If I may, Mr. Chairman, I'll attack this from the perspective of trying to put myself in the position of a commander, like Commander ISAF.
A commander in that situation is dealing with a multinational force, and the first thing he has to look at is the nature of the job, the mission, how big an area he has. It's not uniform. There's great complexity to it. Some areas are peaceful; some are more difficult; some are really terrible and you don't even want to send troops there. It would be ideal if you had all troops at the same level of capability, the same level of professionalism, and indeed the same limitations, if you will, but that's not the case.
The first thing that happens is a commander receives troops on which the respective national governments have put limitations on their employment. You've seen it. Certain of the nations will not be allowed to deploy in certain areas of the country. It's not my place to question that, because Canada has done the same, not necessarily in Afghanistan, although there will be some limitations there. Certainly in other regions of the world, we've often sent troops in with significant political limitations on their employment.
The second is that you have to look at the professionalism and the overall capability of the force. Some are highly professional, well trained, well equipped--all of that; others are at lower orders of capability. The problem a commander has is to mix and match all of those limitations with the tasks that he has. The reality is, certainly in Afghanistan, by my judgment and, I would suggest, the judgment of many other observers, that Canada is in the top three--at the maximum, four--of all the forces in Afghanistan. The British, the Americans, and maybe somebody like the Dutch are up there, but Canada's certainly up in that category and, as the vernacular goes, punching above its weight. In that context, a commander's going to use Canadian troops where he needs them.
So Canada is, in a sense, shouldering a higher percentage of the overall load because it has the troops that can do it, and any commander from any nation would achieve the same thing. The question, perhaps more importantly, is whether it is unreasonable. Is this a disproportionate share? And from what I can see at this juncture, the answer is no. We have far fewer troops in the region, even on any percentage basis, than some of the other nations. We have always had a challenge of matching other nations in terms of their commitment to international operations. This is one of those cases where we stand out as being near the top of the pack, and I think it's high time that be the case. I don't think we're carrying too much of the load. The casualties we have taken are not out of proportion to the numbers we've had or the kind of operations that we have undertaken.