Madam Speaker, my colleague, the vice chair of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs, made some very interesting remarks. I am always very impressed with his reasoned approach and I look forward to working with him again as we have in the past.
If I did not misunderstand him, I would like to clarify. I thought I heard him draw an inference from the Speech from the Throne that somehow the government may be talking about scaling back the size of our Canadian Forces. Did I hear him correctly? Is he not aware that we are committed to at least 5,000 more regular forces and 3,000 reserves?
His leader spoke today about going to 80,000 men and women in the Canadian Forces. I wonder if there has been a costing of that size of increase to 80,000? Has there been a detailed rationale? I wonder if he is aware of that or was his leader just kind of throwing out the number.