The CF maintain, for Canada, a sizable military presence in Afghanistan. We have something like 2800 personnel there with Task Force Afghanistan. May not be large in comparison to what the US and UK can contribute, but, when you consider that the whole of the Canadian Army is probably smaller than the student body of a midsized university, and, the entire force strength of the Canadian Forces is only about 50, 000, the number is not too bad.
Mind you, I am of the opinion, that for a wealthy Western nation, the willingness of Canada to spend on and maintain it's military is not very good. Personally, I think we should maintain the CF at around 150, 000 personnel, and with modern equipment instead of always playing catch-up in that regard. But, that's not likely to happen given the political culture up here.
Also, if I understand correctly, the CF suffers one of the highest casualty rates of any NATO country in Afghanistan. I just recently attended the funeral of a kid I taught a couple of years ago; a combat medic who was killed by an IED about 3 weeks ago. The reason we lose soldiers like him is precisely because Canada consistently plays catch-up in regard to military hardware. Our soldiers must travel by road more often than other forces because our government decided, a number of years ago, that we didn't need helicopters like the Chinooks. So, they were sold off. So now, our guys watch Dutch soldiers flying around in the helicopters the Netherlands bought from Canada, while they run the gauntlet of IEDs on the road.
