National Defence committee  Thank you.

National Defence committee  Thank you. Let me apologize for being late. We'll talk about Air Canada later on. I'm grateful to be here and that General Dallaire is giving me the opportunity to share the floor with him to speak to you about an issue that I believe is incredibly important in how we look at n

National Defence committee  Thank you. There are a couple of aspects here. One of the challenges we have with civilian protection is that we need practical approaches to how to employ that effectively. Your concept of what that means versus someone who comes from a totally different cultural context in the

National Defence committee  There are significant numbers of child soldiers who are estimated to be used in Mali. It is also one of the countries that is listed by the UN Secretary-General's report that comes out every year on the state of children in armed conflict. We know for sure there are at least four

National Defence committee  One critical thing is that we have to be able to recognize those areas and moments when we could do more effective prevention techniques, because we don't do that enough. General Dallaire made the example of Boko Haram and the Nigerian Armed Forces. All of you will have known ab

National Defence committee  It's certainly the case that you have to understand that not all children are forcibly taken, but we also want everyone to understand that the lack of choices exists, whether it's because there isn't an opportunity to go to school, the economic situation, loss of parents, etc. Th

National Defence committee  Just to reiterate a point you're making, if you're going to move towards a role that is not commonly undertaken by someone who doesn't look like you, you need to see those people out there, so we need to find ways to put women out there so that other young women can see that as a

National Defence committee  I just want to clarify. When General Dallaire says "we", he means the Roméo Dallaire Child Soldiers Initiative. We have a set of scenarios we walk through, 12 interactions, one of them specifically being a checkpoint scenario, for example, much like the case you are highlighting.

National Defence committee  Let me give you an example. We've worked with former child soldiers to create the training that we've conducted. I always recall some of the children in one of the workshops telling me, “Please tell the soldiers not to back down from the situation, because in the heat of battle w

National Defence committee  I think it's incredibly important to make sure that this is where we have to go—beyond the policy, beyond the doctrine, into action. I'm a little concerned right now that we're still at a point where it hasn't gone deep enough yet. In terms of the Canadian Armed Forces or the RCM

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  I want to make sure that you understand. I would say that one day is never enough for.... It's a constant battle that we have with any armed force that we're dealing with. They tell us that they don't have any more training dates to give. That depends on what you set your priorit

National Defence committee  Thank you for that opportunity. First of all, being clear that one of the things that we need to do as a smaller nation, with a relatively smaller set of troops that we contribute, is to also be really clear on niches that we may have and not try to take on everything that exist

National Defence committee  There's no problem with integrating it into the training, but I think that first we have to create a capability of understanding the specialized dynamic of it, and then how it could be inserted. One of the things we need to do is to look at how we work with those groups—whether i

National Defence committee  I think it's important that there are ways to bridge information gaps and approaches, but that means thinking about it carefully because, yes, a lot of the NGOs on the ground still don't want to collaborate with the military actors on the ground, for good reason. There are group