Mr. Chair, I appreciated the comments by the Minister of National Defence. I have a number of questions and I will put them fairly quickly in case others want to pose questions for the minister as well.
First of all, I would like to start from the premise he drew that somehow this deployment of 450 troops to Haiti would not constitute undue stress on our armed forces. He talked a bit about the high operational tempo. I see a contradiction there.
Obviously even a deployment of a short duration by a relatively small number is going to add to that high operational tempo that our armed forces have been experiencing for quite some time now. I would submit to the minister that despite his reassurances to our men and women in uniform, it will add significantly to the stress, certainly to the stress of those 450 individuals and to the families of those troops we are sending there. I want to also state the obvious, that our men and women in uniform always perform above and beyond the call of duty and what is expected of them. That is the first question that I will pose.
The second and third questions are the ones that I posed to his colleague, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, when he opened the debate this evening. Do we have any estimate of how much this three month deployment is going to cost? Is it going to be covered, at least the military component of it, under the existing Department of National Defence budget, or are other funds going to be made available either now or in the upcoming budget in a couple of weeks?
Finally, if, as the minister said in his speech, the chief of staff of our military recommended our commitment of 450 troops prior to the Prime Minister's announcement that he made in New York City at the United Nations, then why in heaven's name could the Prime Minister not answer any questions that the reporters posed to him that day about the size of the deployment, where the troops would come from, the terms of engagement, or whose command they were going to be under? He could not respond to any of those questions, yet the minister now expects us to believe that the recommendation came from the chief of staff to the Prime Minister. I am pleased that the Prime Minister is here tonight during the debate.