National Defence committee  If you view that as an error, yes. However, we consider that it is the very basis of land training which gives Canadians the option to assign part of the military to resolve a crisis occurring somewhere. There is no guarantee that we will always be facing situations like the one in Afghanistan.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

National Defence committee  Right now, we require folks seeking to enroll in the Canadian Forces to have no less than landed immigrant status. I can't speak specifically to where that comes from. Whether it's a question of legislation or departmental policy or whatever, I don't know at this stage of the game.

National Defence committee  No, sir, I'm not. But anything that accelerates it is a good thing.

National Defence committee  The Australian army, as an example, will hire you in a week, because they know what they're getting when they go after people. They'll cover all the rest of that; they'll catch up to it later. It's really extraordinary when they hire a trained military man from another country of their choice in a week.

National Defence committee  Yes, sir, and if I represented that as the aim, that's not correct. The aim is to accelerate the journey for people who wish to belong to the military and who are on a journey to citizenship. That's the aim, sir.

National Defence committee  I work in partnership with the director general responsible for land force capacity renewal. We are partners in the Doctrine and Training System. The link between doctrine, training and operations is unification. Lessons learned under my control have a direct bearing on the drafting of the doctrine.

National Defence committee  First is people. We need to ensure that we don't have to tap into other parts of the organization to run a training system. Second is partners. The nature of operations today--the whole of government, the three Ds, pick a term--requires us to have our partners and us working alongside each other before we actually get there.

National Defence committee  The answer is that from the time a person applies to the time we sign them up, whatever slows that down, that's what's doing it, sir. I think what's slowing it down is, in part, our own practices, which are being challenged by us now, and in part issues of governance, which we can't do much about: security screening, citizenship, and the like.

National Defence committee  Yes, our practices or institutions. When we get them into the training system, however, then we have full control. If we lose them in training, it's not for lack of our effort or lack of their will. At some point or another, what you think you're joining and what you're actually in comes to your mind.

National Defence committee  That I can't do, because I don't know.

National Defence committee  We train the soldiers who deploy...and then train the Afghani army. That's correct. I am not personally involved in the relationship with the Afghani army in Afghanistan.

National Defence committee  We're training the officers--the warrant officers and their leaders--who deploy to Kabul, at the national training centre. Through our training system we train the soldiers who are working alongside the Afghan National Army and national police. As of this summer, we will be deploying an observer military liaison team that will live with an Afghani battalion and provide enabling support from the ally forces.

National Defence committee  We would be unable to train the Afghanis to our level of sophistication. The training they need is provided to them in Afghanistan. We are actually taking the best practices, vis-à-vis the Wainwright model, of our national allies, in particular the British and the Americans, to do the training.

National Defence committee  They're certainly helping to teach us. I wouldn't say they're helping to train us.