Thank you, Chair.
Thank you both for coming.
In the last couple of weeks I had the great privilege of listening to a couple of presentations by Lieutenant-General Bouchard, who, I suppose, is on the pointy end of readiness. Certainly, in terms of experience among our military leadership, he's probably as ready as anybody. He talks about leading the force in 2011-12, and his comments strangely echo yours. He talks about cultural sensitivities when you're leading a coalition force. He talks about military limitations. At any given time, he may have had 80 or 90 planes that he was supposed to be able to call on, and in fact he had 40 or 45 that he could call on. It was the same with the boats: he may have had a fleet of 10 or 12, but in fact only 5 or 6 would actually be useful. He talked about differing mandates among governments.
The other interesting observation he made was with respect to the various levels of secrecy among the allies: that the intelligence that is gathered is not always shared; that literally, during the first part of the bombing runs, they were using Google Maps to figure out where they were going to be bombing. All of this leads him to a conclusion about “agility of mind”, which speaks to both of your points, really, Professor Windsor: knowing your military history, but having, if you will, the intellectual training that's required in order to lead.
You made an interesting observation with respect to the interoperability, for want of a better phrase, between DFAIT, CIDA, and the CF. There are some limitations among those three silos, and I'd be interested in your thoughts with respect to that point of interoperability.
The second I'd be interested in is what advice you would give the CF with respect to changes in recruitment, if any, given that “agility of mind”, if it's really important in 2011-12, is going to be even more important going forward.
The third is with respect to General Leslie's report, in particular the issue of “tooth” and “tail” and all of that sort of stuff. At this point, neither the CDS nor the minister has chosen to respond to General Leslie's report. Were you given the opportunity, what would you suggest to both the CDS and to the minister with respect to picking up on some of General Leslie's recommendations?