I think that whole area is really an interesting one. I would say that I take considerable pride as a Canadian in the context of.... Let's talk about Afghanistan. Whatever individual citizens' views might have been about the commitment in Afghanistan, there was never any doubt that they were supporting the members of the Canadian Forces. Whenever there was an issue around PTSD or health care or support of families, there were 30 million Canadians who rallied around it, whatever their views.
I think the challenge is to figure out, when you look south of the border, how some of these things sometimes develop if you don't support the troops. I'm not saying there wasn't a little bit of that, but for the most part that wasn't the way it played out in Canada, and the challenge is to figure out how to continue in this way.
It's not up to the generals or the troops to advocate why they're somewhere, but it's certainly fair ball to expose them and to expose Canadians to the Canadian Forces to explain what they do. Short of an Afghanistan, I would say we should have open houses at bases, open houses on ships, and should be exposing Canadians in general.
I would say that this is a huge reason the reserves and cadet programs are so important in this country. The reserves are in many more communities than a regular force. Whatever number we end up with—70,000, 60,000—is located on super-bases normally away from large population centres. This is a huge reason for our needing the reserves, and as I said, the cadet programs. The reality is that the Canadian Forces.... I mentioned my view that the reason they do so well is that they're Canadian. Exposing Canadians to them, particularly given the wonderful multicultural makeup of this country now, with many of those folks coming from other countries, where a uniform is not necessarily somebody you actually want to spend any time with—in fact, going the other way is usually a pretty good idea.... Giving them some sense that folks wearing a Canadian Forces uniform are actually Canadians who have morals, ethics, and all of that stuff....
How we do it? I'm not sure. You folks are much more expert at that than I am. I think that engagement is extremely important. If we don't have another Afghanistan soon—which I would be very happy with—or a Libya, how does the conversation happen?
I think that whole area of how, in a democracy, the citizens engage with the military and the military with the citizens, so that everybody has some mutual trust and understanding, is really important.