Mr. Speaker, in their 2008 defence strategy, the Conservatives promised significant investments, but nothing ever came of that because of their incompetence when it comes to managing defence procurement.
Now the Department of National Defence is in the same boat as the other departments: it has to make cuts so that the Conservatives can hand out pre-election goodies in 2015. The senior defence staff has proposed a terrible solution, namely to cut personnel.
Can the minister promise that he will not reduce the number of full-time members of our armed forces?