I tabled a notice of motion a couple of weeks ago, so I'll just read it into the record:
That the Committee undertake a study on the strategy and development of a new defence white paper and policy review by the government; that the study focus on the following: (a) risks and threats assessment; (b) capabilities and capacity; (c) readiness and recruitment; (d) procurement; (e) national security and protection of sovereignty, including the Arctic and maritime approaches; (f) deterrence, combat and peace keeping responsibilities, including NORAD, NATO, and the United Nations; and That the committee report its findings to the House of Commons by Tuesday, October 18, 2016.
Mr. Chair, you and I have discussed this. The purpose of the motion isn't to distract from what we're doing right now, but to build on it. We would still do our report, as determined by committee, on the defence of North America focusing on aerial readiness. But as we're hearing from witnesses, we're also talking about things beyond just NORAD; we're talking about things like NATO and other infrastructure and security needs of the Canadian Armed Forces. This would give us the opportunity to take some of this information that we're gleaning right now to apply to a second report, which could probably take part of the.... Maybe we could do some travel in the summer, but more specifically, start off early in the fall to close the gap on some things like where we're sitting with NATO, our procurement issues, our navy, and readiness and capabilities.
I'm hoping that if the committee accepts this, we may even look at making a quick trip in the summer up to the Arctic, to Resolute and/or Alert, to look at what we're doing there, especially with the new training systems that we have at Resolute Bay. And then if we want, we could even travel to SHAPE at Brussels and look at the things from a NATO context, and definitely a trip to Halifax at the very least to look at the Royal Canadian Navy and the national shipbuilding program, and then still be able to feed into the defence review process.
I've talked to Minister Sajjan about this, and although I know they want to have cut off public consultations sometime at the end of July and that they'll be spending the entire last six months of the year drafting and writing the policy review, even if we're coming out in October with the report, it would still help feed and inform some of that drafting. As you know, the Senate committee has been asked to take on a specific role on peacekeeping and looking at UN missions, but I think there still needs to be some work done in a broader context of some of the other alliances that we have, specifically from a NATO perspective.