In terms of the military, first of all, let me say that I have benefited from being the NGO dissident voice at so many military training missions. One of the best things about the western military, and the Canadian military in particular, is that they have always made room for dissident points of view, if you like.
There are two problems with the current situation. Our guys are about as good as you get in terms of western militaries, but one problem is that in terms of western militaries coming out of the Cold War era, it's hard to think of a military that would be less suitable for fighting this sort of war. They are again coming out of a military culture that, for fifty years, had them preparing to fight battles in northern Europe. That means they are self-contained, they are very high-cost, they are tied to their computer screens, and they are the exact opposite of the kind of colonial military that could go in and do stabilization activities. So on the military side, we really need a long-term, if you like, JTF-3 that would concentrate on security and stabilization exercises.
This is not the old peacekeeping. This is robust military work. This requires some things that are not very palatable. For instance, they need slush funds to buy intelligence, to buy informers, to bribe people in these conflict zones, and they should get them. I want to be clear about that.
What I think is also the case is that, in this country, we have never had any funding for humanitarian aid agencies, no funding to develop the kind of stand-by capacity you need to mount these heavy programs for the employment of young fighters after the conflict is over. We are having discussions about that now with CIDA, and after thirty years, I think it is about time that we had, as they have in almost every other country, the kind of program funding for humanitarian aid agencies that we have for our development sector. But we haven't had that to date, so you're put in a ridiculous position where the military, which can't do stabilization work adequately, instead of addressing that, says the problem is that we're not doing humanitarian work.
My response would be that it's just wrong on both counts. The military must change, and there have to be resources put onto the humanitarian side.