Thank you very much. I don't have a lot to say, which will probably make things a lot easier for everybody else this morning.
I was not aware that you were specifically discussing the question of readiness. I have to say with all due respect that I'm not quite sure what that means. I thought I would come here and say a few things about capabilities and I'm sure this easily slides over into readiness.
I've been asking myself for quite some time now as to why we have so much difficulty making defence policy in Canada, or making it stick. I think there are essentially three reasons.
The first is that direct threats to Canada are obviously abstract threats. We don't live in as difficult a neighbourhood of the world as Australia and other countries do, for example. We think of ourselves as taking part in operations with allies for reasons of national interest, whether that be full-scale wars or small wars, as we had in Afghanistan, but those are, again, abstract because they don't directly impact citizens. Canadians don't really see the threats unless they are major wars. But in the wars such as we are just about to conclude in Afghanistan, it's more difficult for Canadians to understand what's at issue.
The second reason is that the political decision-making calendar—and I've worded that very carefully—does not coincide with long-term strategic developments. We have our own political decision-making calendar in this country and it's largely nailed down by election cycles. It doesn't really matter what party is in office, because the considerations are the same. Long-term strategic developments, whether they're surprising ones like the Arab awakening or Arab Spring, ones that catch us off-guard, or ones that we can see evolving long term, such as the growth of naval power in China, don't wait for the Canadian political cycle. They just go on.
The third reason is that it takes a long time in this modern age to build military capability. I'm not only talking about kit, or equipment. Obviously it takes a long time to build something like the maritime shipboard helicopter or a modern strategic fighter jet, but it also takes a long time to train infantry, just to give you one example. Again, the political decision-making cycle is not particularly a long-term cycle. It's an annual cycle, it's a budgetary cycle, and it has to respond to the daily realities of what's going on with the Canadian economy and with the global economy. What we've seen since 2008 has had a very significant impact on defence planning in Canada, but that isn't the first time it's happened. It's happened on and on since the end of the Second World War.
The best current example I can give of that is Canada's defence strategy of 2008, which I reviewed again the other day before my appearance here. The more time that elapses since the announcement of that policy in 2008, the more out of date it becomes. I strongly suspect that the next federal budget—the one we will hear either next month in March, or maybe early April, we're not really sure—will push its force and funding projections further down the road, shift it to the right some people say, in response to the real pressures that exist on the Canadian budget.
Not for the first time, the fiscal situation will have a significant impact on defence planning in Canada, but again, the world's strategic evolution isn't waiting for Canada, the United States, or NATO, for that matter, to resolve its budget problems. The Chinese are not waiting for us to resolve our issues in their push to create hegemony over the South China Sea and the approaches to the South China Sea.
It's not only in strategic problems that we see this. I wanted to pick two examples, one domestic and one international. It's pretty clear, it seems to me, that we have a growing demand for search and rescue capability in this country, and we've had it for a long time. I was trying to remember the first time that the replacement for the fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft was raised, but it was back early in the 2000s, maybe 2001, and maybe 2002. Now 10 years later, we have a really serious effort, I'm told, to actually carry out a competition to find and acquire a new fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft.
I'm sure you're all aware of the fact that not too long ago, a young boy died in Newfoundland and Labrador as a result of the lack of availability of a helicopter. I don't know what the Department of National Defence and the minister would actually say about this, but I do know that in the military we're told that this is a cost-benefit factor. We can't have search and rescue equipment all over the Arctic. I understand that—it would be a phenomenal waste of resources—but do we have enough and why haven't we solved that problem before? Well, again, it's because the question has been put off for various reasons, including budgetary ones.
I also think that almost everyone who sees the world situation today understands that we absolutely must build up our blue-water naval capabilities. The next generation of Canadians ought to be as much or more concerned about the navy. I'm not saying this because Gary's sitting on my right and is going to give me an elbow, but that's where the challenges are going to be—not just in the South China Sea but in many places around the world where the global commons is going to be less well guarded by our neighbours to the south.
The U.S. Navy is going to experience considerable budget cuts. They're talking about laying up numbers of cruisers and destroyers. There was a long list enunciated recently. Apparently, right now they're not going to cut into their carriers, but just about everything else is going to be cut back significantly.
This is not a value judgment on my part, but I like to think that the United States Navy, today, plays the same role in the world as the Royal Navy played in the 19th century, and that all of us who are trading nations and who believe in the freedom of navigation depend very heavily on the Americans for guaranteeing that. When the Americans begin to cut back, what role will our navy play, if any?
Everyone talks about smart defence, the allies fitting together, and so on. Our navy has been interoperable with the U.S. Navy since the mid-1990s. But at a strategic level, what decisions need to be made as to what role our navy ought to play in the future to help the Americans, the Australians, Great Britain, and others carry on the work the U.S. Navy has basically been doing by itself for the last generation or two?
Finally, I want to say I think we ought to study our Afghanistan experiences very closely, because I think they might prompt us to revise our NATO-centric defence planning. I don't see us ever leaving NATO or threatening to leave NATO, but there's a significant difference between the work we do with the so-called Five Eyes—the British, the Americans, the Australians, the New Zealanders, and ourselves—and the work we do with NATO in all of NATO's different characteristics. That includes the NATO countries that do nothing, the NATO countries that do a lot, and the NATO countries that make political commitments but are not prepared, either because they can't or because they won't make military commitments. I think we have to look at that very carefully rather than continuing to discuss NATO in sacred terms.
That's really all I wanted to say for introductory remarks. Obviously, I'll be happy to answer questions.