Canadian MPs are currently debating whether to allow the requested extension of Canada’s participation in the US-coalition into March 2016. They are likewise mulling if they should allow Canada to expand its airstrikes outside of Iraq into Syria. But on Thursday, Canada’s MPs learned the goal of pulverising the ISIS Daesh will take years to accomplish and more specifically, the goal of the special forces sent by Canada to train the Kurdish peshmerga fighters won’t be through in just a year.

In a closed meeting with some NDP and Liberals MPs, Maj. Gen. Mike Hood disclosed the contingent of 69 elite Canadian commandos deployed last September to northern Iraq had so far only trained a total of 650 peshmerga fighters, Canadian Press reports, citing unidentified sources. It wasn’t mentioned just how many Kurdish peshmerga fighters the elite forces needed to train. Hood is slated to become Canada’s next commander of the air force.

The source said that they heard mentioned in the meeting that “this was not a one-year undertaking by any stretch of the imagination, that it will take multiple years.”

On expanding the mission into Syria, the MPs were reportedly told the special forces personnel will not be sent to identify and steer laser-guided munitions into targets that will help CF-18 jet fighters properly aim their bombs, something that they are currently doing in northern Iraq. Hood reportedly also told MPs that even without the lookout of the elite commandos, the CF-18 jet fighters “would be able to conduct precision strikes on moving and static targets inside Syria.” Hood mentioned “intelligence and surveillance platforms” as sources of “accurate strike information.” It wasn’t clear how they would get them.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, when he unveiled the extension and expansion plan before the House of Commons on Tuesday, said Canada had to take a more aggressive participation into the US-led coalition because the ISIS Daesh threat “is very real for this country.”

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