Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank Ministers Nicholson and Baird for being with us. To the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Lawson, it's good seeing you. Please take back to all members of the Canadian Armed Forces how proud we are of them, and that this committee and Parliament support them in every way, shape, and form for the great work they're doing, not just in Iraq but around the world and here at home.
It's interesting listening to the opposition and Liberals saying they support the mission. They don't support the mission. You can't have it both ways. You can't doublespeak. You guys voted against the motion. You didn't support the mission. Marc may have said at one point in time that he did support it and he had to change his position. They are not behind our troops in Iraq, either special operations or the air task force.
When you talked about how this has changed, Minister, I think you used the term “evolutionary process”. The evolution has been that we've gained territory back, and that the training we've done, the advising we've done, and the military planning we've provided have resulted in Iraqi security forces, the Kurdish peshmerga, gaining territory and liberating villages and people.
Can we talk about how that has specifically been a positive and that we're going to continue to do that in our efforts to stop ISIL, get them back on their haunches, and ensure that they cannot bring their terror to the rest of the world or spread it throughout Iraq?