The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence wants to chirp at me, Madam Speaker. He was sitting in government during the decade of darkness under the Liberals. He knows very effectively how to cut defence spending. Unfortunately, he is in a position now to be advising the minister and the government on how to cut defence spending again.
We have seen that these cuts have been made, $3.7 billion, and we know the Canadian Armed Forces needs equipment to do the jobs that we task it with.
Here are some of the details. The Liberals have cut spending on the Arctic offshore patrol ships by $173 million. For investments in the future fighter aircraft that we need to replace the CF-18s, $109 million has been withheld. We are just finally getting to a place where we can retire the Sea King helicopters, and replace them with the Cyclone maritime helicopters, which the previous Conservative government brought into Canada. The Liberals have gone and reduced the operational budget for the Cyclones by $90 million. The Liberals have taken the Halifax-class modernization/frigate life extension and have cut $71 million from there. As well, we have already heard how they cut $39 million from the integrated soldier protection system. That communications and personnel protection unit is critical to our soldiers who are going into harm's way, those who are right now serving in Iraq.
Unfortunately, we have a situation where our Department of National Defence budget has been cut. We need to continue to tool and kit out our soldiers, our aircrew, and our sailors who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces, the Royal Canadian Air Force, and the Royal Canadian Navy so they have the ability to do their jobs in protecting Canada and projecting our influence on the world stage on issues that are important to us.
I just want to quote the parliamentary budget officer, who clearly showed that the Liberals have a history of doing this. In his 2015 report, 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.
Back then it was called the decade of darkness. I sure hope we are not entering another era of Liberal darkness for the Canadian Armed Forces.