Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that I did represent that part of the constituency which the member is representing now with the Cold Lake air base and I did hear from a lot of personnel over the years about some of the difficulties they were facing in trying to keep our jets flying. I did hear about the strain on the families due to over-deployment and so on. That certainly was there then, as it is now.
It is amazing to me that for the 11 years we have been here in the House we have heard that our equipment overall is continuing to deteriorate and is simply inadequate, yet so often when Canada goes to various trouble spots it is recognized as serving extremely well. When we look at why that is, I think the reason is obvious, but I would like to ask the member about his thoughts on this.
It clearly is not because they have state of the art equipment generally, and it certainly has not been the case in the past. It is because of the ingenuity and the excellent training of our military personnel. It is the people themselves who are so capable, so proud and so committed to doing a good job on behalf of our country and making our country proud that they make up for the dreadful inadequacies of the equipment. I would like the member's comments on that.