Mr. Speaker, last week when I was travelling from my home riding to Ottawa, I happened to listen to a radio interview of the mayor of Cold Lake in northern Alberta, where our fighter pilots are trained. It was interesting to hear his somewhat reserved comments that he was glad that the fighter pilots were returning home, and they are always happy to return home to their families. Their families have lost a sense of meaning the fighter pilots are no longer going to be doing the job for which they had been trained. They had trained to fight when there was a fight that needed to be taken. I sensed the whole community was feeling some sort of loss because of the responsibility that was being taken away from these fighter pilots.
I often wonder now what incentive there is for new pilots who are entering the training system. How is the government going to incite new recruits into becoming fighter pilots, some of the best in the world, if they are never going to be given the chance to fly missions like this in Iraq and Syria?