Madam Chair, I simply do not understand what it is the minister thinks we need to work on jointly. We have the support of the Conservatives. We have the support of almost all other members in the House. We had the support, apparently, of Liberal members at the committee until the minister intervened.
I will be, as I said, asking for unanimous consent at some point. I hope the minister rethinks his inexplicable opposition to taking this very positive step.
I want to turn to the question of spending, since this is an estimates debate. The minister threw around a number, which I know he likes very much, because I have heard it so many times, and that is that the Liberals are going to increase military spending by 70%. He likes these large numbers, and he likes talking about the future, but when we actually look at this year's estimates, what do we actually find if we look at operating expenses for DND? We find that the Liberals are the same as the Conservatives. They are asking more and more of the Canadian Armed Forces each and every year without a real increase in operating expenditures.
If we look at the increase from the 2017-18 main estimates to 2018-19, the increase was 1%. If we look at it from 2018-19 to 2019-20, there is a big increase of 1.3%. How does the minister think the Canadian military can continue to do the excellent job it does when he is giving it increases below the rate of inflation? How is the military going to continue serving the country so well with less and less money every year?