If I were to pick a deadline, it would have been maybe about 1990, but it's never too late to catch up. We are late in the game, but the go time is now.
It's not as if we have to build a number of things from scratch. There is Canada-Russia business cooperation. Much of it is in the north, strengthening those kinds of things. There's Northern Forum, in terms of municipality associations; there are the indigenous organizations; there are things like the University of the Arctic; there is the Arctic Council. So we have a lot of things; we wouldn't be starting from scratch.
What we have to do, quite frankly, is take Canada seriously. We only take Canada seriously from coast to coast. As Canadians, as a society, as a government—and it cuts across broadly—we don't take our north seriously. We talk the talk, but we don't walk the walk. It's the kind of thing—the deployment Michael Byers has identified in terms of capability—that's going to cost, absolutely. But it costs to be a country, and other countries have made that investment.
And sooner is obviously much better than later. I do want to point out that the kinds of investments we need to put in are going to have economic benefits, whether it's in icebreakers, fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and so forth—and, I would argue, a much broader deployment across the Arctic, multiple sites, permanent sites. What does it cost to have high unemployment in indigenous communities? That also costs Canada.
These military investments, which are critically important investments around region building and nation building, are going to yield benefits back to Canada, even in the short run. Inaction costs us. Action is going to reduce costs in the long term.