservatives in their party policy to say that $1.5 billion had to be spent on operations and $1.5 billion a year on new equipment. They did not know what that meant and they do not know it today either.