Madam Chair, I congratulate the minister on extending the Conservative-initiated mission, Operation Unifier.
I know that the minister visited the troops last year. He invited me to accompany him, but unfortunately, I was ill and was not able to be there. It is something I hope he and I can do again in the near future.
As everyone in this House always recognizes, our troops are second to none. Their skills and abilities, as the minister knows first-hand, are easily transferrable, and our Canadian Armed Forces are always up to the job of helping those who want to better themselves and defend themselves, and in the case of Ukraine, who want to train to NATO standards. I thank the minister for extending this mission for the next two years.
Ukraine has been asking the minister, as well as the government, to sign the Canada-Ukraine defence co-operation agreement so that we can take this relationship even beyond what it is in Operation Unifier by expanding exchanges of officers and bringing their trainers here so they can get even more involved in the Canadian institution and the military culture we have here, which really is, in my opinion, the leader in the NATO nations. Something Ukraine, of course, aspires to is having NATO membership at some point in the future. Of course, they have to train to the standard. They have to make sure that they have that ability.
Will the minister commit to signing that agreement? Will he also take a serious look at providing lethal weapons to the Ukrainian military to defend Ukrainian territory, as the government has done with the Kurdish Peshmerga in fighting ISIS?