National Defence committee  Very briefly, we're not capable of assuming the leadership role. You have three infanteers here. Most of the boots on the ground, most of the casualties, etc.... I'm an honorary chief of the Toronto police service. We have 2,000 more cops in Toronto than we have infanteers in the Canadian Army.

National Defence committee  I'll just add a bit of humour to all of this very serious discussion. When I did say to the public that if you are a UN commander in the field and did it at CDAI, don't phone the UN after five or on the weekend, because there's no one to take your call then. When I got back to Canada, I was invited to New York.

National Defence committee  I would just say that the lead has already been taken, and it's the French who are actually killing the bad guys. They're concentrating on the fundamentalists, and they're responding with deadly force. It certainly can't be the UN, because the other three participants there right now—plus a few others who are there with special forces and don't get announced—are not prepared to accept UN leadership.

National Defence committee  Lester Pearson didn't invent peacekeeping. There were tons of ideas floating around New York at the time about putting a neutral force in-between countries, armies, that are fighting. He richly deserved the peace prize because he stickhandled through the General Assembly—not the Security Council—the approval to deploy the force between countries, Egypt and Israel.

National Defence committee  No. It's not a threat to Canada. It's a continuing threat to international peace and order, because it involves very much not just the civil conflict that's going on, but the insurgency and the fundamentalism and the franchise of al Qaeda and ISIS, etc. It's like whack-a-mole. We're chasing them all around the world, and they just happen to be doing a pretty good job in Mali right now.

National Defence committee  The big difference is that the whole situation in and around Rwanda was just a modest border observation force. It was the surprise that caught the UN out, because all of a sudden the president's plane was shot down and all hell broke loose. That's when the genocide started. Before that, it was a very modest observation mission on the east boundary.

National Defence committee  Look, Roméo Dallaire is a friend, and we have a public debate about a few issues. The problem for General Dallaire, God bless him, was that he'd never worked with the UN before, and he kept asking for permission. You never ask permission from the UN. You do things, and then you say the next morning, oh, by the way, I did such and such.

National Defence committee  Well, to repeat myself somewhat, which I'm happy to do, the point is that—not to be overly dramatic about it—26 members of the Royal Canadian Regiment were going to burn to death in the back of their vehicles in Sarajevo, and I phoned the UN. It was 11 o'clock at night in New York.

National Defence committee  I got that three IC on and said, “Hi. This is General MacKenzie.” He said, “Yes, and where are you?” I said, “I'm with UNPROFOR.” He said, “What country is that in”? I said it was the former Yugoslavia, and he asked where I was. I said, “I'm in Sarajevo.” He said, “What do you do?”

National Defence committee  It goes way back before Afghanistan. It goes back to the mid-nineties due to the gross incompetence of the United Nations and all those nations I listed that backed off from peacekeeping because they didn't trust the UN anymore.

National Defence committee  We had 8,000 persons deployed on peacekeeping operations in 1992—Cambodia.

National Defence committee  Absolutely, along with all those other nations I mentioned, particularly the Scandinavian countries. Very quickly, there was a lack of understanding amongst elected politicians at that time too. We mentioned the fact of NATO coming in and taking over from the UN. I wanted to throw something at my TV that night when, in statements for the record, two members from two different parties stood up, and they had it backwards.

National Defence committee  Certainly there's a ton of retired military, police, diplomats, civil servants who line up outside the door as soon as you start recruiting for a centre like that.

National Defence committee  Five years ago.

National Defence committee  Certainly, it's our past reputation. We did, in fact, participate in every UN mission that anybody had ever thought of up until the end of the Cold War, and performed admirably. We bring more than we're permitted to bring. As was mentioned, we were ordered to bring 13 APCs to Sarajevo.