National Defence committee  Thanks, for this opportunity to brief this committee. I'll be under 10 minutes, so no worries there. Today I'll speak from my experience as the former political adviser to the UN peace operation in Congo, and from sometimes serving in other large peacekeeping operations. I'll t

National Defence committee  Thanks very much, Mr. Martel. One quick note: I was never deployed in Mali, so these are observations from the outside. I think the security situation in Mali tends to ebb and flow, and there have been some gains by the military component of MINUSMA in some of the areas where

National Defence committee  I think she certainly covered it. In my experience, interoperability is an important issue for new troops coming in. Often it's that moment when you have a troop-contributing country that isn't used to operating alongside some of the more developed countries. Having some training

National Defence committee  I'm afraid that because that was Ms. Haq's point, from her experience with the Bangladeshi troops, I actually don't have anything to add. I don't think Richard does, either. My apologies.

National Defence committee  We'll both take a stab at that one. The short answer is yes. The cuts to peacekeeping are not happening right now. It had been happening over the past several years. Peacekeeping was at a high watermark of $8 billion, and is now under $7 billion. Big missions like MONUSCO have

National Defence committee  I assume by that you mean the use of multiple different troop-contributing countries within a single.... Okay. It differs from country to country. I think one of the main difficulties has been a wide variety of training and capacities across different kinds of peacekeepers. In s

National Defence committee  Sure. I think that was in the context of South Sudan. Is that correct?

National Defence committee  When the mission in South Sudan was first set up in 2011, the impulse behind it was essentially to do a state-building project. In 2013, the civil war that broke out between the president and the vice-president essentially closed off a lot of the space for the kind of process we

National Defence committee  I think one of the issues that Ian pointed to is the mandating, having a mandate that very clearly sets out from the beginning what the political objective is and not having 290 other tasks that also need to be done at the same time. Also, there's some work that can be done in m

National Defence committee  There isn't a lack of information flow from the field to headquarters. In fact, there is probably sometimes too much information, and it's a matter of culling it. There are daily reports, cables, and an entire centre set up to receive information and flash reports and other thing

National Defence committee  I only have 20 seconds for my answer. It can always be improved. The strategic review initiative is a very good one, and the more we can make it independent and transparent, the better it will be.

National Defence committee  I think there have been some important adaptations in the last few years in terms of building intelligence capacities and understanding the conflict better. I think some other innovations, such as through the use of aerial drones to survey areas where we're not deployed in places

National Defence committee  I would say that in my experience, the Canadians are at key points in the mission like, for example, MONUSCO, a francophone one. They are leading the liaison with the national army and doing it very capably. I couldn't imagine a better contributing country for that. They're leadi

National Defence committee  It's worth pointing out that I don't work for the UN peacekeeping—

National Defence committee  I think there's a certain level of wistfulness that the full commitment would be reached. There is a lot of excitement around the defence ministerial conferences that you've been leading and the commitment to a quick reaction force and others as well. I wouldn't say there's disa