Mr. Chair, thank you very much.
General Vance, it's great to be with you. Thank you for your service and, through you, I'd like to thank all members of the Canadian Forces for their tremendous work and service.
Operation Impact is a mission with which this committee has been seized from the outset of this parliamentary mandate. Iraq is a case that's near and dear to my heart, having had the chance to serve for just under seven years with the political wing of the U.N. mission there. One of the issues that we were seized with at the time was the question of the status of Kirkuk in northern Iraq. As we all know, we have very strong relationships to Iraq's north, commercial, cultural and otherwise.
I'm wondering if you can give us your sense of how the relationship between the federal government of Iraq and the Kurdistan region is currently evolving. Do you see any risk points? At one point, there was heightened risk of military tensions between the federal centre and the Kurdistan region. I think that's substantially diminished, but I'd like to hear your views on that.
Then, if you could cast a regional lens on that from a military security perspective, where do you see the Kurdish nation and its aspirations and plans in 2018?