Hundreds of soldiers and their families gathered at Canadian Forces Base Gagetown on Friday, for a patriotic pep rally that celebrated the military and its mission in Afghanistan before the troops depart for six months.
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor and Canada's military leaders were on hand at the New Brunswick base to give the latest wave of troops headed for Afghanistan an emotional send-off.
O'Connor gave the crowd an rousing speech, saying the government is supporting the Afghan mission and that they are serving the needs of the people in that country.
"You are there so that women are not restricted to their homes, often without any means of support, so that public floggings and beheadings are not used to keep everybody in line. You are there because Afghans want a different future," he said.
The defence minister said the government has yet to decide whether Canada's contribution into the mission in Afghanistan will be extended beyond 2009.
"It depends on how much success we determine we've had there, whether there are other missions to do and the state of the Armed Forces,'' O'Connor said.
"We have to look at a whole lot of factors.''
O'Connor said that by 2009, the Afghan war will have cost Canada close to $4 billion.
But he dismissed claims the expenditure is emptying the military's coffers so that it cannot afford other commitments.
Questions were raised about the military's financial status earlier this week.
The navy's Atlantic branch cancelled a scheduled fisheries patrol and suspended overtime because it had run out of money at the close of the fiscal year.
O'Connor said that the defence budget in Canada this year is $16 billion and will grow by another $1 billion next year. "It's internal money management,'' he said.
Of the approximately 2,500 troops heading to Afghanistan later this month for the latest rotation, nearly 1,200 are from Atlantic Canadian units, most of which are from CFB Gagetown.
Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier acknowledged on Friday that the troops may be facing a resurgent of the Taliban, who are widely expected to be planning a spring offensive.
"They (the Taliban) will still come after us with suicide bombers and IEDs (improvised explosive devices) but we don't believe they will use the conventional tactics they used last summer,'' Hillier said, adding those tactics meant a heavy death toll for the insurgents.
"They will probably try to use more ambush and hit-and-run tactics.''
Earlier in the day, more than 2,000 civilians and soldiers trudged out into the snow at the New Brunswick base to make a very large and colourful gesture of support for the troops.
They each held up red placards and with the backdrop of a fresh snowfall, formed a huge Canadian flag, which base officials say was the largest in history.
With a report from CTV Atlantic's Peter Shaw and CTV's John Vennavally-Rao
