Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, General Mariage and Colonel Belleau, for coming. I really do want to thank you for enlightening me, at least on this problem. In our province of Newfoundland and Labrador, we of course have the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, which started as a militia over 200 years ago and served as a unit in World War I. It is a very well-respected organization.
Can I ask you whether you think what has happened to the place of the reserves is deliberate, in the sense that this is a philosophical change that has been implemented without anyone really taking up the whole question of whether we need citizen soldiers as such, and remaining as such, or was it born out of necessity?
We know what General Leslie has said and what is perhaps, in our view, the over-ambition and overreaching of the Canadian Forces, particularly in Afghanistan. Is it out of necessity that this happened, or was it deliberate? Does it require a philosophical change and perhaps an examination of what you're talking about here?
Could you comment on that?