Thank you very much, Chair.
I would like to join my voice to those of colleagues wishing you and everyone who works in NDHQ and across the Canadian Forces in all branches, even in the most far-flung places well beyond Kabul and parts of Africa and so forth, the very best for the holiday season and a merry Christmas. All of us really do appreciate the tempo you maintain and the sacrifices that have been made particularly in recent years. We hope 2010 was an exceptional year. Certainly it was in terms of our recent history. As the season unfolds we have an enormous amount to be thankful for in terms of the work you and your colleagues have done, so we wish everyone a merry Christmas.
I really want to delve into some of your earlier remarks about readiness. Obviously our readiness is an expression of the priorities that have been set by the government and by circumstances in the world, but by being ready for certain missions, we are, in effect, saying we're not ready for other ones, or we are less ready for other ones.
You said that the mission that actually arises as a new priority is often not the one we could predict. We can't predict earthquakes. We couldn't predict 9/11 and so forth.
We have come to have a lot of confidence in the ability of the Canadian Forces to retool and to become ready for new missions, and we understand that readiness involves equipment. It involves training. We understand it involves human resources. There have been improvements on all of those fronts, but there's an issue we haven't heard about yet, which is really the rate of preparation. Obviously it's better to do a lot of training over a long period, but you don't always have that time.
I was wondering if you could discuss how that factor has evolved recently in response to Afghanistan and other missions. How quickly can we become ready for a new mission, and are we doing a better job of that now? Are we doing it faster? Are we able to do it faster than we could in the past? If not, what sacrifices or compromises does this involve?