Article content continued

Q. How do you respond to concerns about the parking of army support vehicles to save money (non-combat support and civilian vehicles such as heavy and medium trucks, cars, vans and even ambulances)?

A. Again it’s about managing the risks. We have an older fleet, an aging fleet, that we couldn’t just keep up in terms of maintaining. So we made a decision. And for that period of time, we’re going to assume a bit of risk in taking off some of the burden of that maintenance. There are enough trucks around to be able to still do our part in reacting to a domestic operation.

Now I’m not saying to you that I might not have to borrow some from some areas of the country to the other one. I’m not saying to you I might not have to borrow some vehicles from civilian counterparts. But given the current situation, the current state of the fleet of the vehicles, those are solutions that could work.

Q. What do you think of the government’s requirement that the military not cut personnel to save money?

A. It’s about capabilities. What is it that the army needs to have to be able to answer the need? And once we answer that question and we agree what capabilities we need, then the rest flows out of this.

Q. What are your thoughts on the recent number of military suicides?

A. I never really thought we would have to make a big statement that this is a priority, because it is a priority, intuitively. But when we look at some of the suicides that happened over the last couple of months, we ought to be concerned. And we ought to ask ourselves what it is that we can do, what it is that we can do better? It comes down to leadership. It comes down to awareness.