Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to revisit a question I asked in the House back on December 7 related to the Speech from the Throne.
In the first part of the question, I talked about the comment about having a leaner military, which was almost prophetic for what we saw later in the main estimates and in the budget. In the second part of my question, I said that of the 1,700 words in the budget, not one of those 1,700 words was ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh. I want to revisit those two issues, because the replies we have been getting from the government have been incoherent.
The government is saying “leaner”, and we all know that leaner means cuts. It means a smaller military. It means less capabilities. We are seeing ongoing decisions by the government to withhold money from the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces.
If we look at the main estimates that were subsequently tabled, “leaner” translated into $300 million of money being cut from the main estimates. This is $300 million total that has been reduced from the main estimates. Then, in the budget that was presented by the government, we saw a defence procurement cut of $3.7 million or, as the parliamentary secretary will probably say, the money has been delayed or put off for the next five years. However, we all know in this place that any money that is deferred is potentially up for grabs by other departments, or for paying down the national debt, or reducing the deficit, or for special projects that the government may take from time to time.
Therefore, what we have here is a situation that the Liberal government is repeating itself. As we know, during the 1990s and early 2000s, we lived through what was called the “decade of darkness”. That was confirmed by the parliamentary budget officer in his report of 2015. He said:
The most significant budget cuts under program review occurred from 1995 to 2004 [...] The cumulative defence expenditure over that period of time was roughly $13.4 billion below what our modelling showed was required to maintain the existing force structure.
He went on to say:
As a result of the underinvestment through the 1990s [...] the cumulative affordability gap that existed until the early 2000s. The model shows that it was only with the significant spending increases seen in the latter half of the 2000s that the affordability gap was closed.
Of course, that affordability gap was closed by our Conservative government of the day.
Therefore, we are dealing with a situation where not only did we see the $3.7 billion, which was supposed to be for future defence procurement, but they actually reduced current procurement projects that are ongoing, such as the upgrades for our Halifax-class frigates, which are going to be potentially slowed down through the national shipbuilding program, and the Arctic offshore patrol vessels. The Harry DeWolf-class ships, which they are already starting to build, are now, according to reports in the Ottawa Citizen, up for grabs. The certification of our Cyclone maritime helicopters is also being slowed down.
My question back to the parliamentary secretary for National Defence is: Why are they not giving our troops the equipment they need right now?