Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague does not seem to understand the basic concept of a coalition. A coalition is a collection of individuals, and in this case nations, that agree on a certain task that needs to be done. Then they allocate those tasks among various partners, for example, one does air, one does ground, one does intelligence, one does aid, one does this, and the other does that. Quite rightly, the Prime Minister identified the fact that a lot of nations were prepared to do the air war part of the campaign.
There is something in the order of about 200 airplanes in theatre at any given time, all available to take back territory from the ISIS group of terrorists, and in large part, they have been quite successful. They have taken back substantial pieces of territory basically on the basis of an air war.
At some point or another, somebody has to get on the ground. In this particular case it is the focus of the Government of Canada to train the local Iraqi security forces and the peshmerga in a fashion that they will be enabled to take back ground, whether it is Fallujah or Mosul or Raqqa, or pick the individual city.
In order to give them the best chance to be successful, we have allocated 830 of our best people. We have effectively doubled the size of the mission and we have put Brigadier-General Anderson into Baghdad. He is performing a magnificent task, doing some coordination and liaison among the various factions.
The member will appreciate that this area is complicated. These people in some respects have been fighting with each other for the last 4,000 years and to think that somehow or another removing six of our airplanes from this particular conflict is going to bring resolution or even better protection to our own troops is just a nonsensical and fanciful thought.
We are doing what the Conservatives refused to do, namely, making available to the peshmerga and to the other Iraqi security forces people of the highest quality training. Our people are the top of the tops and by making them available, which admittedly as General Vance has said, increases the risk to the mission, there is a much better chance that when the Fallujah initiative takes place, and part of it is already taking place, and when the Mosul initiative takes place, these Iraqi security people and the peshmerga will have the best possible chance of success.
Frankly, six airplanes in theatre adding to the already almost 200 airplanes that are there would not increase the chances of success in any substantial measures.
At some point or another, we have to realize that there are phases to conflicts and at this phase, there is an opportunity to take out ISIS and take it out big time.