Thank you very much for being here. It's always a pleasure to see you again.
I'm going to premise my question with obviously having two sons serving in the Canadian Armed Forces. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Veterans Affairs and Associate Minister of National Defence, I'm a little biased when it comes to our Canadian Armed Forces members.
One of my colleagues was talking about risk, especially with respect to the Mali mission, and I don't know about you but I've never known a Canadian Armed Forces member who would shy away from a mission. I know that Canadian Armed Forces members are incredibly well trained. In terms of other countries asking for more of Canada and why our Canadian troops are so popular, I think it's a testament to their resolve and the training that they receive. You mentioned our numbers may be small, but we're mighty, in my opinion.
That being said, given the change of peacekeeping missions, from peacekeeping to peace operations, can you talk to us a bit about the challenges in terms of recruitment and training of our Canadian Armed Forces to make sure that those brave men and women in uniform have that multi-dimensional training, because it's not just a question of boots on the ground. It's understanding cultural differences, conflict prevention, diplomatic solutions, and so on.
Can you explain a bit about how that's shifted the training of Canadian Armed Forces to understand the multi-dimensional aspects of missions today?