- Sep/18/24 5:38:28 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, when my colleague from the Bloc and I work together on the bill, we will be vigorous in our analysis and will ensure that we get it right.
The member mentioned the member of Parliament for Vancouver South, who is the current Minister of Emergency Preparedness and the former minister of national defence. Does she believe that his protection of his war buddy, his brother in arms, former chief of the defence staff Jonathan Vance, was political interference, and that because of his unwillingness to address this back in 2015 and onward until 2021, after the last federal election, nothing was done on sexual misconduct? Was there a willingness to turn a blind eye to it to protect his friend?
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Mr. Speaker, first of all, I will say that the code of service discipline, the very ethos of the Canadian Armed Forces, holds up the issues of honour and integrity. I think all of us would demand that all those who serve apply that to their daily lives. This situation of sexual misconduct only happens when those individuals are not following through on that ethos, and then they are going to be subjected to the code of service discipline and the Criminal Code.
When we are talking about sexual misconduct, that has nothing to do with wokeness. This is about behaviour that has to change, and that respect has to happen. I am talking about ending that woke culture and making sure that we get back to training war fighters. I think that the stereotyping that has happened about our Canadian Armed Forces members in general has been detrimental because everybody who dons a uniform deserves to be respected. For everyone who goes out there, there is an expectation that they have a certain standard to meet.
Bill C-66 is for those who refuse to follow the code, and then they have to be subjected to the Criminal Code. For that, we support it one hundred per cent. To my colleague from the NDP, I will just say that, as I said to my friend in the Bloc, we will be treating this with the utmost respect and balance this conversation deserves to ensure that those who come before committee feel safe and are going to be valued in their testimony, which we will take it into serious consideration as we go forward.
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Mr. Speaker, as a father of three daughters, I want to make sure that any victim, male or female, who wants to come before our committee is treated with the utmost respect and that the political partisanship that we often play at would have no place in this study on Bill C-66.
We need to ensure that they have a safe place to help us do an analysis of Bill C-66. If we are in a situation where there are shortfalls within the legislation, or if there are situations that need to be amended, then we need to hear from those victims and we need to make sure they are feeling safe, welcome and respected. I encourage all members of our national defence committee to do so.
As vice-chair and former chair of that committee, I can commit today that members from the Conservative side will definitely respect all who appear. This is not about partisan one-upmanship, especially when we have those individuals in the room. This is about making sure that we get this right, that the military justice system is there to serve those who are already putting their lives on the line for this country and ensuring that they have a safe and respectful workplace where they do not have to worry about being mistreated and sexually assaulted by any of their cohorts.
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- Sep/18/24 5:08:54 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, let us just remind everyone that, if we actually look at what we bought and got delivered in a very short time for our Canadian Armed Forces when they were deployed and in theatre, there were five brand new C-17s and a whole fleet of new HERC-130Js. The Liberals had thrown away our Leopard tanks. Can members guess what we did? We bought a whole new fleet of Leopard tanks. We upgraded all our LAVs and our frigates, and everything was in perfect fighting condition.
Now we are in a situation where we do not have enough tanks to train with. We gave away all of our howitzers and did not replace them. We have a situation where we cannot actually deploy, because our individuals are stretched thin. This is outside the good work we are doing in the theatre of Latvia. We could not deploy anybody to go down to Haiti to help bring justice there under the government, because our troops are so poorly equipped and so poorly trained at this point in time that they cannot handle the workload coming at them. We are looking at a shortage of staff.
All we have to do is look at the track record on all the high-level cases that the Liberals have brought forward already. Where is the justice for the victims? Every court case was stayed or the defendant was found not guilty. In Jonathan Vance's case, he was not charged for sexual misconduct or even abuse of authority of his position as CDS. He was charged with obstruction of justice.
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Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to stand in this House and speak for the brave women and men who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces. Conservatives are proud of our soldiers, sailors and aircrew, and we want to support all those in uniform who serve Canada.
Conservatives believe that sexual misconduct, discrimination, racism and other forms of harassment must be stomped out of the Canadian Armed Forces because all military members deserve a safe and respectful workplace. It is hard enough to do the dangerous work that we call upon them to do. We know they face incredible danger in addressing the conflicts around the world and the domestic responses to natural disasters right here in Canada.
The previous Conservative government, and we are talking nine years ago, accepted all recommendations from the Deschamps report to eliminate all sexual harassment from the Canadian Armed Forces. That report, as I already asked the minister about, sat on the desk of the former chief of the defence staff, Jonathan Vance, and on the desk of the former minister of national defence, who is now the Minister of Emergency Preparedness and the seatmate of the current Minister of National Defence. It sat on their desks and collected dust. Here we are, nine years later, and they are finally moving forward with legislative changes to the military justice system.
I would say that we cannot trust the Liberals to actually implement the policies needed to stop sexual assault and sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces when we look at the soft-on-crime policies they instituted in our Criminal Code and our criminal justice system in the civil courts from coast to coast to coast. After nine long years and two more reports from two more former superior court justices, the victims of sexual misconduct within the military still have no answers and they are not having their cases dealt with properly.
As I said earlier, Conservatives support Bill C-66. We want to get it to committee. We know it needs vigorous study. We know we need to hear from witnesses, both experts and academics, who are familiar with the National Defence Act and the military justice system, but we also have to hear from victims. We have to hear from those who serve in the Canadian Armed Forces and other stakeholders, including the legal community, provincial governments and municipal courts, that are going to be forced to handle the investigations, the collection of evidence and the prosecution within our court systems that are already overrun because of the soft-on-crime policies the Liberal government has brought forward.
We have these outstanding issues on whether there is capacity within the civilian court system to handle what is coming from the Canadian Armed Forces. The biggest problem is that they are overrun because of the soft-on-crime approach that is allowing people to get out on bail. Repeat offenders just keep going out and reoffending. That is why Conservatives always say, “Jail, not bail”. By doing that, not only are we taking dangerous and repeat offenders off our streets and making our communities safer, but we are going to be able to free up more resources within the court system to deal with things like sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces.
Conservatives are wondering about some of the logic within Bill C-66. It is proposing to take the investigation and prosecution of sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces outside of the military itself for any offences that occur within Canada. They would be moved into the civilian system, whether it is municipal or provincial police departments, or even the federal police department, the RCMP, in some jurisdictions. We would see the skills and ability of our military police and criminal prosecutors within the Office of the Judge Advocate General atrophy and deteriorate.
Within Bill C-66, whenever our troops are deployed out of Canada, we are still going to be in a situation where they are going to be the lead investigators and lead prosecutors, as well as the defendants, as we know happens within the military justice system, which has both prosecutors and defenders in order to provide the balance of justice to those who are accused and those who are plaintiffs. However, if they are not good enough to prosecute and investigate sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces when it happens here in Canada, how do we know we can trust them for cases outside Canada? I know I do, but I wonder if the minister is at all concerned about the atrophy of those skills, at both the prosecutor level and the investigator level, for our military police if they are not getting the repetitions. It is just like exercise; one has to do it over and over again.
The other concern we have is about the new Governor in Council appointments. Currently, the Governor in Council, or the cabinet, the Prime Minister, the PMO, appoints the chief of the defence staff, the deputy minister, the national defence and Canadian Armed Forces ombudsman and the judge advocate general. They are all done through an order in council and they all report to the Minister of National Defence. Now we would be adding more Governor in Council appointments: the director of military prosecutions, the director of defence counsel services and the provost marshal.
That would increase independence, but there are questions around the terms and lengths of those appointments. There is no consistency with other Governor in Council appointments we have, both in the civil system, within the bureaucracy and other government appointments, and those appointed under the National Defence Act. There is also no clarification of how those individuals would be reappointed. There have even been questions raised about whether having these three new Governor in Council appointments, who right now report to the JAG, would make having the judge advocate general irrelevant and the position undermined because of directives that can come from the minister.
We are also very concerned that this would increase political interference, which we have already witnessed with the Liberal government. This is because it would be giving the power to the Minister of National Defence to not only have control over more individuals within the Canadian Armed Forces, but also to issue guidelines under Bill C-66 with respect to prosecutions, which would open the door to that political interference.
All we have to do is look at some of the cases the government has already politically put pressure on to have moved to the civilian system. There was the case of Vice-Admiral Mark Norman; we can look at how that came about. Of course, those charges were all stayed and there was a legal settlement paid out by the Government of Canada to Vice-Admiral Mark Norman for its witch hunt.
There was the case of Jonathan Vance, the former chief of the defence staff. In that situation, he was not charged for sexual misconduct but was actually charged for obstruction of justice.
The next case I want to touch on is that of Admiral Art McDonald. Again, this was a political appointment by the Liberal government, and he was chief of the defence staff. It then came to light that there was some misconduct in his background. When it came time to prosecute, those charges were all dropped by the military prosecution office.
Major-General Dany Fortin was acquitted by the Quebec judicial system. There is pressure coming from the Liberals on National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces to move these to the civil system, so here he is getting off. All we are doing is destroying these people's reputations, and from the victim's standpoint, they are not getting any justice.
With respect to Lieutenant-General Trevor Cadieu, his cases were stayed by the Ontario justice department.
Vice-Admiral Haydn Edmundson was found not guilty in the Ontario justice system. That case was just ruled on earlier this week, and it was found that a CBC reporter actually tampered with a witness and all the testimony was thrown out.
The last one I have here is Lieutenant-General Steven Whelan, and again, the charges were dropped by military prosecutors, and Lieutenant-General Steven Whelan has filed a statement of claim. When we look at all of this, we know we have a situation where the political pressure on national defence from the Prime Minister and the Minister of National Defence to move these into the civilian court system does not automatically result in justice for the victims. It actually turns into situations where we have liability because of increased defamation of the characters of individuals who have served this country for long, hard years as military leaders.
We know General Jonathan Vance as a former chief of the defence staff. When we studied this at the national defence committee, for three months the Liberal chair kept adjourning the committee and refused to let us hear from witnesses and experts and victims about the cover-up that happened when the victims came forward about Jonathan Vance. The news stories broke and it came to light that the former minister of national defence, the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, had gone to great lengths to block the investigation, to turn a blind eye. The Prime Minister was involved in that. Unfortunately, the only committee that was able to give any type of report was the status of women. The Conservatives said, in response to that report, that it was “abundantly clear that there has been a lack of leadership by [the defence minister] on the issue of sexual misconduct in the Canadian Armed Forces.”
Of course, instead of finishing the report and getting to the bottom of this, an election was called, Parliament was prorogued and the report died. The Liberals had lots of opportunities to act earlier than 2024. They had lots of reports they could have relied on. I mentioned the 2015 Deschamps report. In 2018, the Auditor General released a report on inappropriate sexual behaviour in the Canadian Armed Forces and then updated that report, the national defence and Canadian Armed Forces ombudsman report on sexual misconduct, in 2021. We had the Justice Fish report, which was a very extensive report with hundreds of recommendations. There was, also from the status of women committee here in Parliament, the 2021 report “Eliminating Sexual Misconduct Within the Canadian Armed Forces”. What did we have? Indecision, dithering, delays and punting this down the road to 2024.
Meanwhile, while all this was happening, sexual misconduct, sexual harassment and sexual violence have escalated. As I have said before, we are trying to push out any sexual misconduct within the Canadian Armed Forces on base and here in Canada. Since 2015, over the last long nine years of the Liberal government, we have seen total sexual assaults at all three levels increase 74.83%. As for sexual violence in Canada, and this is all Canadians, sexual violence against children has increased 118.85%. Forcible confinement or kidnapping is up 10.6%. Indecent and harassing communications are up 86.41%. Non-consensual distribution of intimate images is up 801%. Trafficking in persons is up 83.7%.
These are huge numbers that are dominating the work of our civil judicial system, whether it is in defendants or prosecutors or municipal or provincial or federal police forces. We are now going to throw in there an increase in sexual misconduct that we are seeing at national defence.
Over the last five years, sexual misconduct reports have increased from 256 to 443. That is an increase of 73% under the watch of the Liberal government, which has turned a blind eye to this problem and failed to act in an appropriate manner.
However, I do not think we should be surprised by this at all, because this is a Liberal government that has failed our Canadian Armed Forces. It has failed our brave women and men, who are the best of the best that Canada has to offer. They go through some of the roughest training. They get screened from a medical and a health perspective before they are ever allowed to don the uniform, and the current government has allowed our Canadian Armed Forces to fall into complete disrepair for nine long years.
Our warships are rusting out, our fighter jets are worn out, the army has been hollowed out, and we are so short of soldiers, sailors and air crew that all our troops are burnt out. We have entire air squadrons now that have been shut down because we do not have enough personnel, whether pilots or maintenance personnel, to keep our fighter jets in the air. Our submarines are barely in the water. From all the Order Paper questions that we get back, we are lucky if we can put one submarine in the water for 100 days a year, and that is four submarines combined, which is embarrassing. How do we maintain skills if we do not have the opportunity to train and practise alongside our allies and protect our shorelines from other submarines?
When the Liberals announced their defence policy, SSE, back in 2017, I said that it was a book of empty promises. If we look at their track record, it is still a book of empty promises. The defence policy update was a year late and, again, fails to make a strong investment in the Canadian Armed Forces. In fact, after the Liberals brought forward their defence policy update, they cut a billion dollars from the budget, which is affecting the operational readiness of our Canadian Armed Forces. Over $10 billion has gone unspent, uninvested in the Canadian Armed Forces. This means that the delivery of much-needed equipment is happening later, and our troops are getting tired of operating on old, worn-out equipment.
Our troops do not feel safe. They do not feel respected. They do not feel honoured by the government. That is why we are short 16,000 troops in the reserves and regular forces today; this is a shocking number to start with. However, because we are so short of troops, we are also short of the people, the ladies and gentlemen, who make up a kind of middle management. These are the corporals, the master corporals, the sergeants and sergeant majors, who go out there and train our forces.
Right now, we have over 10,000 undertrained and undeployable members who are in uniform. We do not dare send them out, because they do not have all the skill sets they need to do the job that we want them to. This is the government's own number. Our military has been so badly hollowed out that only 58% of our forces stand ready to deploy; again, that is a huge embarrassment.
One thing that has really undermined our troops is that, at home and abroad, they have literally been left out in the cold. We have a housing shortage of 6,700 units. The government has only budgeted $8 million to build homes over the next five years. Last year, it only built 20 homes for our Canadian Armed Forces members, and the year before that, it only built 18. Thirty-eight new homes will not make up for the 6,700-unit shortage we have right now, and that is why so many of our guys are living unhoused. They are living in tents; they are couch surfing and sometimes living in precarious situations.
I will close with this: The next Conservative government will rebuild the Canadian Armed Forces by cutting down on the bureaucracy and the wasteful spending on unnecessary consultants. We have people in the Canadian Armed Forces and within the Department of National Defence who can do that job. We will reduce that tail and invest it in the tooth of our military. We will take the taxpayer money that is going to foreign dictatorships and despots and reinvest that into the Canadian Armed Forces. We will spend more on the Canadian Armed Forces than the Liberals ever hoped to, and we will make the Canadian Armed Forces stronger and ensure they have the equipment they need. We will restore the honour and integrity of our military heroes so that Canadians can be proud of them. We will reverse all the woke Liberal culture, that experiment they have been carrying on; instead, we will support the war fighters of the Canadian Armed Forces so that they can proudly serve, proudly defend and proudly fight alongside our allies when they are called upon.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the minister's tabling Bill C-66 at second reading. The Conservatives will be supporting Bill C-66, but we want to send it to committee. We know that it needs to be thoroughly studied, and we want to make sure that it is going to work for victims. We want to hear from stakeholders, military justice experts and the CAF itself to ensure that the appropriate action is being taken.
The government came to power nine long years ago, and here we are in the dying days of this Parliament and the government, and the Liberals are finally bringing forward something they knew was a problem. In 2015, former chief justice Deschamps brought forward a report that sat on the desk of former chief of the defence staff Jonathan Vance, and on the desk of the former minister of national defence, who is now the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, for years and they did nothing with it.
The Liberals actually covered up the sexual misconduct by former chief of the defence staff Jonathan Vance. They even stalled a committee from doing an investigation into why there was a cover-up from the Prime Minister's Office by Katie Telford and by the former minister of national defence. Why did they allow that to happen and why did they not act then to address the problems we had in the Canadian Armed Forces in protecting the victims of sexual misconduct?
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- Sep/18/24 3:47:34 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am proud to present a petition today that is signed by Canadians who are very concerned about a film that has come out, which was funded by the Government of Canada through the Canada Media Fund and by TVO, called Russians at War. The film paints a nice picture of the Russians fighting in Ukraine without laying out all of the war crimes that they are committing and the illegal invasion that they have started.
The petitioners are calling upon the Government of Canada to get back all of the taxpayers' money, the $345,000, that went to the film's producer, Ms. Trofimova, who was employed by Russia Today in the past, which is sanctioned by the Government of Canada. She used those monies to bring out this misinformation campaign.
The petitioners are calling on the government to audit all the programs that they have currently, like the Canada Media Fund, to see how taxpayer dollars were used to further the Russians' interest right here in Canada. They are requesting that both CSIS and the RCMP do an investigation on whether or not there was any international or Canadian law, or Ukrainian law for that matter, that was violated. Finally, they want the RCMP to seize all material so that it can be used to go forward with the investigation on any war crimes that she may have captured on film but did not actually put into the documentary. The documentary is being aired now at the Toronto International Film Festival and other places in Canada.
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Mr. Speaker, Conservatives on the defence committee are submitting dissenting reports and opinions for both of the reports from the committee.
As we learned at the procurement study, the global threat environment is increasingly precarious. The decision by the government to cut $1 billion a year over the next three years from the defence budget is unconscionable. We are asking that the government reverse that budget cut.
We are asking for more leadership coming from the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's Office. We believe that we have to have more ministers who are actually in control and accountable. That includes having a secretary within the PCO and a prime minister who actually takes this seriously.
We are asking the Prime Minister to designate one minister to be ultimately accountable for all defence procurement. We are also calling on the government to grant members of the defence committee classified defence-related information and clearances so that we can do a better job of oversight and accountability.
I would also just want to say, on the issue of aid to civil power, which we also talked about, one of the important messages that we did hear when the committee was meeting is that, while part IV of the National Defence Act does outline that CAF can provide aid to civil power, it always should be the force of last resort. It is ultimately the responsibility of provincial, municipal and territorial governments to provide protection, and they need to invest more in mitigation and response assistance.
We also know that the Canadian Armed Forces are dealing with a retention and recruitment crisis, about which General Eyre was very blunt in his assessment. He said, “The demand signal for those primary tasks we're responsible for is only increasing. However, our readiness to do that is decreasing, due in part to the incessant demand for these types of domestic operations.”
Therefore, we are asking again that the budget cut be reversed and that we restore the $2.7 billion that was announced in September 2023. We also say that we want to see the private member's bill, Bill C-386, an act respecting the establishment and award of a special service medal for domestic and emergency relief operations, from the member for Cariboo—Prince George, be accepted by the government and concurred in, and that we can recognize those Canadians who step up to participate in domestic operations, such as disaster assistance, pandemic relief and other avenues, and recognize their contributions.
Also, we are saying that there should be an increase in youth involvement in aiding and assisting in civilian volunteer disaster relief.
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- Jun/18/24 4:31:00 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am hearing impaired and have incredible difficulty listening to the member for Winnipeg North. I would ask that you show some compassion and ask the member to defer the rest of his speech to this time next week.
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- Jun/17/24 8:41:25 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the question. The Liberals are cutting $2.7 billion from the budget over the next three years. That is having an impact, and we are starting to see it in the issues around readiness and training. We are now deploying our troops to the NATO enhanced forward position in Latvia that we are running, and they are not taking their pretraining before they go and deploy. That predeployment training is critical to being able to make sure that we are the leaders in the theatre of NATO allies that are also stationed at the same base in Latvia. When we go over there and have them play catch-up, again, it is a national embarrassment. Therefore, we need to make sure that we are making the investments that are required. A case in point is that one of the first things the Liberals cut was uniforms for women in the Canadian Armed Forces; they did not think these uniforms were necessary. It is a shame.
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- Jun/17/24 8:39:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member knows my mother was born in Chesterfield Inlet and raised in Pangnirtung, so I have a lot of connections to the Arctic. I really do firmly believe that the Canadian Armed Forces have a major role to play in expansion of the Canadian Rangers to make sure that they are better financed, as well as able to do a greater job in carrying out exercises to establish our control and sovereignty over the entire Arctic.
We also know that we could be making more investments in dual-purpose infrastructure for both the Canadian Armed Forces and local populations. That is everything from runways to ports and from telecommunications to broadband. We need to do more of that to make sure that those collaborations will work for all Canadians, especially those in the high Arctic.
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- Jun/17/24 8:38:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the member over there knows well that no one has fought more and harder for Ukraine than I have. I was one of the first of 13 to be banned from Russia because I have taken a strong stand in support of Ukraine for a long time. I will take no lessons from the member.
When we did not support the free trade agreement, it was because we already had a free trade agreement in place. It was better than the current free trade agreement, in which the Liberals actually stuck a carbon tax. We know that the Liberals also supported sending over turbines to pump Russian gas into Europe to help fund Putin's war machine. We will never take lessons from the Liberals on how to not stand up for Ukraine.
An hon. member: Oh, oh!
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- Jun/17/24 8:26:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to stand today and talk on Bill C-69, the budget implementation act, or as I prefer to call it, “the economic vandalism act”.
This is a budget that continues to build upon the inflationary deficits that Canadians are struggling to deal with. The government's spending continues to be out of control. First it was borrowing money, then it was printing money, and now it is going to continue to dip into the pockets of Canadians and raise taxes so it has money to spend on all its crazy ideas and programs.
We know the Liberals have gotten no results the entire time they have been in government. For the past nine years, we have witnessed rent double. We have witnessed the cost of a mortgage double and the cost of a down payment double. Our children and grandchildren will not have the opportunity that we did to own a home and to move ahead in life because of the out-of-control spending of the Liberal-NDP government.
We have a deficit this year that is going to be over $40 billion. It has been described as the worst budget since 1982. Who said that? The former, Liberal-appointed Bank of Canada Governor, David Dodge.
We have witnessed that Canada has the worst living standards in 40 years according to the Fraser Institute. We have also seen, under the Liberal-NDP government, that we have had the worst growth in GDP, or income per person, since the 1930s. Nine in 10 middle-class families are paying more in income tax today than they were nine years ago.
We have a situation that is increasing and is hurting everyone. In my riding of Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, it is hitting everybody. Our farmers are struggling with increased carbon taxes that have gone up 23% and they now have to deal with the capital gains tax, and that is really starting to take a bite.
We can look at how farms have been structured, family farms, over the last number of years. I come from a farm family. My daughter and son-in-law are grain farmers. I have two brothers who are farmers. They put hard work and effort into growing their properties. They want to make sure that there is something to pass on to the next generation, which is the same thing that my father did for his children, and that is at risk.
To make things more manageable, people have formed their family farms into limited corporations. Our doctors, our dentists and our chiropractors, especially in rural areas, have set themselves up into limited liability partnerships and corporations. Those limited corporations pay out capital gains. Of course, now these capital gains are all going to get taxed by the Liberal-NDP coalition by up to 67%.
This is not a tax on the wealthy. This is a tax on the hard-working people who feed us, take care of us and take care of our health. All of them are going to be attacked and become either less profitable or be forced to relocate to jurisdictions like the United States where it is easier to make a living without having to work as hard. I have had doctors and dentists tell me that they are going to work fewer hours because of the income tax implications with the capital gains tax grab by the Liberals and the Minister of Finance.
This is also hitting cottage owners and those who have secondary residences, whether they bought a property for rental income or they bought a home that they hope to pass on to their children. Now, when they go to sell those properties, they are going to get nailed with this capital gains tax that they did not expect. There is a word for this. When somebody takes something away from another that they never deserved, it is called highway robbery. That is the economic vandalism that we are talking about here by the Liberal-NDP coalition.
As the shadow minister for national defence, I do want to switch gears and talk about how this budget does not support, in any way, shape or form, the even less ambitious defence policy update. The defence policy update had some ideas, but all the spending, especially in this budget, has been kicked down the road until after the next federal election. We are talking three, four or five years down the road before we see any increase in spending for national defence to support our troops.
At the national defence committee today, we actually had one of our witnesses say that the defence policy update is a national “embarrassment” that fails to recognize the threat environment we are in and that, technically, Canada is already “at war”.
We are witnessing what is happening in Ukraine. We have had increased escalation in the conflict in the South China Sea between the PRC and the Philippines, plus what we are seeing in Taiwan. This defence policy update fails to recognize those threats. All the money that has supposedly been promised is kicked down the road.
As a case in point, we have a retention and recruitment crisis happening in the Canadian Armed Forces. One thing that we identified is the lack of housing. The Minister of National Defence even said that we are short 6,700 residential housing units for our troops. We have troops who are living homeless and actually couch surfing. They are living in campers or in their cars. Worse yet, they are stuck in these tent cities that have sprung up across the country over the last nine years under the Liberal government.
Even though the government recognizes that we need more homes for our current serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces, the budget has zero dollars for new housing for our troops. It has zero dollars next year. There is only $8 million in the budget in three years' time, which does not build 6,700 housing units. Eight million dollars will not build, in today's dollars, 24 homes. Again, that is a national embarrassment. We have people who are serving this country but cannot house themselves properly, and the government and the defence minister fail to recognize that we have to support our troops. Therefore, we have a retention and recruitment crisis, and the defence policy update gives no idea of how we are going to increase our troop strength. We are 17,000 troops short today, and it could get worse if this is not rectified soon.
We have a housing shortage and, of course, we have no money to put into new houses. As we heard today again at committee, we have an army that the government has no plan to get new kit for so that it can become the expeditionary force we have come to rely on as Canadians.
A case in point on how the government does not take our forces seriously and puts them in awkward positions is the news we heard just this weekend that the Canadian Armed Forces, through the Royal Canadian Navy, positioned one of our Arctic offshore patrol vessels in Havana, Cuba, for a celebration of the Communist dictatorship there. It is docked alongside Russian navy destroyers. Why would we want to use the Royal Canadian Navy to liaise with a hostile dictatorship in Cuba and an aggressive country that is invading Ukraine today?
We know that Cubans are serving in the Russian armed forces today and fighting in Ukraine. Cuba has actually sent troops to Belarus to train alongside Russian and Belarusian soldiers so that they can invade Ukraine again from the north. This is a national embarrassment and, again, speaks to the fact that the government does not have a plan when it comes to supporting our troops. Instead, it uses them for photo ops with Communist dictatorships rather than supporting our allies in fighting back against the evil that is occurring around the world.
We have frigates that cannot be deployed on as frequent a basis. We no longer have destroyers. We no longer have any of our own supply ships. They are slowly coming, and we have the Asterix out there, of course, which we ordered when we were in government. However, we do not have the same reach in the navy that we used to.
When we look at Ukraine, our government, again, continues to dither and delay in delivering. It announced 18 months ago that NASAMS was going to be sent to Ukraine, and it is still not there. The Liberals finally announced that we were sending 2,000 CRV7 rockets, but guess what, Mr. Speaker? We asked back in February to send the 83,000 we had, not 2,000.
We will continue to put pressure on the government to do the right thing for Ukraine, for the Canadian Armed Forces and for rural Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
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- Jun/17/24 3:06:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Foreign Affairs told CBC News, last week, that it was news to her that Russian warships were docked alongside one of our Canadian naval vessels in Havana celebrating the Cuban Communist dictatorship. This morning, the Minister of National Defence was asked whether he had told the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and of course he denied it.
It is both reckless and dangerous for the Liberals to honour Cuba, Russia's junior partner, and once again they are undermining our relationship and support for Ukraine.
Why is the Minister of National Defence using our navy to cozy up to the Communist regime in Cuba with our Russian adversaries?
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- Jun/10/24 2:10:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, after nine years, the government has given hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to their lobbyist friends. The Department of National Defence handed out $72 million in consulting contracts last year alone. This includes the usual recipients, such as McKinsey, which was awarded a total of 13 non-competitive contracts, but that is not all. The Prime Minister's favourite company, SNC-Lavalin, is back. It was once again awarded contracts worth well into the six figures. When questioned about this at the public accounts committee, neither the defence minister nor his officials could answer what these contracts were for.
Meanwhile, our troops are being forced to visit food banks and couch surf, and some have even started GoFundMe campaigns, yet the Liberal-NDP government has handed out millions in contracts to Liberal insiders and friends. Conservatives demand that the government treat our troops with the respect and decency they deserve. In an increasingly dangerous world, it will not be lobbyists who will defend Canada but the brave members of the Canadian Armed Forces, who will be called upon to serve our great nation.
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- Jun/6/24 3:26:35 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Liberals are definitely fighting against having this motion carried and having the production of papers. There are $123 million that the Auditor General has identified that did not follow the rules under the conflict of interest declarations. The SDTC actually continued to use funds to benefit themselves and their friends, and the Liberals stuffed this board with their colleagues. We are talking about patronage, and we are talking about pork-barrelling.
Are the Liberals voting against this because it is another Liberal cover-up? Is it Liberal incompetence? Is it Liberal corruption? Is it Liberal complicity in what could be under an RCMP investigation that ends in charges under the Criminal Code? Is it all of the above?
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- Jun/6/24 3:16:23 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties and if you seek it, you will find unanimous consent for the following motion:
That the House commemorate the 80th Anniversary of the tremendous sacrifice, valour and victory of Canadians Soldiers, Sailors and Air Crew at Juno Beach as part of the D-Day invasion and subsequent liberation of Europe.
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- Jun/6/24 1:47:31 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as a former Crown prosecutor, my colleague understands the Criminal Code better than anyone. One of the reasons we want to ensure we get to the bottom of this is to ensure there was an accountability based upon the misappropriation of these funds, $123 million, that failed to observe our conflict-of-interest rules.
We have an Ethics Commissioner, and public servants and those who are appointed to serve on boards like the SDTC have a responsibility, a fiduciary duty, to ensure the proper use of taxpayer money. Therefore, I ask my colleague, as a former Crown prosecutor, to talk about the violations under the Criminal Code that could be applicable through this RCMP investigation, whether it be fraud or breach of trust.
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- Jun/6/24 1:13:01 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am surprised that the member spoke almost the entire time and never even mentioned the Auditor General's report, which found that 123 million dollars' worth of contracts violated the conflict of interest rules at the green slush fund, the SDTC. We are talking about 76 million dollars' worth of projects that were given to Liberal friends and insiders. We also know that 12 million dollars' worth were actually ineligible for funding and were in violation of conflict of interest policies.
I have been here a long time, 20 years, and I was here at the tail end of the adscam under the Chrétien Liberals. We have now witnessed, since the Prime Minister came to power, the SNC-Lavalin scandal, the WE scam, arrive scam and now the green slush fund scandal, just to name a few. Is this Liberal incompetence? Is it Liberal corruption? Is it Liberal complicity?
We are calling for a RCMP investigation because the current issue is a breach of trust as well as fraudulent behaviour. Would he agree that we have to call the RCMP in here? Is it the responsibility of, and does it falls on the head of and under the accountability of, the Minister of Industry, or is it, again, Scott Brison's problem?
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- Jun/3/24 2:08:40 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, on Canadian Armed Forces Day, we express our gratitude for the bravery of those Canadians who serve our great nation and protect each and every one of us. We thank them and their families for the sacrifices they make for Canada.
The efforts of the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Canadian Army and the Royal Canadian Navy have been recognized from Vimy Ridge and Juno Beach in the Atlantic to Kapyong and Panjwaii in the Indo-Pacific. Our soldiers, sailors and aircrew have always distinguished themselves through their courage, grit and integrity when deployed to conflicts around the world and during times of crisis right here at home.
This year, we commemorate the Royal Canadian Air Force's 100th anniversary and celebrate the incredible contribution its members make to our safety every day. We thank them for their service and sacrifice over the past century.
Today the forces are in a recruitment and retention crisis. The chief of the defence staff said that if we cannot attract the talent, we will not be able to protect Canada into the future. We must ensure that our forces are ready to meet any situation that threatens our peace, prosperity and security, by investing in the equipment they need and streamlining the recruitment process for today, tomorrow and our future.
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