Thank you, Chair.
Thanks to our witnesses, General and Sergeant-Major, for being here. It really is so important to our study to have you here. While I'm very sorry not to have been here for the first hour, I can see from your presentation that you've given us a couple of the major inputs that are going to be most useful for us by laying out exactly what constitutes readiness in the eyes of the army and how you're preparing for that.
Just by way of explanation, the Atlantic Council of Canada is having a conference with some of your colleagues over in the Pearson Building, so I was asked to make a presentation to them. I would much rather have been here from the start.
Peter, it's great to be with you. I think back to those days in Kabul when you were commanding the multinational brigade, and neither of us had any idea of just where that mission would be going in the years to come. So congratulations on the achievements then and everything you've done since then.
The same for you, Sergeant-Major Moretti. I know how important your role is in the army today.
I see from your introduction that you have covered a lot of ground, and I really want to just focus on one or two issues--not the prospect of a train wreck in Port Hope, which I'm sure has thoroughly alarmed Rick Norlock, whose riding includes Port Hope....
You just had one? Okay--and I know it was completely hypothetical, on your part.
But thinking of today's army, thinking of the challenges that we know you face, I want to ask about capabilities. How capable are we in the experience we've gained in Afghanistan, that we're trying to institutionalize in Gagetown, with regard to countering the threat of IEDs? I know you've touched on it. I know you know a lot about it. But it strikes me that wherever we go with boots on the ground, IEDs are going to be a part. Almost certainly, if it's more than peacekeeping, IEDs are going to be one of threats we face.
How do you feel we stand up compared to our past, also compared to our peers and allies?