As Canada mourns the two soldiers killed in Afghanistan last week, questions surrounding the military's capability to safely carry out peace-keeping operations are dogging the defence minister.

"Today is not the day for that kind of question," Defence Minister John McCallum said Sunday.

At CFB Trenton for the arrival of the fallen Canadian troops, McCallum told CTV's Question Period, the deadly incident has not deterred his commitment to Canada's role in the war on terror. And he defended the use of Iltis jeeps on the mission.

"You don't win the hearts and minds of the Afghans by speeding by in an armoured vehicle," McCallum said, rejecting the notion troops should be using more heavily armoured transport around Kabul.

"No one believes more than I do that the Canadian forces deserve to have world class, state of the art equipment," McCallum said. But he added that the troops leading NATO operations ISAF in Afghanistan are doing a fine job with what they have.

"We have more foot patrols than other countries, and as a Canadian I'm proud of this reaching out attitude."

On Friday, the Opposition challenged the government to justify equipping Canadian soldiers with "rusted-out dune buggies." They charged Ottawa of leaving troops vulnerable to the type of attack that killed two soldiers in a suspected landmine blast near Kabul the day before.

Sgt. Robert Alan Short, a 42-year-old native of Fredericton, and Cpl. Robbie Christopher Beerenfenger, 29, from Ottawa, were on regular patrol near Kabul, Afghanistan when their vehicle was ripped apart in massive explosion. Three others were injured in the blast.

The Iltis vehicle the soldiers were travelling in was first built for the German army in 1978.

"The government has known for years that the Iltis jeeps are long overdue for replacement yet it sends our troops into a warzone with these unprotected, antiquated vehicles," Canadian Alliance MP Jay Hill said in the House on Friday.

But according to an officer who has commanded troops in Afghanistan, Canadian soldiers are, indeed, properly equipped and trained for their mission.

"We're involved in stability operations and I would have to say that our soldiers are very good at stability operations because we train first and foremost for combat," Lt. Col. Pat Stogran, former Commander, PPCLI, told Question Period Sunday.

Stogran, who attended the dead soldiers' arrival at CFB Trenton, was commander of the four Canadian troops killed in Afghanistan last year when they were bombed by a U.S. fighter plane.

"Our soldiers are well prepared, not only from a combat perspective but also on the cultural side -- interacting with the community."

The defence minister said, in the field of operations, that means acting on the values Canadians are known for.

"I think it's deeply embedded in the nation's psyche and the psyche of the Canadian military ... to reach out to people, to have a spirit of openness."

The trade-off, according to Stogran, is troops will be put in harm's way. He says that's an expected part of a soldier's job.

"Certainly anybody in the combat arms expects to be put into harm's way at some point in time.

"If we wanted to protect ourselves from all the dangers in an operational theatre such as that, we would never be able to do our jobs as soldiers on a peacekeeping mission."

An investigation by Canadian combat engineers into what sort of explosive blew Short and Beerenfenger's jeep apart is still ongoing.