Thank you, Mr. Chair.
General Eyre, I just want to say thank you for your incredible service and tenure as CDS and your entire military career. We're all very thankful that you've been in a position of leadership during some difficult times, with everything from COVID to the war in Ukraine and the increasingly dangerous world we seem to find ourselves. We're trying to navigate through that, despite tight budgets and cuts in those budgets at times, and all the other things that have happened within the Canadian Armed Forces.
You stepped into a situation that had the entire CAF in turmoil following one of your predecessors. Thanks for coming in, stabilizing that ship and moving the troops in the right direction.
We're here to talk about transparency, and you did talk about that in your opening remarks. The chair and I both spoke last week at the defence intelligence conference, and one of the concerns that I raised.... We talk about making sure Canadians understand the importance of our Canadian Armed Forces, the situation we find ourselves in and how we change public perception. A lot of it comes down to the classification of information and the overclassification of information. If Canadians are going to understand the threat environment, then we need to be more blunt with information. This committee, of course, does not have any security clearances, so the information shared around this table and the information shared with the public is limited and only open source.
Do you believe there needs to be a change in how the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence handle information so that we can make sure the public is onside with the expenditures, the investments and the missions we have to undertake to keep Canadians safe?