Thank you for the question, because this is a message that I want to highlight.
We don't necessarily have to emulate what the Nordic countries have done. I think it's okay to have a Canadian approach to how to do this gender mainstreaming strategy. I think the gender-based analysis tool that has been in place for several years is a well-designed tool. Where we need, I suppose, to speed up our efforts is in how we adopt those tools to security and defence challenges.
The baseline tool is great as a primer and as a baseline, but it's an additional challenge to see how the guidelines within that tool kit can then be applied to complex security and defence challenges, whether those are policy challenges, or operational planning, or mission-specific challenges. I think it's that leap that we still need to do.
I'm not saying that Nordic countries are doing it.... They have a training infrastructure to provide training at the leadership level and for gender advisers. However, when I look at training approaches writ large, even the UN training approaches, what's missing is that tailoring. It's teaching people to know how to assess their operational environment as a social ecosystem, to understand what their presence will be like locally, and understanding the differentiated impacts on women, men, boys, and girls locally. Then it's how gender is incorporated as sometimes even a tactic in adversarial strategies.
It's that piece where a lot more work needs to be done. I'm not seeing anyone leading the way on that, which is why I think Canada should seize on this opportunity. What I'm seeing is a lot of baseline training. It is very focused on peace-building and nation building, as I mentioned before. However, when it comes to being able to tailor to a broader range of operational context, I think this is where the exciting developments lie ahead.