Madam Speaker, my colleague from Jonquière must be following what is going on right now and why the new U.S. president-elect is threatening to impose 25% tariffs. These are the consequences related to border management and drug trafficking. Canada's national defence, which is a bit player as far as the Americans are concerned, only adds to the friction. That is why we are taking stock of Canada's military situation in relation to our partnership with the Americans. It is part of our overall national security. That is why Canada is currently being criticized.
According to the Public Accounts, the Liberals have let billions of dollars in defence spending fall by the wayside since 2015. This essentially means that through their mismanagement, they have failed to spend the billions of dollars that were allocated for national defence. Only 58% of the Canadian Armed Forces would be able to respond to a crisis if called upon by NATO allies today. Nearly half of all military equipment is considered unavailable and unusable. This is one reason why the American president is fed up. It seems pretty clear to me.
The Liberals ended up choosing the F-35s to replace the aging CF-18s, but that happened only after several years of mismanagement and political interference in the procurement process. That is something else the Americans are sick of. Richard Shimooka of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute described this situation as disastrous in a 2019 report.
For our part, when we were in power, we took our military obligations seriously. For example, we quickly acquired five C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft, 17 CC‑130J Hercules transport aircraft, 15 Chinook helicopters, some Leopard tanks. We modernized the CP-140 surveillance aircraft, as well as the Halifax class frigates, and so on. That made our American colleagues happy. We were with them in Afghanistan to fight against the Taliban.
Retired Lieutenant-General Andrew Leslie said something about Canada's ailing military. Let us not forget that he was a Liberal member for four years. He did not seek reelection because he understood the problem I am talking about. He said that in the past decade, the Liberals “spent more money on consultants and professional services than it did on the Army, Navy and Air Force combined”.
Here are a few facts. We have fewer than 35 personnel deployed on UN missions, compared with almost 2,500 in 2003. We are the only NATO country whose level of military operational readiness is falling, while all the others' readiness levels are soaring. We have the longest and least efficient supply system in NATO, of all member countries, in fact. We are the only NATO country without a concrete plan to reach 2% of GDP, a target that was agreed to by the Minister of Defence in 2008, reiterated in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and I could go on. We are the only NATO country whose defence minister has publicly admitted that he failed to convince his cabinet colleagues of the importance of NATO defence spending and the 2% GDP target.
“This is borderline atrocious”: That is a quote from Vice-Admiral Mark Norman, for those who were here in 2016 and 2017. Members will remember Admiral Norman. Vice-Admiral Norman said, “Readiness is all about measuring the ability of your armed forces to do what it is they're expected to do. And fundamentally, that's all about going somewhere and fighting. And, you know, it's a pretty dire situation when you're...not where you need to be”. What Admiral Norman was basically saying is that we need to be ready for combat. We always need to be ready for any deployment we are asked to do. That is not happening now. We are not ready.
The Liberal government has a disastrous record on national defence. Canadian forces members have not had any leadership in 10 years. As we used to say back in my day, when the situation changed, it went “order, counter-order, disorder”. For nine years, it has been “disorder, disorder, disorder”.
We want to put Canada first again. For that, there needs to be a plan.
Where is the plan?