Gentlemen, Mr. Minister and General Hillier, I want to first of all congratulate you and the men and women who are serving over there. They certainly are doing a superb job, and they've gained international respect for the work they've been doing too. It's people like Corporal Grant Wagar, who's with the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Highlanders, who's over there serving now. He's really on his third tour, although this is the first time in combat.
That leads me to a question that has been raised by the media lately too, about taking troops from other positions, whether from the air force or from other units of the army, and retraining them for military combat.
Going back to my own experience in the sixties, I was in the Royal Canadian Air Force, and Canada wasn't involved in Vietnam, but I sure wanted to go. At that time the Commonwealth had a process of transferring from one military to another. So it really is not that unusual to take people from certain other jobs and retrain them if they have a willingness to serve in other missions.
Could you comment on that, and whether that is a concern or whether that will satisfy some of the short-term shortages, and how that fits in with your overall strategy?