Mr. Speaker, I am proud to speak to this motion to enhance and support our military. I am also proud to represent Calgary Centre, a riding that has a proud history of support and respect for our military.
In fact, many Calgarians were incensed during the recent election campaign when the Liberals mocked the Conservative Party's serious proposals to give our military the funding it deserves. Providing proper funding would allow the brave men and women who serve our nation to carry out their duties knowing they have been endowed with the best training and equipment possible.
Over the past few months we have seen the Liberals continue to show disregard for our armed forces. We even read this week that the Liberals intend to impose further cuts, cuts of perhaps $50 million a year from our beleaguered armed forces. As one young officer recently told Conservative Senator Mike Forrestall, who quoted the young officer, “The government pretends to want a military and we pretend to have one”.
I find the government's contemptuous attitudes disgraceful. Canadians are not pleased with such attitudes. We share a proud history of support for our armed forces. We are incensed by Liberal government cutbacks in military funding and are saddened by the tragic loss recently of submariner Lieutenant Chris Saunders.
This terrible event, combined with the never ending horror stories of aging Sea King helicopters, underequipped troops and the loss of Canada's international standing are surely sufficient examples for the government to recognize that it must stop ignoring our sovereignty, jeopardizing the safety and security of our nation and demeaning those in uniform. We must restore the respect for our servicemen and women and return a sense of pride to their commitment to protect us.
In the post 9/11 world, we face a new reality which includes threats of global terrorism, oppressive regimes and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Rather than approach these matters with the urgency they demand, the Liberals have opted to treat our military with contempt and our foreign policy with indifference.
A decade ago in its white paper on defence, the government forecasted a diminishing role for the Canadian military. The Liberals assumed that the world would become a safer place and that military and defence matters would become less important. The Liberal government was wrong then and it is wrong now.
While our allies have conducted thorough reviews of their defence policies after 9/11, the Canadian government has been unresponsive, wasting time and resources and placing our sovereignty and security at risk. The Liberals have chosen to keep these matters on the back burner, not deeming it necessary to adopt new defence policies to new realities. While they have dramatically reduced our defence capabilities throughout the years of cutbacks, they have multiplied our commitments abroad.
The cutbacks have been so severe that the military has been forced to defer funds for badly needed infrastructure upgrades just to fund day to day operations. Since it is capital spending that allows for the renewal of military capabilities, the future of our military has been sacrificed to pay for its day to day existence.
Canada now spends less than 1.1% of its gross domestic product on its military, far below the NATO average of 1.9%. That means, to quote Liberal Senator Colin Kenny who is chair of the Senate committee on national security and defence, “We are spending about half of what would legitimize us in the eyes of our allies and the rest of the world”.
Not that long ago, from 1985 to 1987, under a Conservative government, a government with which I am proud to have been associated, the Canadian defence budget accounted for 2.2% of our gross domestic product, twice what the Liberals allocate today.
I am also very worried by the short-sighted, minimalist view adopted by the Liberal government on the role of our military. Conversely, as the Conservative Party leader said earlier in this debate, our party supports three longstanding and increasingly interlinked goals: the security of Canada, the collaborative defence of North America, and the promotion of peace and security on the international stage.
We must act now to deal with the ever increasing challenges that confront us. We must immediately increase defence spending by $1.2 billion per year and continually increase annual expenditures until we at least reach the NATO average of 1.9% of GDP per year.
Our 52,300 regular forces now struggle to meet the demands placed upon them. It is too much to ask of our overworked and under-supported troops. To adequately serve and protect Canadians we need a force of at least 75,000 military personnel and we need to provide funding immediately for new equipment, including airplanes, helicopters, tanks and artillery.
I want to acknowledge the fact that members of the Canadian Forces have held up remarkably well under trying circumstances. The brave men and women whose job it is to protect us deserve our respect and support.