Mr. Speaker, first let me thank my hon. friend for his congratulations. I look forward to working with him and with other members of the the House who have the best interests of the Canadian Armed Forces at heart.
As I go through this phase, let me suggest to him, to a lot of people at national defence headquarters, to a lot of people across the country in the forces themselves as well as to all the public servants, I do not expect to be able to master all of this in a very short period of time but I am going to work very hard at it.
I want to assure my hon. friend that we will take into account all of the suggestions, all of the recommendations. I will be very careful in doing that. I want to make sure that I am fair and as equitable as possible.
I do not have any prejudice or axe to grind in any of this. I look forward to working with those members of Parliament who believe, as I do and as I can tell my hon. friend does from his question, that the objective of the exercise is to make sure that the men and women in the Canadian Armed Forces know what is expected of them, that we provide them with a mandate they can understand and work within and that we provide them with the financial and human resources to carry out that mandate.