House of Commons photoWon his last election, in 2021, with 49% of the vote.
National Defence April 19th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member that, as I stated earlier, our government is committed to making sure that our men and women have the right capabilities.
We are having the defence review, but on a separate track we are also moving diligently along to ensure that we replace our CF-18s and our ships for the navy, and we are working on a lot of other projects.
However, the defence review allows all Canadians to participate in looking at where our Canadian Forces need to go.
National Defence April 19th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, Canada is committed to working with our multilateral organizations, especially NATO. I have read the intelligence report on that. Our troops are actually working with NATO at the moment. I got to visit our troops in Poland and also the troops that are in Ukraine. They are doing wonderful work, and we are potentially looking at other ways that we can support NATO and oppose Russian aggression.
National Defence April 19th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, our government is committed to the Canadian Armed Forces. With our open and transparent defence review that we are launching, I welcome the member holding his consultations with Canadians and experts alike, and I look forward to hearing his comments personally as well.
I will reiterate for the member that our government is absolutely committed to the Canadian Armed Forces, the men and women who serve us.
National Defence April 18th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, the government wants to ensure that Canada and North America are well defended from all threats.
We want to make sure that the defence review is open and wide. By not opening up the discussion on ballistic missile defence and allowing Canadians to have a say in this, it would not be an open defence review.
National Defence April 18th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, Canada currently does not participate in the ballistic missile defence. No decision has been made to change this policy.
Through the defence policy review, the government is consulting Canadians on a wide range of defence-related issues in an open and transparent manner, including ballistic missile defence.
National Defence April 13th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, I find it very ironic that just yesterday all members of Parliament stood together at an important event and I stood up and said that all members of the House who are sitting and standing there support the military.
To hear this in the House is actually quite insulting, to be honest. I personally met with the member, so I do not think we need to get down to this level of question. I would be happy to meet with the member personally and explain in detail. I have opened up the department for briefings and have met personally with them. I would just like to stop this whole thing. Every member in the House supports our military. Let us not play this ridiculous game.
National Defence April 13th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, our government is committed to making sure that our men and women have the capabilities for the missions of the future. The defence review is a wonderful process to allow all Canadians to have a voice in where the military needs to go. We are committed to replacing our fighters. We are committed to supporting our navy and many other procurement projects. We are re-profiling the money so that we can have it at a time when the military needs to be able to write the cheques for the procurement projects.
National Defence April 13th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind the hon. member, as I did my critic some time ago, that the only cuts to the budget happened during the Conservative government, some $3 billion. We have actually increased the planned spending with $360 million for the operational budget, plus $200 million for military infrastructure as well. The defence review is our way of actually committing to supporting our troops who serve us.
Search and Rescue April 12th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, the previous government might have been looking at privatizing search and rescue, but I can assure the member that this government is not, because the Canadian Armed Forces play a critical role in search and rescue.
National Defence April 11th, 2016
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member can keep talking in terms of the definitions of war, but our fight against ISIL does not change in any way. We will take every action with our coalition partners to defeat Daesh, and we are not going to give ISIL legitimacy by calling them a state, by calling this a war.