Thank you very much, General, for being our witness today.
First of all, I would like to thank all the medical corps who served for years in Afghanistan, especially the personnel at the Role 3 hospital in Kandahar. Also I share the grief of the lost lives of medics in combat at the front line. I know there were several of them.
General, are you able to expand on your experiences of running the NATO combat hospital in Kandahar? That was a very interesting operation and a very interesting role that Canada had in an area of allied operations. You didn't see only Canadians who were injured. You have seen all kinds of casualties from different nations.
What kinds of physical and mental health-related injuries did you see the most? Was the hospital ready to give you the services needed to address the injuries that came in? How did this situation evolve over time? How did the hospital improve over time? Were there any injuries or cases that you did not expect to see?
As you know, and as I explained to the committee, the Role 3 hospital was very important to stabilize the injured survivors and save lives; before we speak about any kind of operational stress injuries, we speak about saving lives first. In this context, can you elaborate on the lessons learned from Afghanistan to be applied at home in order to increase the time to treat the operational stress injuries, in order to reintegrate the soldiers more quickly to be combat ready? That is the role of the forces: to have soldiers ready to be deployed again.