Mr. Chair, I will try to answer the first one about time.
When the government commits the forces to a mission, it has to analyze what has to be done. There has to be a criteria for success. What is the gauge of success? What efforts have to be put in? An estimate has to be made either by our own staff or by our allies or in concert with our allies to estimate how long the mission will take to achieve our goals. There has to be some sense of how long the forces are going to be there. The minister said that it would not be 10 years. Certainly now it will not be 20. Maybe we put it in a bracket. Maybe our commitment is for 10 years or five years, but there is some reasonable estimate that can be made based on the criteria of success.
If the forces cannot achieve these criteria and cannot achieve success, then that is the alternative. At some point we have to pull out. If we feel we are making success, then we have to report that we are making success. We have no idea what the criteria is for success. I believe we can make a time estimate. We can say the forces will be in there for so many years.
With regard to equipment, it is true that we are going to have a variety of allies with different equipment. What is important for us is what our troops are equipped with, within the limits of our financial capability and our technical capability what can we provide our troops in terms of weapons and protection and mobility. For instance, in the commitment we are going into, I am aware that the Americans in the zone will have helicopters and can provide helicopter lift, et cetera, and there is no immediate need for helicopter lift. When our troops go down a road or into a village or up a hill somewhere, they have to have the best protection possible. My contention at the moment , because this decision was made without making sure we had the equipment the troops precisely need for Afghanistan, is this is being rammed through and we are not necessarily making the best choices.