Thanks very much for the question. Right up front, the answer is yes.
Let me just put forward a preamble. First of all, thank you and thanks to everyone for the great comments about the men and women in the Canadian Forces. I think we've realized once again through this experience in Afghanistan that we don't take a back seat to anybody. Man for man, woman for woman, and in what we do as a force, from the most junior private right up to our senior leaders in theatre, we have proven ourselves once again. Things that we knew before, we have proven once again.
Again, thank you very much for the special recognition of the counter-IED folks, because they save lives every day, and you realize the number of cases they respond to is absolutely tremendous.
We are still working to the transition of the military mission next summer. I use the word “military” mission; some folks say “combat”. But if you look at the PRT, the training mission, support, and development—all the things across the board involving what we in the military do—we call it the military mission. We are working with our allies, specifically Regional Command South, which is the ISAF headquarters in the south of the country, with respect to the transition dates. We're looking into the June-July timeframe next summer in order to meet the parliamentary motion's remit to be out of the country by the end of 2011.
So that's the timeline we're working to. We aren't specific yet on the actual dates of handover of various areas of responsibility, as we recognize that Regional Command South headquarters will be transitioning over the next little while from a British-led headquarters to an American-led headquarters. The new commander will get on the ground and develop his plans and then, with the troops he has allocated, will work on detailed plans in terms of what areas, such as Dand District and Panjwaii District, which you visited...at what point those areas are going to be transitioned to other NATO allies.
So we are still working to transition in the summer of 2011 and are putting that into June and July of 2011 in order to draw down, such that we are out of the country by the end of the year. Again, logistics is always tough; it's tough in this area. We saw how some of the routes into Afghanistan were interdicted these past few months. That will create challenges, if interdiction continues. But from our planning standpoint, we are working towards the end of 2011 date.