I'm no longer a member of the forces, but my observation would be that they have come an awfully long way. One of the things that was a little bit bemusing was around 1990, at the time of the Gulf War. We had been a unified force since 1968. People assumed we were joint and everything else, but in fact the three services had operated quite separately, generally, in the Cold War scenario. Other than at staff college or at the occasional training around a humanitarian relief operation, or whatever, we didn't meet each other.
It was really only in the nineties that we did start to become joint, and I would say that one of the fallouts that I mentioned earlier was that we learned a lot in the nineties. In fact, there is a great deal in the 1990s with the Canadian Forces, and the folks who are members of it can be extremely proud in terms of what was achieved in very difficult circumstances. But I would say in the sole area of joint post-September 11, the operations in Afghanistan, the operations in Libya, it's second nature now. It really is.
There is not the kind of...how would I say this? “Joint” used to be the afterthought. Now you'll find the commanders of the army, navy, and air force really working at being truly joint, and it is a challenge, actually. It's definitely a challenge, and we're probably not there yet in a technical sense, but they're certainly there in a procedural sense now. And they've done a lot of it in recent years.
So I would say that it will always be a work in progress, but we're in pretty good shape and continuing to make progress. That is my assessment from a little bit afar.