Madam Speaker, I thank the member for the question. It certainly gives me an opportunity to talk about what our government has been doing, all the good parts.
First of all, as the member opposite well knows, defence is certainly at the forefront of the government's agenda which we have talked about since December.
The Speech from the Throne, budget 2004, the new national security policy as well as recent investments in key capital equipment, all highlight the government's ambitious security and defence agenda.
Regarding the Prime Minister's announcements on new search and rescue aircraft, the quotations are in the mail right now. The mobile gun system, which was recently announced, was a new project. That was not one that has been hanging for years, as the member opposite had said.
The maritime helicopter project is one that has been hanging for years, but on the other hand it has probably been good in many ways because we have a great bidding process. We have some really good competitors out there and the type of equipment we are going to get is going to be much more advanced than what we were looking at before.
The other project of course is the support ships, which is very important. This is something that has been talked about for awhile but has come up and we are moving ahead much quicker than what was planned before.
When we talk about budget 2004, we certainly put a lot forward there, but we have to remember that the budgets of 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2003, all had huge defence increases in them. This clearly demonstrates the government's commitment to defence. In fact, the member opposite said that there was no money in budget 2004. There was roughly $1.6 billion in new funding for national defence.
Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: That was just to cover the operation.
Hon. David Price: The member opposite is saying that was to cover the operation, but she was just saying we were robbing out of capital to cover operations.
In fact, that is what we are doing here. We are putting money into operations, money for the incremental costs for Haiti and Afghanistan. That is exactly what we were supposed to be doing. We are not taking the money out of National Defence. We had separate money that went directly in for those costs.
Maybe we should talk about, and the member opposite is certainly aware, Roto 0 and the people who went to Afghanistan. They did an incredible job there. We must congratulate them for that. Regarding the equipment they had, the member opposite was also at the SCONDVA the other day when we had General Leslie before the committee. He explained very clearly to a question posed of whether they had the necessary equipment. He replied that everything they asked for, they got. There was no question and no problem for capital expenditures and operations. They got everything they needed, so that has been very clear.
I want to mention the role of our reserves in Afghanistan. They have done an incredible job over there. We talk about the three Ds as our policy now. When we go into a country that has problems and we are going to work there, it is not just defence. We go in with defence, diplomacy and development. Our reserves are doing a lot of the development work. That is incredible and it is an incredible role for Canada to take up.