National Defence committee  It's my boss.

National Defence committee  It's a job that's assigned to him. It's one of his main jobs. He has several. It's just like the search and rescue region commanders in that two of them are also joint task force commanders. They have that responsibility as well. The commander of Joint Task Force Pacific is also the commander of search and rescue region Victoria.

National Defence committee  They report through me, sir.

National Defence committee  I think the air force would be a better witness to this, but I did have an opportunity to fly the new Chinook very recently. Having started flying helicopters more than 25 years ago, this new aircraft is night and day in terms of what it will afford in terms of a capability for Canadians, the Canadian Forces, and all those—certainly in the disaster response sense—that we would aid.

National Defence committee  It's because the capability itself as a system is not yet ready, sir. Some of the experienced aircrew who we would want to deploy, if we deployed a detachment of two or three aircraft, are being used to train the other aircrew. The maintenance capability is not yet completely up to speed.

National Defence committee  Sir, our principle partner in the defence of North America is the United States. We maintain a very active relationship with the other two commands that are involved in the defence of North America, those being NORAD and USNORTHCOM. The structure that we use is called the tri-command.

National Defence committee  I would say that the command and control system is always turned on—if that's an analogy that makes sense. We're always operating and we're always ready. The Canadian Joint Operations Command manages our response through the Canadian Forces integrated command centre, called the CFICC, which is always on duty, 24/7, and 365 days a year.

National Defence committee  Thank you very much. Mr. Chair, members of the committee, it's a pleasure to be here. I am accompanied today by Brigadier-General Gregory Loos, Commander of Joint Task Force North, headquartered in Yellowknife. I'm here to talk about the Canadian Armed Forces role in continental disaster relief operations.