I'll be rather frank with you. I don't think the committee per se has a relationship with the department. The committee is, in a sense, an all-party organ of Parliament, and it is not supposed to have a legal or other relationship with the Department of National Defence. Therefore, as I've said, we try to function in a non-partisan fashion, but sometimes it should be almost an adversarial process if we don't like collectively or partially what the department might or might not be doing.
We have a cordial relationship. Obviously there are protocols as to the briefings that we talk about and other information that we might want. For instance, we're now doing a study on Afghanistan. They do some of the research for us and the committee does research on its own. They can provide information to us. If we are able to go to Afghanistan, they will assist us with security arrangements and the like. In that sense, there is a relationship, but there is no legal connection per se, like the one the minister has with the department itself. We don't have that.