The minister of the Canadian military turned heads Sunday when he said that the coalition’s current method of defeating ISIS (Islamic State, IS, ISIL, Daesh) with airstrikes isn’t working, and that ground combat needs to implemented immediately.

According to him, it’s the only way to win.

“When ISIL was in the open, you could target them,” Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan told his country’s CBC radio in an interview. “Now the fight has gone into where you need to be able to define and find your target, and then be able to have that impact on the ground.”

“It has to be the Iraqi boots on the ground — if you don’t have the boots on the ground, you cannot win,” he said.

The Canucks have only contributed six fighter jets to the coalition’s aerial assault on the terror group’s footholds in both Syria and Iraq. And, according to a number of sources, they’re trying to pull them out as soon as possible.

This from Kurdish news outlet Rudaw:

Sajjan … said that he would like to expand Canada’s training mission in the Kurdistan Region where 69 Special Forces advisors work with and train the Kurdish Peshmerga.

“Teaching [local troops] how to launch and repel attacks, and doing it in an environment that’s close up is extremely important,” the Canadian defense chief told CBC.

“We’re fulfilling a very important need right now in the training mission … having troops on the ground able to carry out operations on their own,” he explained.

While Canada had an extremely limited role in the most recent Iraq War, they did lose 159 soldiers in Afghanistan between 2001 and 2014.

UPDATE: Could Sajjan’s public denouncing of the coalition’s airstrike plan cost him a coveted seat at the table in Paris to discuss future plans to rid the world of ISIS? Sure looks that way.