Great.
For a number of years, I was asked back to the Staff College on one of their case studies on the Great Lakes region story. The problem with that story is that the problem got resolved. We had a mission, we had constraints, and we had buy-in from allies, but then the problem got solved before the mission actually went out the starting gate, which made managing it to the conclusion kind of fascinating.
Having said that, to say that Canada was ready then to lead an operation of that nature.... I'm not just talking about the Canadian Forces. I go back to my comments about the Manley report, the government response to it, and the whole-of-government approach around Afghanistan. We are leagues ahead of where we were there.
I would also say that I used to think this was a pretty low probability anyway—and it's not necessarily a high probability—but I'm not sure the Australians expected to find themselves leading the operation in East Timor. I think Canada needs to pay attention to it, actually, and part of the reason why I think the lessons learned out of Libya and Afghanistan need to be applied to that question is so that Canada is ready.
I think we are significantly more ready today. The challenge is that if the world unfolds and we don't find ourselves in that scenario, and people move on—not just in the forces but in all these other government departments—and we lose all the stuff that we have gained in the last 10 years, or certainly 7 or 8 of the 10 years in Afghanistan, it would be a huge loss to Canada's ability to lead an operation of the type you're talking about.