National Defence committee  I would request of the honourable member that I not answer that question, simply because I'm currently still serving as an independent reviewer for the evaluation of options to replace the CF-18s. As a panel, although our work is concluded, we have agreed not to comment until a public report is released.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  I would generally agree with my colleague. The extent to which surveillance could be enhanced through lower-cost systems would certainly be something for us to consider at this point in time. The added advantage of UAV systems is that they tend to be more quickly replaceable and therefore they can keep pace with technological developments as they go forward.

National Defence committee  I would suggest as a first step, if one takes part in the system, that one at least get a commitment from the United States that it's part of the NORAD construct. Once that occurs, then it necessarily becomes an obligation for the command to defend the continent binationally. Therefore if we can arrive at a political agreement, and that would be a diplomatic agreement, then NORAD would be duty bound as a binational command to protect the continent equally, as opposed to focusing on some areas versus others.

National Defence committee  I would suggest a very limited number, and it's only made for a very limited number. This is why, as much as there is speculation, Russia will always improve its ICBM and SLBM fleets and continue moving them and developing them and ensuring that it will always be able to overwhelm any North American system.

National Defence committee  The question for me is simply in terms of how the threat to North America might increase. We see that both powers arguably will continue with their conventional naval capabilities that could eventually potentially be of interest off the coast, or potentially even in the Arctic. So we have to be particularly aware, I would suggest, of developments in destroyer technology such that the air defence of destroyers will make it prohibitive for us to come close to certain ships.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  Absolutely. If we are talking only about the personnel already on site.

National Defence committee  You confused the two issues I talked about. I said it was time to expand NORAD's role in defence on land, at sea, in the cyber realm, and in the Arctic. That was the first point. The other point concerned the missile shield. I will talk about the first point. One of the most important points General Leslie raises in his report on transformation is that a tremendous amount of money is being spent on administration and administrative staff.

National Defence committee  As I said in another response, in 2005, Prime Minister Paul Martin set the following condition: Canada would become a member of that system only if no costs were imposed on it. If that condition was maintained, there would practically be no costs for Canada. We should keep in mind that, through NORAD, Canada is already closely involved in the use of the system, at every level.

National Defence committee  I will repeat it for a third time. If we maintain the condition whereby Canada's participation does not involve any costs, the staff already on site is used and no facilities are planned on Canadian soil, we would just be using the existing resources.

National Defence committee  Right. So before we even discuss going down a truly tri-national approach to North American defence, we first need to—at least in the Canadian context—properly build up the bilateral defence relations that we have between ourselves and Mexico. Similarly, if we were to make it a tri-national approach, that could only work if we have the buy-in from the United States to do so with Mexico.

National Defence committee  I would say that if we look at the history of North American defence relations and how they developed, you initially begin with a bilateral approach. So when we look at the Second World War in the 1940s and the early 1950s, the way that Canada and the United States began their cooperation was primarily bilateral to start with.

National Defence committee  Thank you. I'll certainly admit that consistency is often a luxury that academics have, which politicians might not, so I fully accept that. I do accept that there are other considerations than purely what we take to be the strategic situation in the world. I'll first tackle your question about other means of dealing with the problem.

National Defence committee  I would keep it restricted to Canada and the United States. It would not be a tri-national command. Part of the difficulty in dealing with Mexico at this particular moment in time is that we simply don't have that level of tradition of working with them that closely. Similarly, it's unclear to me at this point if the United States would be willing to go down that road even if we were, and I'm not even sure we would.