Mr. Speaker, the defence minister insensitively announced, on Remembrance Day, a three-year deployment of Canadian troops to a number of unspecified African countries. The minister said, “These missions, all of them, have the level of risk where peacekeepers have been hurt, they have been killed”.
In Mali alone, 106 UN peacekeepers have been killed by terrorists. Why would the defence minister choose to announce on Remembrance Day that he is sending our troops to dangerous UN-led African missions?