Madam Speaker, the farmers in my riding want the government to get out of the way. They want to eliminate the red tape. They want to get away from all the enforcement of new regulations that do nothing to enhance productivity or to allow farmers to feed the world. We need to make sure processors are there to buy and process our products so we can export them around the world.
There is one thing in this budget I did not get the chance to talk about. I am the critic for national defence. There is new money in the budget, and I congratulate the government for finally realizing that we need to invest in our sovereignty and put more money into modernizing NORAD, we need to do our responsibility under NATO, and we need to deal with sexual misconduct and gender-based violence within the armed forces. The one thing I am worried about is that out of all of the funding it announced, over half of it is, as the budget says, “Funds Sourced From Existing Departmental Resources”.
Essentially, the government is robbing Peter to pay Paul. Those dollars have been transferred out of military infrastructure, which will hurt the overall competitiveness or capability of our armed forces in dealing with security threats in the future.