Broadly speaking, the contingencies we work on fall under the category of protecting Canadians. Should there need to be an evacuation of Canadians, as we've seen before out of Lebanon, and if Foreign Affairs turned to the Canadian Forces and asked for support, we need to be ready. We need to make certain that we have asset visibility. We need to be ready to adopt a posture that allows for a reasonable response.
I said “reasonable”, but there's a question mark behind that term. We want to achieve strategic effect as quickly as possible. We maintain ready-duty ships so that if we need to go somewhere to help evacuate Canadians, we can go as quickly as possible. The calculus, the decision-making, then goes through a variety of iterations. Do you maintain a ready-duty ship in Canada, or do you maintain a ready-duty ship closer to where you think it might be needed?
These are questions for decision at a variety of levels in government. Nonetheless, my staff goes through the options analysis, always wanting to give the government options. If you are concerned about a nation in the Maghreb or in the MENA region, or if you need to determine how the Canadians on the ground should respond, then we would have some options available to government. Our job is always to provide some options. From a broad contingency perspective, that's really what we do.
We must also be certain that we maintain the capacity—and here it's a bit of a forcing function—to reinvest in the broader training and readiness of the forces. It might not be as high, but it is readiness in some detail. We need to be able to prosecute operations that we think could happen in the future. So there's the vice-chief's side of the house in force development.
Your premise is absolutely correct: we are constantly trying to work through strategic contingencies.