Mr. Speaker, one of the obvious examples is the $2 billion gun registry. We have had other scandalous spending such as ad scam and the $100 million which was floated away. There is the $160 million that disappeared out of the back door of DND, where every dollar counts and where our soldiers are using outdated equipment.
For example, we have our Sea King helicopters. We could talk about those alone. Those helicopters are older than the pilots. For every 20 minutes a helicopter is in the air, it requires 36 hours to get them back up again. This is one example of outmoded equipment being used around the world by our brave men and women who are out there keeping peace in this very troubled world of ours. As a government, we are obligated to give them the best equipment in the world. What did the government do with $100 million that could have gone to some of their equipment? Even basic things like boots and uniforms would be a help. It spent $100 million on corporate jets to fly the Prime Minister around.
The Prime Minister is in Toronto this morning for a pre-election announcement. What did he fly in? Did he fly in a Sea King helicopter? No, he flew in a brand new jet, one that the government did not need. Its own officials said that it did not need these, that it had enough. He has logged about $500,000 worth of airtime on those jets since becoming Prime Minister, basically in a pre-campaign period. It is just an example. Our brave young men and women in the forces are using, driving and flying equipment that is truly not safe. It is outmoded and outdated, yet the Prime Minister of Canada is flying around in a $100 million corporate jet, which its own officials said that it did not need.
This is symptomatic of how the Government of Canada has browbeat officials in every department where officials did not dare say out loud what was on their minds. They did not whistleblow to declare and bring forward some of the wrongdoings in government on the threat that they would be fired or replaced. We saw a lot of that in the public service.
That brings me to one bill that I introduced in this place three or four years ago. It was a whistleblower bill that would have provided public servants in every government department and crown agency around the country protection so if they did see wrongdoing, they could come forward and the government would have to do something about it or the public would determine that it had to be fixed.
What the government attempted to do, and it did it very successfully, was to silence these people. It could have brought in a whistleblower bill or it could have supported my bill. However, it chose not to because it did not want the truth to be known. It wanted to continue to run the government with a heavy hand. We truly paid a heavy price for that heavy hand of government to do exactly what it wanted in the last 10 years. It has finally caught up with the it.
In this election we will have a united Conservative Party on this side of the House. Canadians will truly have a choice and they can determine whether it will be this group or that group that will be the government. I am absolutely convinced that now we are a government in waiting. We have the talent on this side of the House to replace that group, and believe me, after the next election, it will be replaced.