Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and address the question that I brought up a while ago about the Liberals slashing $3.7 billion from the defence budget.
As the House knows, this is reminiscent of the time the Liberals were in power in the 1990s, the decade of darkness, when they slashed considerable money from the Canadian military. The Canadian Armed Forces had a tough time during that rule of the former Liberal government under Jean Chrétien. Interestingly, that decade of darkness followed a defence policy review that was initiated in 1993 and 1994.
During that decade of darkness we saw significant money cut from the defence budget. As the parliamentary budget officer said in his fall 2015 report:
The most significant...cuts under program review occurred from 1995 to 2004.... The cumulative...expenditure over that period of time was roughly $13.4 billion below what our modelling showed was required to maintain the existing force structure.
In the budget we know we need to invest in ships. We know we need to make investments to replace our fighter aircraft. We know our army needs to replace a number of its vehicles, including trucks. All of that has now been put on hold by the Liberals until after the next election. They have kicked military investments down the road, to the tune of $3.7 billion, until after the next election.
That is going to impact 16 military projects that are currently under way. It includes things like Arctic offshore patrol vessels; $173 million is being withheld on a program that already is being cut. On the future fighter aircraft replacements for our CF-18s, the government has withheld $109 million. If the Liberals want to talk about replacing our CF-18s, they need to make sure we have money in place so we can select the proper aircraft.
The government has withheld $90 million from the Cyclone maritime helicopters. We just took possession of the first eight, and another 17 are on their way. The Liberals are withholding dollars for that. With respect to the modernization of our Halifax-class frigates and their life extension, the government has withheld $71.1 million. With respect to the integrated soldier system project, the government has withheld $39.4 million. This is just the tip of the iceberg of the $3.7 million that the Liberals have slashed from the budget. We are going to hear from the parliamentary secretary that it was re-profiled, but re-profiled is just another word for cut, and we know that any dollars that are moved down the road are apt to be sacrificed by the Liberal government.
Analyses are done by a lot of experts and military analysts. I love this quote from David Perry, who said, “This budget reminds me of that episode of Oprah where everybody in the audience got a car. Everyone got a car here except the Department of Defence...”.
The budget shrank military spending by $3.7 billion. We have seen a spending increase in almost every other department but for our men and women in uniform who are tasked with some very difficult jobs by the government. I would ask the parliamentary secretary and the Liberal government to put that money back in the budget and support our armed forces.