National Defence committee  But you're right in general terms that we might be taking over that mission. It's unclear what that essentially means, but it is fairly clear that NATO is prepared to take over the south. There is a staged approach in terms of taking over one province at a time, the south, and th

National Defence committee  I think there has been a debate, and there continues to be a debate. This was what the Dutch were debating. It was about what role they were going to be undertaking in Afghanistan. Was it going to be a peace support mission, similar to what we would consider UN peacekeeping? It i

National Defence committee  It's not entirely clear to me. I thought it was 2009 in the proposal—which sprung out a couple of days before the debate.

National Defence committee  According to the New York Times, the Americans are concerned about whether NATO is going to be able to handle the increased military activity and the fighting that's going on there. According to that report, it's looking at delaying stage 4, which is ultimately having NATO take o

National Defence committee  That's a very good question, and one I didn't see a good answer for at the last meeting, when that question was raised at this committee. There seemed to be a sense that there was going to be a continuation: the mission would just be simply a continuation, and there would be ve

National Defence committee  Certainly. I'll answer the last one first, especially if I misspoke. I said it would be $21.5 billion—I'll get the exact number here—at the end of the five-year period. So it would be the 2010-11 budget, at the end of the decade. So it's not just in a few years, but it's over—

National Defence committee  Yes, we use real spending estimates, so not just the budget, but we also include any revenues that--

National Defence committee  But that number actually came from General O'Connor himself, now Defence Minister O'Connor, during the election campaign, when he said it would exceed $21 billion by the end of the decade. So I'm going by his numbers in determining where we're going to be at the end of those five

National Defence committee  He said that specific figure, so we're using his numbers. The problem is that in your budget of 2005, the Liberals' budget, you at least broke out the spending in each of the five years so we knew what the bell curve looked like, but with the Conservatives, we don't have those

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, honourable members, and guests, thank you very much for the invitation to appear before you this afternoon. It's been three years since I had the last opportunity to address the Standing Committee on National Defence, back in March 2003. It's nice to see some familiar