National Defence committee  One of the recommendations of the Somali inquiry was that Canada needed to better train its forces. It was one of the brutal lessons from the Somali debacle. The Pearson Peacekeeping Centre and the PSTC, the Peace Support Training Centre, were created as a result of that hard-learned lesson, and it seems to me we have forgotten that lesson and we have to get back to it.

National Defence committee  I think that would be an accurate estimate, yes.

National Defence committee  I think you're going to be happy with the answer. Kingston is actually a good area because—

National Defence committee  —it's close enough to Ottawa but far enough away. It already has the Peace Support Training Centre. There are facilities, for instance, in Fort Frontenac that could be used. I've taught there at the Command and Staff College for the army. You need to be fairly close to an airport.

National Defence committee  Yes, they're also in favour of that location.

National Defence committee  No. The peace operations of the UN stayed the same. What changed was Canada's engagement in Afghanistan. When we were moving into Kandahar, we had 200 logisticians in UNDOF, the UN Disengagement Observer Force, in the Golan Heights of Syria, and we needed those logisticians for other operations.

National Defence committee  I have been in Gao. I was there in January and I was there in July last year. Yes, Gao has been attacked. I'm not aware of any fatalities as a result of those attacks. Even when I was there in January, I could hear gunfire in the distance. Most of the time, most of the people in these towns are safe, and the super-camp in Gao is very well protected.

National Defence committee  Sure. They're headed by Paul LaRose-Edwards. They're on Nicholas Street. Their primary funding now is coming from the British government. They help provide civilians from not only Canada but countries around the world to international organizations to serve on missions. I've been asked at least a dozen times by CANADEM to deploy on mission.

National Defence committee  Currently we don't have a place where military, police, and civilians can get together and do education and training together. We have the Peace Support Training Centre in your riding, but it's so important that the military get exposed to the other components of peace operations and that they learn to work under civilian control.

National Defence committee  Sure. I give a whole lecture on the evolution of peacekeeping. I'll submit to the committee a figure that will give you a good view of how you can view peacekeeping as part of peace operations as a whole—peacemaking, humanitarian assistance, peacebuilding, peacekeeping, peace enforcement.

National Defence committee  I think we can. The Canadian Armed Forces has a chain of command. The chief of the defence staff never loses his command of the forces in the field, and they take very thorough precautions to ensure that the men and women in uniform are adequately protected. In Mali the fatality rates are less than one-third of what Canada experienced in Afghanistan.

National Defence committee  It's not possible to completely secure the borders, particularly in a country like Mali, with those wide-open desert areas, but you can do a better job. That's why I was in Mali in January, looking at how unmanned aerial vehicles can be used in that mission.

National Defence committee  I've visited the Indian and Pakistani units. I've worked with their officers and I think they're very fine. Ethiopia has some major experience in combat and in peacekeeping over the decades. In many ways, those countries have surpassed Canada in terms of knowledge about how peacekeeping works.

National Defence committee  The UN role is to support a peace process and to do a wide range of activities, from protection of civilians to human rights to child protection. Operation Barkhane, led by the French, is a counterterrorism mission, and so is the G5 Sahel. It's important to keep those missions separate, because otherwise the terrorist-armed groups may say that it's all one unit, and they will attack the soft underbelly: those who are providing humanitarian assistance, those who are working for the UN on development.

National Defence committee  There is communication. The French also have soldiers in the MINUSMA mission, so they're quite aware of what's going on. There are times when MINUSMA personnel may need to be rescued by French forces. They share some resources together, and their communication is essential. It's just that the roles should be viewed differently, and they actually are quite different.