Conservative
Over-Spending on Afghanistan Leaves No Funds for Critical
Search-And-Rescue Equipment
OSLO
– The minority Conservative government’s flurry of spending on tanks
and other equipment for the Afghanistan mission has left Canada’s
military without enough money to upgrade its search-and-rescue capacity,
Liberal Defence Critic Denis Coderre said today.
“The
purchase of new search-and-rescue aircraft was the number one equipment
priority for the Canadian Forces in 2003,” Mr. Coderre said from Oslo,
where NATO is meeting on the Afghanistan mission.
“But this government’s recent spree of equipment purchases has
stretched the budget so thin that this critical purchase has been shelved
indefinitely.”
The
military’s purchase of 15 search-and-rescue planes was supposed to
replace the 40-year-old Buffalo aircraft on Canada’s West coast as well
as the aging Hercules transport planes used for such missions.
But,
according to news reports, the $1.3-billion program to buy a fleet of new
fixed-wing search-and-rescue aircraft has been derailed by the hundreds of
millions of dollars being spent on equipment for Afghanistan, including a
$650-million order for Leopard tanks and multibillion-dollar purchases of
C-17 and C-130J transport aircraft and Chinook helicopters.
Mr.
Coderre noted that since aircraft such as the C-130J won't be delivered
for at least three more years, there should still be money in the military
procurement budget for search-and-rescue aircraft.
“What
is it going to take before the Conservatives acknowledge they must proceed
with this program – a large-scale disaster that our military can’t
respond to?” Mr. Coderre said.
