Mr. Chair, thank you for the question.
I would say that in international operations, Canada has a significant commitment to NATO through that alliance and, indeed, to the United Nations as a founding nation of both organizations. But in international operations, again, government has a call in what we do internationally. In support of the United Nations, we have missions that are carried out throughout the world, and we don't talk about them enough. We still have people in Haiti today, we have people in the Congo, people in the various regions of the Sudan. We have people as part of a multinational force of trainers in Sierra Leone, and we have people in the Middle East with the United Nations Truce Supervisory Organization, UNTSO, all wearing blue berets. So we have all of those missions.
Indeed, the Canada First defence strategy was produced while we were ramping up into Afghanistan. One of the key lessons of Afghanistan is that we have a level of self-reliance and that what we do is to ensure that we have a strategic effect for Canada. Again, I was with some here on tours in Bosnia. In Bosnia in 1994, I was on two tours, the first one a year long in 1994, and we had 2,200 men and women committed to Bosnia. We had one battalion in Bosnia itself, just west of Sarajevo, in the area of Visoko and Kiseljak.