Thank you, Mr. Chair.
General, thank you for being here. Certainly one of the most memorable experiences of my so-far short career here was the celebration honouring your efforts and those of the sailors, air personnel, and soldiers who participated in Libya. It was an honour to be there in the Senate with you and your family for that ceremony.
But I hope you'll forgive me if I get away from Libya a bit. In your opening remarks, you talked a bit about smart defence. Everyone who has come before us on this study of NATO's strategic concept has had something to say about smart defence. I think it's like our previous study on readiness; everyone has a different definition of what smart defence is. But I was interested in your comment, if I'm paraphrasing it correctly, that smart defence is theoretically sound but very difficult to operationalize.
I'm hoping you can expand on that and give us your definition of smart defence and how that applies to NATO—perhaps Libya is a good example of where smart defence took place—and, perhaps more importantly, how it applies to the Canadian context.