Madam Speaker, I know the member for Courtenay—Alberni is passionate about the fishery as well, having served for many years very effectively on the fisheries committee, and he has relatives in Atlantic Canada. That is a great thing about Atlantic Canadians; we are everywhere. We are in Alberta. We are everywhere. We have connections across the country where we have gone to find work.
In terms of the role of the military, we are lucky that we have the military we have to respond to these kinds of crises and to help out. However, the primary reason people join the military, and my nephew is in the navy, is to go on deployment and not just be here in terms of supporting disaster relief. They primarily want to go out and defend democracy and freedom around the world where dictatorships and other people are trampling on human rights, as we are seeing now with Russia in Ukraine, and they are proud of that.
What frustrates them is that we do not make the investments in the military to provide them the equipment. It is a bit of a “chicken and egg”. Why would someone join the air force in Canada to fly fighter jets when we cannot seem to make decisions to actually buy any, and the ones we are flying now were purchased by Pierre Trudeau when some members of this House were not even alive?
The focus on investment in the operational needs internationally is the primary role for which somebody joins the military. If we are operationally ready and we have the resources here to help out in disasters, then that is an added bonus. Right now most people would be attracted to go into the military if we were properly equipping it.