First of all, with respect to your opening comments I should be very clear. I believe Canadians overwhelmingly support the fight against ISIL and what we are doing. I appreciate some Canadians do not support this and I know the New Democratic Party does not support this and the Liberals have a different view than we have with respect to this. Everybody's entitled to their own opinion. I'm of the opinion that we are on the right track in opposing ISIL and confronting them, but that being said, we all can have different opinions on that.
The question of costs is certainly a moving target as this mission evolves. We have fixed costs, as you know, with respect to, for instance, our CF-18s, the costs of employing our men and women in uniform, equipment that we've already allocated, and we have a process in Parliament through supplementary estimates so that when costs become finalized or when they become clarified, we present them. I can assure you we will continue to do that.
With respect to the second part of your question, I can tell you we are in an advise and assist role. This is what we are doing. Any mischaracterization of that as some sort of a combat role is not correct, as you heard from the Chief of the Defence Staff. We are there to assist them. You asked whether we'd be there.... You said, “Are we there for eternity?” We have been very clear. As a government we said we have a six-month mission and we have come before Parliament and had Parliament either endorse or not endorse what we are doing. This mission goes till approximately the seventh of April, which is I think the six-month mission date, and we have been very clear up to this point that we'd like to have the support of Parliament, and I'm hoping this time the NDP will have a look at this.
You ask, “How do we measure success?” It's the kinds of things we've been talking about. When you push back ISIL, I believe that's part of the success.