Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you very much, Professor. I very much appreciate it, and it comes at the right time, because we've been dealing with a lot of the micro aspects of all of this and some of us are a little readier now, pardon the pun, to be looking at this from a macro view, 30,000 feet. I think that's what you've given us, that strategic discussion.
The first thing that crossed my mind when you were talking about smart defence and niche forces, especially as a result of the tour we've just completed, was it was really helpful. That was really good. I got a lot out of it, being fairly new to this file.
It was interesting to listen to, as they called themselves, the sharp end of our foreign and defence policy, the sharp end of the stick being the first division, and about what their understanding of readiness is in terms of expeditionary capabilities. From what I'm hearing, what it boils down to is whatever you guys want us to do, we'll do. Right now you want us to do everything, so we're ready to do everything, and it comes back to us in terms of what we want us to be ready for.
When you were talking about the niche forces, both in terms of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, the nod test made a whole lot of sense. That made sense, but what struck me was everybody is in agreement that the primary focus of our defence is to protect our sovereignty, and that's pretty straightforward. When we get into the expeditionary capabilities it starts to get really complex, and the first thing that strikes me is that if we were going to reduce and be a niche and part of a whole, the first example of how well that worked, or the most recent one, would be Afghanistan, notwithstanding the politics around that and where we all are policy-wise. The reality is that the NATO partners weren't there in equal capacity, and that has caused a lot of strain within NATO. It has NATO looking at itself now and asking some fundamental questions. The Americans, of course, are constantly looking at their role within NATO.
Assuming we still maintain the sovereign ability to protect our own three coasts and our border to the extent that we believe appropriate, in terms of anything beyond that, it would require this cooperation. Yet the example we have right now is that cooperation looks good on paper, but as soon as the raw politics of everybody's domestic reality kicks in, some are there, some are not, some have caveats, some don't.
In that kind of a world, how would you achieve a level of certainty that when the Canadian government, the Canadian people, felt it was necessary to do something and we were a part of that.... What sort of guarantee would we have that those parts would all be there to move at the same time in the way they are supposed to, given that in the recent example of Afghanistan, the exact opposite happened?
Could we have some of your thoughts, Professor?