Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure, as always, to rise in this place, and tonight I am here to talk about an unsatisfactory response to a question. That is what we do at the late show.
It was on May 10. Actually, I will back it up. On April 1, the government raised rents for Canadian Armed Forces personnel who live on base. It raised the rents on base housing. This was at a time of an affordability crisis for all Canadians, a housing crisis that exists all across Canada, and a crisis of morale, recruitment and retention within the Canadian Armed Forces, which has left the Canadian Armed Forces with 16,000 vacancies. Because of this, the defence committee actually moved a motion unanimously and reported back to the House asking the government to reverse the rent increase.
The motion was to not proceed with the rent increase, but it was on May 10 that I asked the government if they would, given the unanimous report from the defence committee, along with the general crisis of recruitment, retention and morale in the Canadian Armed Forces, and the crisis of housing across Canada that affects all Canadians, reverse the rent increase that the government placed on our Canadian Armed Forces personnel on base.
The response that I got from the government during that afternoon question period was a non-answer. The parliamentary secretary did not answer the question at all. She went on kind of an arrogant rant about not taking lessons from the other side on the Canadian Armed Forces, so she did not answer the question. She just deflected and ignored it, but it is worth returning to the point that the defence committee itself, of which that parliamentary secretary is a member, unanimously voted to call on the government to not increase the rent on the forces personnel.
However, the parliamentary secretary can actually be heard at the meeting instructing her own side to just vote for the motion, saying that it was not binding as it just gets reported to the House and that it did not really mean anything.
This is the level of doublespeak that we see from members of the Liberal caucus. They will literally vote at a committee to urge their government to take a particular course of action, but just shrug their shoulders and know that it is not binding and that the government will not do it. It does not hurt them to unanimously vote. They would not have the courage to oppose the motion if they actually agreed that it was only fair to raise the rent on our troop. Instead, they went ahead with that.
There is a cost-of-living crisis in this country, and it affects the members of the Canadian Armed Forces. We are down 16,000 personnel. There are 10,000 more who are undertrained. These are the best of the best. I have met our troops. I have seen them deployed, and they just want to serve. They are the best, and they are let down by the government constantly.
This base rent increase might seem like a trivial matter. It might seem small, but it is not, and the government could signal to the forces members that they support them by not increasing their rent.