NCBW FID

Here's an interesting find - good on CanWest for putting it up:

The Canadian government has shipped chemical and biological defence equipment to the Philippines and will soon send personnel to that nation to train special forces and other units in its use.

Canadian officials donated the 300 protective suits to senior military representatives in Manila several weeks ago and an agreement signed by the two countries notes that Canadian personnel will train Filipino troops in the use of the chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defence equipment.

Any bets the personnel they're talking about come from the secretive CJIRU?

Note that the U.S. considers the Philippines a "terrorist safe haven:"

The U.S. State Department has considered the southern Philippines a "terrorist safe haven" since the classification was created in 2006. According to the State Department's 2007 report, the Philippine government has little control in the Sulu archipelago and the island of Mindanao. The government has also had trouble combating resentment among the local Muslim minority regarding policies of the central government. As a result, the Philippines is home to a number of militant groups, including the Abu Sayyaf Group, the Communist Party of the Philippines/New Peoples Army, Jemaah Islamiyah, the Alex Boncayao Brigade, the Pentagon Gang, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). These groups have conducted over one-hundred attacks within the Philippines since 2004, the largest of which was a ferry bombing that killed 130 people. In the past year, the Philippine government has taken significant steps to combat terrorism, but terrorists continue to use the country as a base to organize, raise funds, train, and operate.

...

Jemaah Islamiyah, which is based in Indonesia and has operated in the Philippines, has had particularly strong ties to al-Qaeda. There is some overlap in membership between the two groups, and they have shared training camps in Mindanao. Al-Qaeda has allegedly provided Jemaah Islamiyah with financial support, and the two networks have jointly planned operations—including the September 11 attacks. Often, these operations took the form of al-Qaeda providing funding and technical expertise, while Jemaah Islamiyah procured local materials (such as bomb-making materials) and located operatives.

"Foreign Internal Defense" has long been a primary mission of the U.S. Army Special Forces (also known as Green Berets), but Canadian forays into that field are a lot murkier. This is an interesting development for me.