That is a good question. First of all, I will say that our task was not to decide how many soldiers are needed in Afghanistan as a whole. That is something that we did not try to determine. We expressed no opinion on the matter. We must understand that about 2,500 members of the Canadian Forces are in Kandahar, of whom 1,000 are in combat roles. So when we say that we need a combat group of 1,000 soldiers, that would effectively double the number of soldiers on the ground in Kandahar, which would help us to implement the strategy that Mr. Burney has just explained. This consists in holding the land that we have won so that reconstruction and development can continue. So we will be able to increase our efforts to train the security forces, the army and the police. Because if it is our goal to leave Afghanistan in a few years, the Afghans will have to be able to carry on. We are training them at the moment, not in a military college, but in the field with our troops, in quite difficult situations. But if we increased the size of our force, we could also increase the training.
On March 11th, 2008. See this statement in context.