Mr. Speaker, I feel badly for the hon. member and his fixation on jets. In fact, we have reprofiled this mission so that there is a far greater involvement by our troops in this mission, and it has been applauded by our allies, most particularly the United States and Great Britain, because we need intelligence if those jets are going to be effective. We need assist, advise, and training missions if those jets are going to be effective. Canadians are doing it and Canadians are stepping up to do it.
The hon. member talked about the Martin years. We are going back quite a ways here. We could go to Mulroney, for that matter, but the truth of the matter is that when Paul Martin became the prime minister, he set the defence budget on a fiscal path of ever-escalating numbers, to the point where when the Conservative government took over, it did not deviate from the path that was set by the Martin government in the previous instance. The only deviation occurred subsequently, when the Conservatives cut $3.3 billion from the budget.