Canada's military can't take on any new overseas missions while it's trying to expand, says Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor.

"As long as we are expanding the armed forces, we will not be able to maintain two sort of heavy lines of commitment from the army,'' he said Monday while testifying before a Senate defence committee hearing in Ottawa.

Sen. Romeo Dallaire and NDP Leader Jack Layton have called for a Canadian presence in Darfur, the violence-racked area in southern Sudan. The Sudanese government has signed a peace deal with the major rebel group there and has indicated it would be open to UN peacekeepers getting involved.

O'Connor said the current mission in Afghanistan, which involves 2,200 forces personnel, is the limit, although Layton suggested shifting resources from Afghanistan.

The minister said, "We can maintain Afghanistan as it is into the future basically forever, but we would be greatly challenged for a substantial commitment elsewhere."

The main challenge right now is to refill the ranks of the army, navy and air force, he said.

At the start of the 1990s, there were 75,000 forces personnel. Currently, there are about 62,000, but O'Connor said only about 52,000 are termed "effectives."

The rest are recruits in training, people on courses or those on medical and other forms of leave.

The Tories plan to add 13,000 full-time recruits to the military.

Equipment

The forces will go on a shopping spree of aircraft, ships and trucks once cabinet gives the go-ahead, O'Connor said.

Streamlining the ponderous procurement system will be a priority, O'Connor said. The minister said he wants to buy proven, off-the-shelf equipment.

"We're not going to buy paper trucks or paper airplanes,'' he said.

O'Connor rejected the notion equipment had to be "Canadianized" unless there was a compelling reason.

The retired general said he remembered when helmets had to be tweaked to be Canadian, "as if there was a 'Canadian' head."