Dawn Black

[Business of Supply, November 7th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I take it that is a commitment to proceed with icebreakers for the north.

I would like to ask some more questions with regard to the north. Are there any U.S. military forces stationed in the Canadian Arctic? Does the United States operate or maintain underwater acoustic sensors anywhere in the Canadian Arctic? If so, is the surveillance information obtained shared with Canada, especially now that the Norad agreement has been expanded to include the sharing of maritime surveillance, including, as the minister clarified to me earlier this year, in the Northwest Passage?

[Business of Supply, November 7th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I am not exactly sure what that answer meant. Does that mean that the government is committed to the election promise that it made around icebreakers or does it mean that the government is waffling on that now?

[Business of Supply, November 7th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I have spoken to the minister personally in the past about Arctic sovereignty and I know t he also takes this issue very seriously. One of the Conservative Party's election promises concerned icebreakers. I would like to know where the government is and where the minister is with that right now. There have been suggestions that instead of icebreakers, that hovercraft could be used in the north.

I wonder if the minister is aware of the significant difficulties experienced by the Canadian Coast Guard when using hovercraft in cold water and cold air conditions in the Gulf of St. Lawrence as the spray freezes and builds up as a thick ice on the equipment. Certainly this would be an even bigger problem in the north. I wonder if the minister could comment both on where we are with icebreakers and the other issue around hovercraft.

[Business of Supply, November 7th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, on procurement, I know the minister made a number of announcements over the summer. These included supply ships, new transport aircraft and helicopters. I wonder if he could tell us now how far along that process is and what considerations have been made for Canadian industrial involvement?

Many people have said that the process around the heavy lift aircraft seems to be tantamount to a sole source contract. I wonder if the minister can assure us that it will not be sole sourced and at what stage this is in the process now?

[Business of Supply, November 7th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I was hoping to get some kind of indication on what projects have been completed by the PRTs but maybe the minister could go into that later.

I would like to ask some specific questions regarding support operations in Kandahar. Who owns the Kandahar air base? I know we employ some local Afghans there but what about the base itself. Is it owned by the Afghan government, by the Americans or by a private company? If so, which one, and how much does Canada pay for the use of the facility for our troops and equipment?

[Business of Supply, November 7th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, in terms of the provincial reconstruction team, could the minister share with the House the amount of spending by DND that actually goes to reconstruction and is actually being spent on reconstruction?

We know an enormous of money has been spent so far on the tanks and on upgraded vehicles, but has there been a similar increase in the spending on reconstruction work by the PRTs, and what have they spent that money on?

[Business of Supply, November 7th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I thank the minister for the information.

Information that was previously provided to me by the minister stated that the added cost of deploying the Leopard tanks will be $157 million. It is a fairly large sum of money, considering that his government made cuts to women's programs, to literacy and to the court challenges program.

When we compare this $157 million with the $1.5 million that the Department of Foreign Affairs is going to spend this year on civilian activities as part of the provincial reconstruction team, how much did it cost to send each tank?

I also asked through a written question to the minister, and I asked him in committee, and my office has even used the access to information system to try to find out the cost of a particular item of departmental spending. How much did Canada pay last November for each Excalibur round to be used with the M777?

The government spent $5.5 million for these shells. That is about the same amount of money that was spent on the court challenges program, in fact a little bit more than that, before it was cut.

The minister promised me at the defence committee that he would find out this information, so I am wondering if he could share that with us now. What is the exact cost of each one of those shells?

[Business of Supply, November 7th, 2006]

Mr. Chair, I am pleased to be here tonight to participate in this process. I would like to thank the minister for appearing here tonight and spending several hours answering questions from members of the House.

The expenditures of the Department of National Defence are really vast. It is the largest single expenditure that Parliament reviews at $13.6 billion. The supplementary estimates alone are just over $1 billion, which is actually a sum that is larger than most departments of government.

In April of last year, in response to a written question that I sent the minister, I was told that the mission had cost, so far, $1.4 billion in incremental costs. About six weeks later, the Minister of Foreign Affairs told me that the mission had cost $1.8 billion and that the future costs of the mission would be $1.25 billion. The Minister of Finance has told me that the rest of the mission will cost $1.8 billion.

Clearly, these numbers are going up, and these are the incremental costs, not the full costs to DND. This number subtracts salaries and does not speak to the cost to the whole of government, to the costs of supporting veterans and their families. If we add up the full costs, as published in the department's report on plans and priorities, we get a sum of over $4.1 billion.

Can the minister now give us an update on the full costs of the mission going forward to 2009?

[Aeronautics Act, November 7th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the comments of the member opposite on this bill. We on this side of the House have a number of concerns about the bill and I wonder if he would address one that stands out to me, which is the issue of the number of flight attendants on aircraft.

My understanding is that the regulation may be reduced by up to 25% fewer flight attendants per plane. That raises a lot of concerns for many people because flight attendants are actually the key people on a flight. If something goes wrong, they are the ones who look after passengers during turbulence, cabin decompression or emergency evacuations. They have a very high standard of training in order to deal with this.

We know after the crash of Air France in Toronto last year the plane was on fire and it was actually the flight attendants who successfully evacuated all the passengers and crew on that plane without the loss of life or serious injuries. That was remarkable but they were at full capacity under the old regulations.

I am wondering how the member feels about this potential of fewer flight attendants on aircraft in Canada.

[Committees of the House, November 7th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has a long record of fighting for women's equality, both here in the House of Commons and in the legislature of Manitoba.

I spoke earlier about the frustration of Canadian women with the lack of progress on the issue of pay equity. I know she shares that frustration and, quite frankly, that anger of Canadian women, who feel that their government does not address the issue that would in fact advance their economic equality.

What has happened in the past is a lack of political will on both sides of the House of Commons. What we need is political will to enact legislation that is meaningful.