National Defence committee  We should be helping them to write it and to implement it.

National Defence committee  Yes, that's right.

National Defence committee  The commitment of those Chinooks to that mission is by far the most significant force multiplier to that mission. I was in the Congo with U.S. special forces going after Joseph Kony. We knew where he was, with the Lord's Resistance Army and so on, but we couldn't get there because we didn't have the lift.

National Defence committee  We published “Mobilizing the Will to Intervene”, out of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, and the Americans in fact adopted part of those recommendations. The first premise is the recognition that a nation such as ours has a responsibility to protect, fundamentally as being our national ethos.

National Defence committee  I went to Africa and then came back and was deputy commander of the army and was caught up in the whole judicial thing, court martials and so on. What was needed to be found was found. We had a rogue unit. Many of us were responsible for putting some of our more difficult soldiers in difficult cases with weak leadership into an organization that was built to be autonomous and to be front line.

National Defence committee  The damn mefloquine.... Halfway through my mission in Rwanda, I wrote to NDHQ and said that mefloquine was causing me significant problems with sleep, being conscious, and stomach problems, and I said I had to get off of it because it wasn't helping. I was told very clearly that if I didn't take mefloquine I'd be court-martialled if I got malaria.

National Defence committee  Don't forget validation, going six or eight months later and finding out whether it was really useful and whether they have used the people we trained, and so on, and bringing that back and putting it into a research model, not just a lessons-learned on how to change a few tactical things but actually how the trends are moving.

National Defence committee  There has to be a will by the nation to want that seat and to see the significance, so there is a responsibility to bring the country along with it. That's one thing. Secondly, what are you bringing to the UN in order to continue to advance its capabilities? The 100 recommendations that got scrapped in 2005 are still sitting there.

National Defence committee  We've been informed that it apparently is not a significant factor; however, it does exist. The question is, to what extent? One of the problems we're having is in terms of people reporting they're facing child soldiers so that we can actually get the data, the metrics, in order to adjust the training and to provide it.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  I think we've entered an era where there are new capabilities required because the scenarios have changed in the field. The threats are different and the construct of conflict is different, and we must walk in with new capabilities. When we have something like a new threat, that being children, as an example, and a new mission, which is protection of civilians, how do you stop the sustainment of a war through generations by using children and how do you prevent them from actually targeting the civilian population?

National Defence committee  Very rapidly—

National Defence committee  From our side, Canada was the first country to have a combat arms female officer die in the operational theatre, and that was Captain Goddard. She had called in fire to protect about 120 infantrymen deployed. Women have demonstrated that they are quite capable, just as effective and brave, and can sustain the pressures of combat when so committed and when trained to do so.

National Defence committee  I'll let Dr. Whitman say a few words, but.... We work with UNICEF extensively on the ground because, as we are working to prevent the children from being recruited, we're working with education programs to instruct young children not to get sucked in and not to get recruited. We have to know, also, how to handle the children and hand them over to bodies like the NGOs who, in fact, we hope will prevent re-recruitment, and we hope the reintegration process works.

National Defence committee  Yes, I was at Vimy also. That is to say Hill 70.