It's very hard to talk precisely about losses in, say, Kandahar province versus losses in Helmand province. You heard what I had to say about where we are operating. The lack of roads means that we are sometimes predictable, but we are doing a variety of things with enormous intensity to continue to reduce the risks while there.
The equipment is not faulty, Madame. We have the most high-tech equipment available, the best technology available in the world right now. I will just give you an example of the enhanced route-opening capability held by us and the Americans, the only two countries in the world who have it, which goes out and clears the roads, etc. We have mine rollers and mine plows on our tanks going out before us on the roads. We have UAVs, which do surveillance on those roads, and a variety of tactics to do this.
However, we also have an enemy who is thinking and who is, of course, unconstrained by the laws of war, unconstrained by any sorts of policies from a government to actually do things with good values and good interests at heart, and they have found some ways to slip some IEDs in, which we sometimes cannot detect, or they have sometimes come in after we've gone across a route, targeting our young soldiers there. We work at this constantly. We learn lessons and we analyze every attack. You heard what I said about the work we do before the blast, at the blast, and after a blast.
Let me just tell you, having been at Trenton and met most of the families of those young soldiers, this one is my number one priority—and we work hard at it. The equipment is not deficient. There is the simple fact that an enemy, given enough time, enough opportunity, can actually find a way to strike you and find a vulnerability, and that is what they have done with those IEDs. That is their weapon of choice. We continue to work against that.
Madame, we have a responsibility to keep the Government of Canada informed as to what we do, and I am very confident that I meet those responsibilities to our government. It doesn't matter whether it's operations, detainees, or anything else.