Mr. Speaker, there is a certain resplendent irony debating a Conservative member about the replacement jet that Canada so desperately needs. After all, for the past 10 years, it was their opportunity to replace the CF-18, which everyone agrees needs to be replaced. By the end of its current life extension in 2025, it will be a 40-year-old jet. There are currently 77 jets available to the Royal Canadian Air Force, down from something in the order of 120 jets. There has been an erosion in the number and the availability of the jets for the Royal Canadian Air Force to do the job they need to do.
Again, it is a resplendent irony to be debating a Conservative member whose government created this difficulty in the first place. The only thing that it did achieve were some glorious photo ops for various previous ministers.
For the life extension of the CF-18s, $2.6 billion has already been spent, and in October a further $379 million has been committed.
The member rightly identifies that the minister has talked about a capability gap. As the numbers I just recited indicate, we can readily see that going from 120 planes to 77 planes on a platform that is getting upwards of 30 years of age is not a recipe for meeting all of the needs of the RCAF.
I think there is an irony within an irony when the hon. member was quoted in September in a Metroland Media newspaper as saying:
It's about making a decision to replace the plane. A decision, in my personal opinion, that should have been made before this. We have to make that decision within 12 months because time is running out on the CF-18s.
We can actually agree with that. Time is running out. We are developing a capability gap. The hon. member is correct to say that this decision does need to be done sooner rather than later.
As members know, we inherited a bit of a procurement mess from the previous government. There were no appropriate guidelines for the replacement of the jets, so cabinet met and made a decision in the early spring as to the requirements that would meet Canada's needs. In the first part of July, notices were sent to all of the relevant manufacturers, all five of them, in an open and transparent way, for them to update all of their information so that we would have a complete picture. That information has been received and is being collated at this point, so the next stage of the process can be entered into and we can get done what the previous government did not get done in the previous 10 years.