Madam Chair, I am going to start with a brief statement and then go to questions for the minister.
I want to start, like all members of Parliament, by thanking the Canadian Forces for the job they do every day in keeping us safe, and also the civilian employees who often get left out of these debates but who make the functioning of the forces possible, and of course, the families of both, who make all of this possible with the sacrifices they make.
I also want to thank the minister for his initiatives in reaching out to members across the aisle and making himself accessible and the bases accessible. It is a refreshing change in the new Parliament and I thank him personally for doing so.
There are some other things I might not thank him for. The government appears to be continuing with some of the things that the Conservatives did. The main theme is asking the Canadian military to do more with less. We know that the dollars provided in the budget actually are not increases. They do not come near keeping pace with the inflation rate in military expenditures, and we know that there are going to have to be some cuts made somewhere in the Canadian military. I guess we will see those later.
Of most concern to me is the reprofiling, as the government likes to call it, whether it was a Conservative government or a Liberal government, of the capital expenditures. We are now to the place where $10.4 billion in expenditures have been put off beyond the next election.
Is the Minister of National Defence convinced that we have enough life left in our F-18s, our frigates, and our long-range patrol aircraft to keep the Canadian military fully functional while we wait for these important procurement decisions to be made and while we look for the money, since it has been put off to an indefinite future?
The classic way to extend the life of military equipment is to reduce the hours. Are we facing an air force that is going to have to reduce its flying hours and a navy that is going to have to reduce its time at sea because of these delays in procurement?