I'd be careful about drawing the relationship to us being there and schools being blown up, because they were being blown up before. We weren't in Kandahar before the elections on September 18, and there were somewhere between I think 14 and 20 religious leaders who were assassinated in Kandahar province and Helmand in an attempt to disrupt the election. Schools were being burnt then, etc. Because we're there now, we know about it. So there's that point.
How does the feedback get to the Government of Canada? The kinds of decisions that you listed about the location and content of the mission, etc., are decisions that are made by political leaders. That's the basics of civil-military relations in a democratic society.
The feedback to the government is through the military chain of command. For a year, I had direct access to the Chief of Defence Staff and to the commander of the Canadian Expeditionary Forces Command. I gave them opinions in a fairly frank manner. Brigadier-General Fraser has direct access to General Gauthier, the expeditionary forces commander, and to General Hillier. We make recommendations all the time. What they do with them is their call.