Thank you, Minister. Madam Chair, I have a quick question while we're still talking about Operation LASER. The President of the Treasury Board has said, The Canadian Armed Forces will be present as long as their presence is needed in Quebec. This contradicts what Prime Minister Trudeau is saying, which is that we have a hard deadline of June 26 for the withdrawal of our troops for Operation LASER. That means taking our troops out of our long-term care facilities. Minister, is June 26 the hard date for the winding down of Operation LASER?
Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'm delighted to have the opportunity to clarify for the House. We've been in very extensive discussions with the Province of Quebec, with my counterpart Minister Guilbault, and we are working very diligently to ensure we have a sustained, appropriate response to the request from Quebec for assistance. That response will result in a transition from the currently deployed Canadian Armed Forces to the deployment of paid volunteers, trained personnel who will take on the important role of providing services to those Canadians who need our help in Quebec.
I'll go back to the Minister of National Defence. The Department of National Defence auditors have called out the Liberal government for mismanagement over the $553-billion investment in our Canadian military through the defence policy. Only three people have been assigned to oversee the rollout of this money. This is a $553-billion investment in our armed forces, and only three people are managing it. Could the minister tell us how that is even possible? Is this the reason that over 100 projects are currently behind schedule?
Madam Chair, first of all, I want to highlight the unprecedented investment that we're making in defence. We have conducted internal reviews of our procurement. The report the member opposite is talking about is from the previous year. This is the ongoing work we're doing to make sure that we make procurement better. When it comes to the management of this, it's conducted by me and the minister of procurement. We are working toward making our procurement even better. We have already streamlined some aspects of our procurement and we'll continue to do more as well.