Mr. Speaker, I hope that is the last interruption.
I am working hard to support and fight for the women and men in the Canadian Armed Forces and their families as they face the rising cost of living and the Department of National Defence, which is not meeting the urgency that this moment requires.
I look forward to discussing our ideas on how we could support CAF members and their families, but first I want to put today's debate into context. Since I first took on the role in 2021, I have greatly appreciated the maturity and seriousness that all my colleagues bring to the Standing Committee on National Defence. Members from all parties do understand that we are there not just to criticize the government of the day. As parliamentarians in general and as members of the defence committee, we have a sacred obligation to the women and men in the Canadian Armed Forces, and we must prioritize supporting them over our partisan interests. At the committee, we look at a lot of big generational questions, questions that are not siloed to the government of the day and questions that do not always make the evening news.
Successive governments, Conservative and Liberal, have failed to grapple with defence procurement reform, with Arctic security and sovereignty, with recruitment and retention, with meeting our international commitments on peacekeeping, with combatting sexual misconduct in the military and with the supply of military housing. These are big questions that cannot be tackled in a day, and that is why the defence committee's work is so important.
We can work together across party lines to study these big, generational questions and to propose solutions for government, which is why I find it so disappointing that I have to tell the House today that the committee is not immune to the tricks that have come to dominate Parliament as of late. Particularly since the change in the leadership of the official opposition, I have seen the committee stray from our sacred obligation in favour of obstructive tactics and rage-farming clips.
That brings me to the debate today. At a time when Canadians are being forced to decide between filling their prescriptions or buying groceries, the NDP was able to fight for a national pharmacare program. Parliament was due to debate the bill, but the Conservatives used procedural tricks and tactics to delay the important legislation from coming forward by moving the concurrence motion before us.
Let me be clear: I want Parliament to study military housing and to find the solutions that CAF members and their families need. That is why I worked with all parties to ensure that the Standing Committee on National Defence undertook a study on the lack of housing availability on or near bases, and the challenges facing military families when they are required to relocate. The motion was moved for debate while the committee was meeting to hear from officials on the very subject. We should have all been at committee to work on finding real solutions for this really big question, but there was a deliberate choice to weaponize the military housing crisis as a procedural tool against pharmacare and, I would say, against Parliament.
When it comes to supporting military members and their families, we need to put the partisan games aside. I want to share an example of how this could be done. In December, the Nova Scotia Legislature heard testimony that military personnel in that province were living precariously and some may be homeless. Canadians were shocked by this, and as parliamentarians, we knew we had a responsibility to investigate the matter further.
I tried to coordinate a joint letter from all opposition parties to the Minister of Housing, asking him to engage in a whole-of-government approach to tackle the housing crisis. I wanted to take the partisanship and games out of this tragic situation, and instead focus on finding answers to this really big question. I am deeply grateful to my Bloc colleague, the member for Saint-Jean, for sending the joint letter to the minister with me. The Bloc and I were able to set aside partisan differences that we may have on other things and collaborate on this important issue. I am disappointed to say that the Conservative Party could not do the same.
Regardless, I am happy to share some of our ideas on military housing. I have heard about the horrific state of Canadian Forces real property portfolio. The buildings on bases, whether it is military housing, child care buildings or mess halls, are falling apart. According to the government's response to an Order Paper question that I put forward, there are 51,586 open work orders for repairs across the country. There are bases where buildings are being demolished without any plans to replace them, and there are countless incidents of military members being exposed to hazards from old buildings.
A major part of the problem is the mess of maintenance and service contract procurement by the Canadian Armed Forces. According to a 2018 report by the assistant deputy minister of review services, the real property operations group is completely unequipped to make a value-for-money analysis on maintenance and service contracts. It is not equipped to measure the success of individual contracts in order to inform future business with contractors.
I have heard of constant examples of base contracts being handed out to contractors with no oversight, only to have more damage be done by poor craftsmanship, which is then fixed by department public servants. In effect, we are paying for many repairs twice, once to the contractor and then again through the salaries of the department staff brought in to fix the mess and do the work properly. When I hear from CAF members, one of the largest concerns we hear is the mess of properties on base.
Building housing and base properties was a large part of the defence policy update published last month. Billions of dollars were earmarked to be spent on military housing and property maintenance, but I have two concerns that I want to raise about that plan. First, of the $295 million promised for building military housing, we will see only $7 million earmarked for the next five years. When I asked the minister about this, he stated that the previously existing funding for housing is enough to carry them for those five years. However, we know that the current status quo approach is not enough. There is a shortfall of 7,000 housing units, but in the last two years, fewer than 40 new units have been built.
Second, I am concerned that we will not be able to tackle the military housing crisis without fixing the overreliance on contractors on bases. The department knew its approach to contracts was a problem, so it ended up hiring Deloitte on a major contract to audit its real property portfolio. However, as a New Democrat, and after all the discussions we had in the chamber last year on the growing reliance on big consultants, I am incredibly skeptical that this major contract was made with the best intentions. The government should be seeking recommendations for solutions from public servants, not from for-profit consultants.
The audit by Deloitte proposed solutions to work more closely with the private sector, and I fear that the government listened based on its new vision for military housing. It has proposed leasing DND properties to develop P3 housing near bases. Instead of cutting down on the problematic contractors in military housing, we will be fronting the cash for private, for-profit developers to become the landlords for CAF members. The Department had the option to partner with not-for-profits to deliver housing or for that build to be public, to be federally run, and I hope that at committee we can continue to push that forward in terms of that solution.
In closing, there are so many more aspects of military housing that we have not been able to discuss in this concurrence debate, which is exactly why I worked to get the issue studied at committee, where we can work collectively and productively towards the production of a report to present to the House. I am proud of a lot of the work that we have been able to accomplish at committee to date, and I invite all committee members to stay committed to our obligation to CAF members and not be distracted by the political gamesmanship.