There are actually few things I am more proud of than the way we are able to look after our men and women in Afghanistan when they fall victim to an ambush, or an IED strike, or whatever else it might be.
It starts with having trained an appropriate number of soldiers—not medics, but soldiers—in tactical combat casualty care, which actually has proven to be life-saving. It has saved lives of soldiers. This is one soldier saving another soldier's life by virtue of the training he's had. You hear these stories when you go over to visit and have so-and-so pointed out who's done this.
We call it a role 3 facility, which is effectively the first line of surgical intervention and life-saving and which is Canadian-led at the airfield in Kandahar. It is certainly something you should see when you visit, because it brings a tear to your eye, in a positive sense—it really does—when you see those men and women. I've seen the same folks over there over a number of visits, in some cases in very tense, very stressful situations, because something's just happened and the patients are coming in. I would qualify it as a world-class facility in its own right at the airfield in Kandahar.
With the medical evacuation capabilities in this, we're part of a coalition. Coalition forces have in place the necessary medical evacuation capabilities to get the wounded immediately into the hospital, and lives have been saved in that hospital.
The next leg in the journey, if I can put it that way, for those who have been stabilized but are not well enough to stay in theatre and require further treatment, is a facility in Landstuhl, which I believe you've heard about, which again is absolutely world-class.
I had an opportunity to visit there about three or four weeks ago. This is the hub, from a U.S. military perspective, for both Afghanistan and Iraq, and there probably isn't a better facility of its kind in the world. When I say world-class, I really do mean world-class.
To a man and to a woman, our soldiers deployed overseas have complete confidence that if they fall, they will be looked after.