Madam Speaker, I thank the member for the question. It certainly gives me an opportunity to talk about what our government has been doing, all the good parts.
First of all, as the member opposite well knows, defence is certainly at the forefront of the government's agenda which we have talked about since December.
The Speech from the Throne, budget 2004, the new national security policy as well as recent investments in key capital equipment, all highlight the government's ambitious security and defence agenda.
Regarding the Prime Minister's announcements on new search and rescue aircraft, the quotations are in the mail right now. The mobile gun system, which was recently announced, was a new project. That was not one that has been hanging for years, as the member opposite had said.
The maritime helicopter project is one that has been hanging for years, but on the other hand it has probably been good in many ways because we have a great bidding process. We have some really good competitors out there and the type of equipment we are going to get is going to be much more advanced than what we were looking at before.
The other project of course is the support ships, which is very important. This is something that has been talked about for awhile but has come up and we are moving ahead much quicker than what was planned before.
When we talk about budget 2004, we certainly put a lot forward there, but we have to remember that the budgets of 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2003, all had huge defence increases in them. This clearly demonstrates the government's commitment to defence. In fact, the member opposite said that there was no money in budget 2004. There was roughly $1.6 billion in new funding for national defence.