Yeah, as said before the military began to fall into disrepair during Trudeaus regime. Percentage of GNP spent on the forces continually went down in the 70's under trudeau.
My dad was in "Mobile Cmmand" then, and he said they had old equipment from the 50's and on exercises they couldnt fire blanks, so they had to run around on exercise yelling "Bang Bang". When Trudea comes up my dad goes on on how he starved the military, and said he was there
The liberals had to start to update the forces in the late 70's-early80's kit wise, so they had to get new tanks, guns, etc etc because the stuff they had was ridicously out of date. They need to mass buy instead of spreading it out over successive governments (as dief and pearson didnt need to replace that much equipment under their reign). Also, the Liberals were in power for like 16/17 years.
Chretien just continued where trudeau left off and simply showed indifference, and to add insult to injury he sent the forces all over the place, and it wasnt till martn that the army starting getting significant funding (allthough not enough)
