Mr. Speaker, that is kind of rich coming from the member of the opposition to suggest that during this recession there will be this huge increase in demand. We know that in the last recession when the Liberals were in government, instead of adjusting for the increased needs in social assistance and health care, they decided to slash the economies of the provinces by cutting back on equalization and health and social transfers. As I just stated, we will not do that. We are increasing the overall equalization, social and health care transfers to all provinces, which will be a major way to help those provinces deal with any increased needs.
When the previous Liberal government went into its deficit fighting, not only did it cut equalization, social and health care transfers, but it cut, slashed and burned our military budget. In this budget, we will continue to address that and help our Canada first defence strategy. We will slow some of that growth but there will still be increases of 20% compared to where we were when we took over the Department of National Defence from the previous Liberal government.
National Defence will continue to grow. We will continue to meet the needs of our military personnel, allow them to keep their equipment up-to-date and keep increasing their personnel to deal with the challenges they face around the world and do such a great job representing us as a country.