Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, gentlemen, for coming.
A number of us have been to Afghanistan on more than one occasion, and I can say first-hand that the work our police do there in terms of training has been quite remarkable under very difficult circumstances.
Weak public institutions feed insurgents. We keep talking about capacity building, and in the report of December 2008, which dealt with Canada's engagement in Afghanistan, we set out a number of baselines. We, of course, are changing this mission to focus on training both the Afghan National Police and the Afghan National Army. Back in December, I read about those baselines and our targets. Obviously they are of great concern. We keep talking about illiteracy and corruption and poor pay and all those things we recognize, and they're not getting any better. In the long run, they do not seem to be getting any better. We continually express concern about the fact that the police are the face of government in many of these local communities. They are the face. If people don't trust the police, you can't expect them to trust government officials.
As of August of last year, the percentage of ANP forces in key districts that were capable of planning and executing near-autonomous operations was zero. And yet in less than two years, we hope to have that be 80% of ANP. How are we going to make this quantum leap between zero and 80% with the resources that we have currently when in the last few years we haven't been able to advance that?
That would be my first question, through you, Mr. Chairman.