National Defence committee  I was just in Hawaii with the chief. We were meeting with 26 other chiefs of defence staff of the Asia-Pacific Rim countries, together with our colleagues from Australia and New Zealand. The message I received there--the same message I received in Brussels--was that everyone want

National Defence committee  Again, I would reserve those kinds of things. We're still working inside the Canadian Forces and the department to go to the minister, and I would not want to share things here that I've not shared within the Canadian Forces, within the department, and with the minister. As we l

National Defence committee  Thanks very much for the question. Again, the operational tempo has been high and has been sustained. As I said before, our ability to do that is based upon the long-term investments that we've made. With regard to the finance piece, I would ask the vice chief. He'll be coming

National Defence committee  Indeed, for the Afghanistan mission we received significant funding to assist in bringing the forces up to the higher level of operational training required to go into theatre. So we received incremental money for the kinds of high-level, brigade-level training that people have w

National Defence committee  I think in both areas, both in Trenton and up in Petawawa, the best guy to ask is the commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force, André Deschamps, who has the details on this. I just tip my hat to the air force for how they were able to manage the introduction of the C-17 and C-1

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, as I've already mentioned, we have put a lot into transforming the Canadian Forces, in terms not only of efficiency and investments pertaining to members of the Canadian Forces, but also readiness and capital for the future. We are now doing studies on the structure of

National Defence committee  When operations began in Kandahar, the number of full-time reservists was about 4,500. Last year, the number of full-time reservists was over 10,000. During this period of high-paced operations, we replaced a lot of members in the Canadian Forces who were at Wainwright for traini

National Defence committee  No, not at all. In the Canada First strategy, the goal was to promote the growth of the reserve forces. In the beginning the reserve force had about 22,000 or 23,000 members. I remember, I was vice chief at that time. The goal of the Canada First strategy is to have a reserve for

National Defence committee  Let me first say thank you for the editorial, because I indeed still remember that when we were trying to get our forces into Kosovo back in 1999, the country from whom we were trying to rent strategic airlift would not allow us to land the aircraft where we needed to land. That

National Defence committee  To answer the first question, let me say that when we go somewhere in a major operation, we put all of our men and women in a team such that we are projecting leadership into that operation, just like General Bouchard did in Naples in running the operation for NATO, and as we did

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for the question. I would say that in international operations, Canada has a significant commitment to NATO through that alliance and, indeed, to the United Nations as a founding nation of both organizations. But in international operations, again, governme

National Defence committee  I asked General Leslie to report on the efficiency of our command and control structure. I've received his report and right now we're working on planning with my team of commanders so that we can submit our recommendations to the department. As I have already mentioned, our pri

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. Mr. Chair, I would just say that this is one aspect of the little anecdotes that people hear about in terms of fatigue and high operational tempo, and so on. I just want to assure you—and again, the Canadian Forces' chief can come in here and pile on—

National Defence committee  At present, the fact that there are not many fighter jets on the market is a challenge for us. In my opinion, the modernization program met with a lot of success. We prepared this fighter jet for sovereignty operations and even for NATO support operations, like in Libya. The CF

National Defence committee  In view of the evolution of radars, it's essential to have a fighter jet with better technology in order to protect our aircraft and, above all, their crew. The stealth aircraft, all the command, control and radar systems are included in the F-35 fighter jet. This would be a