Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I too want to extend my congratulations to General Bowes and General Meinzinger on their upcoming appointments.
As Mr. Spengemann suggested, this is our first session on peacekeeping, and there's a tendency to run off in all directions, I think, among all of us.
I guess I would say to the chair that this is a motion that I moved almost a year and a half ago. At that time I wrote it relatively broadly, because we didn't know where we were going. We might have written the motion a little differently, given where we are.
I'm wondering whether we will have the opportunity to talk to the minister specifically about the Mali mission as part of these hearings. I just put that on the table for the committee. There are sometimes things that involve political decisions and are better asked to the minister than to those who are in front of us today.
Mr. Gwozdecky, you have described the new situation that Canada is taking on, the new tasks and the new approach. I in no way want to criticize those tasks as being unimportant, but it seems to me it's a step down from our traditional role in peacekeeping, whereby Canada provided very high-level leadership. It's not just boots on the ground that we provided, but high-level leadership, not only in missions that had Canadian troops but in other missions of the United Nations with both civilian and military officials. We also provided very high-level training, which was organized in this country by the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre. I'm wondering whether there's any sense—and this is one of those questions that may be unfair to you—in which we have actually stepped down to a more technical approach to peacekeeping from that leadership role that we have traditionally played.