Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be able to rise on a question that I originally asked back in December about the Liberals' continued investment in the F-35 program.
The Prime Minister promised in the last campaign that he would not be buying the F-35, so I felt it was kind of strange at that point in time that the Liberals would be investing in a program that they do not believe in.
We get down to the truth now. Just yesterday, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a very well-respected independent think tank right here in Ottawa, came out with a new report called “The Catastrophe: Assessing the Damage from Canada’s Fighter Replacement Fiasco”. This report strongly condemns the way the government has handled this file in trying to find a replacement for our fighter jets.
I do not think I have to remind Canadians that the government's idea for replacing fighter jets is to replace our CF-18s with even older, more worn-out F-18s from the Australian air force. The Liberals are taking a position on these used F-18s now.
Let us be clear that the reason we have this fiasco is that the Prime Minister made an ill-informed campaign promise in 2015 that he would not buy the F-35. Every move the Liberals have made since then on replacing our aging CF-18 fighter fleet is about covering up for that promise, which they are going to have a heck of a time fulfilling, especially if they actually were to run an open, fair and transparent competition.
We know that this competition is not transparent because everybody has lifetime gag orders on them, and we know it is not fair because this report says it is fixed against some of the potential competitors.
It is clear that the Liberal government and the Prime Minister himself, with the assistance of the Minister of National Defence, have placed the partisan interests of the Liberal Party of Canada ahead of our national interest as a nation in protecting our sovereignty. It has eroded the respect that we used to have on the world stage, and in particular it has undermined our defence partnership with our strongest ally and neighbour, the United States.
Throughout our time as government, we stood up for the Canadian Armed Forces, but morale within the Canadian Armed Forces is at the lowest levels we have ever seen. Members of the armed forces are voting with their feet. Pilots and aircrew and aircraft technicians are leaving in droves, all because they have lost confidence in the Liberal government.
As the Conservative Party, we know that we will select the right fighter jet in an expedited amount of time when we form government this fall. We know that we will restore our relationships with our defence partners, especially the United States, through NORAD. We will not waste billions of taxpayer dollars on old fighter jets. We will not continue on with that Liberal tradition of buying used and old worn-out equipment, as the Liberals have done in the past and are doing right now. We will make sure that we are the true north, strong and free.