Since the government announced the decision, at the strategic level the team has engaged our United Nations partners with the kind of military and operational planning that we would need to take the mission forward.
In addition, we conducted a reconnaissance mission—what the UN calls a site survey—into Mali to talk to partners. Concurrently, we also had teams in Europe as recently as two weeks ago, talking with major partners about how we would conduct our entry into the theatre at the same time as other nations would be coming out.
Just last week I was in Europe talking with all my European colleagues, a European Union representative, and allies involved in Africa, including the French forces and the United Nations planners, about the sequence going forward in the next little while. In the next two weeks we will conduct a more detailed reconnaissance and site survey with regard to sustainment of our mission or approach that we will use to go in, and we are working closely with Germany—the nation that we are replacing—from an aviation task force perspective.
As German helicopters come out of the mission, Canadian helicopters go in, and it's not all at the same time. It's a phased approach. We're not talking about international airports, we're talking of some very small airfields and facilities, so as a helicopter comes out, another one goes in; we sequence this.
This is a normal tempo that occurs with every mission, even if it's a Canadian rotation. That's the lie ahead in the next few months, with a view that we'll activate this theatre some time in June. Our forces will flow in, the main bodies will flow in some time in July, and in the third week of July we will see Germany's helicopters come out in the final sense, and Canada's will be on the ground and will be operational in early August.