Foreign Affairs committee  Madame, let me just respond to that first question. First of all, you're incorrect; we have not taken more losses than other countries. The British have had now, I believe, almost 100 soldiers killed in action in the operation in southern Afghanistan. One loss, from our perspecti

Foreign Affairs committee  It's very hard to talk precisely about losses in, say, Kandahar province versus losses in Helmand province. You heard what I had to say about where we are operating. The lack of roads means that we are sometimes predictable, but we are doing a variety of things with enormous inte

Foreign Affairs committee  Sir, let me just say that indiscriminate attacks by the Taliban have increased—and I emphasize the indiscriminate part. They've switched some of their attacks away from us, because we are a hard target, to the more vulnerable, the more fragile.... School teachers have been killed

Foreign Affairs committee  Yes, sir, I'd be delighted to speak to that. There are two aspects of the mission and setting success for the mission that helicopters enable, overall, under the umbrella of flexibility. The first aspect is force protection. We have soldiers, sailors, airmen, and airwomen, not

Foreign Affairs committee  Sure. What I would say is that it has helped take away some—some—of the freedom of the Taliban leadership to reside inside of that federally administered tribal area in Pakistan, where governance really is non-existent, security is very much limited, and development is just not

Foreign Affairs committee  Second, the 16 helicopters we're buying for the longer-term operational capability of the Canadian Forces for Canada are not going to be delivered in time to meet the demand that the Manley panel.... So we're looking at something different, but hopefully connected, and I don't ha

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for the question. Let me just say, you can say “dance to your own drummer” for every single one of the countries that are involved in the NATO mission from time to time, depending on how you look at it. I actually have a great deal of comfort. Let me just tell you t

Foreign Affairs committee  Sir, I'll tell you, it won't be perfect. That's the only thing I will say. You know that, and we know that too.

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, sir. They don't speak with a Newfoundland accent. That's the only thing I'd say about those folks coming in.

Foreign Affairs committee  Sir, first of all, no, I cannot. That's not because I'm trying to avoid the question or sidestep it or anything. It's simply this. We're in a real short-term process to see how quickly we can meet what the Manley panel said. Much of this, that we needed helicopters, that we neede

Foreign Affairs committee  You're talking about the cost to buy the 16 Chinooks?

Foreign Affairs committee  I personally think the--

Foreign Affairs committee  If I could try to help focus it, first of all, we're not operating on “if” we're going to have an extension to 2011; we're planning on getting on with it, sir.

Foreign Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, thank you for the questions. Let me just say that I did tell Mr. Manley and his panel that we needed another manoeuvre battalion group in the south, specifically in Kandahar province. The first thing that led me to say that was that NATO had done the assessment almost

Foreign Affairs committee  What I've heard about the American forces in the south is that the marine unit that is coming in now has been given a mission that takes them through to November. What I understand about the commitment from the Americans at the NATO summit is that by the end of January 2009, they