National Defence committee  As a statement of personal belief, I believe that the Canadian Forces are among the best trained militaries in the world. I think they're ideally suited for not only counter-insurgency operations but many others. But let me try to put some meat on those bones. I think it's important that I define, at least from my perspective, what counter-insurgency is.

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman. First of all, let me give my apologies; I'm going to do this in English. My French is getting rustier by the day, so I will not impose upon you or the committee. Yes, we've had casualties in Afghanistan, but casualties are an inevitable part of the conflict and of what we do as soldiers, and in my mind, given the kinds of operations we've been in, the casualties are relatively light.

National Defence committee  If I may put this in some strategic context, until about 1990 the Canadian Forces was deployed principally in Europe, in a footing that really can be best described as just-in-case. We maintained a reasonable size of forces. It varied, but at one stage it was upwards of 90,000. Through a succession of reductions we're now down to 62,000, but even that varies on a day-to-day basis.

National Defence committee  If I may just correct something in terms of specifics, the exercise we did in the nineties was prior to 9/11, obviously, and we were trying to analyze what kind of world we were going into. We already believed that we were going into a much more complex world, and that with the end of the Cold War we were going to see asymmetric warfare emerge: a lot of little guys trying to beat up the big guys, if you want to put it in simple terms.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, it's a pleasure to be here. The last time I was here I was in uniform. Of course, it's a much different context, although it's much the same sort of feeling being here in the room. I did serve for three years as the army commander, ending 39 years of military service.