Mr. Speaker, throughout my 35 years in the RCMP, I was involved in many emergency situations, not in a military scope but emergencies within Canada such as major explosions, major fires, floods, etc.
One of the biggest problems in any emergency situation is a breakdown in communications. It does not matter where we are, when we have multiple agencies trying to work together, it does not work as efficiently as one agency integrally working within itself.
That is what alarms me here. We are taking away one of our strong tools, the CF-18s, that was there to protect our men and women on the ground if needed, and it was proved that it was needed. Relying on other allies to give that support to our troops will lead to a failure.