National Defence committee  Absolutely I agree with you. We always need to start with private industry and what industry believes would be appropriate government support. In our country, we find that our national guard, and to some extent other military forces, can provide for road clearance, can provide for security, can provide for other support functions that utilities actually find useful.

National Defence committee  Interoperability is key to mission effectiveness in NORAD. The F-35, by providing for a common airframe, will not only allow us to sustain interoperability in those terms, but all of the ancillary equipment—communications, everything else for avionics that will be modernized over time as those airframes are updated because there is a common airframe, because these other projects will be able to go forward on a collaborative basis—provides for a foundation for interoperability that I believe is going to be extremely valuable.

National Defence committee  With the full participation of the coast guard and the other lead agencies.

National Defence committee  To give you a more serious answer, we can leave that issue still to be resolved and nevertheless look for opportunities for information sharing, under the purview of NORAD in its maritime warning, with full participation by coast guard and all of the other critical components of building the system that we need.

National Defence committee  The points of friction were that in hurricane Katrina, federal forces came in to the disaster response under the command of the President without sufficient dialogue with the governors about which specific disaster response operations were most important for that governor. There needs always to be civilian leadership over defence operations, and in our system governors—not the President of the United States, but governors—have primary responsibility for the public safety of their citizens.

National Defence committee  The states are able to use their equipment for disaster response either funded by our disaster response agency, FEMA, or sometimes funded by the Department of Defense. It's an example of the extremely complicated system we have built, which reflects our unique form of government.

National Defence committee  My standard response when I was in office was, “That's a problem for the Department of State and DFAIT to work out. In Defense, we don't have to tackle that one.” That remains my party line.

National Defence committee  I completely agree. So let's figure out what we can do in both the immediate term and then over the longer term, for which sustained investment is going to be required.

National Defence committee  This is being explored in the United States in both the private and the public sectors. I agree with President Obama on the all-of-the-above strategy: pursuing every promising development for generating capacity, knowing that the imperative to reduce carbon emissions is absolutely vital.

National Defence committee  Yes, thank you.

National Defence committee  We need Canada's collaboration, absolutely. Neither nation can meet these challenges on its own, in my view. An additional investment is going to be required going forward. We don't have the capability that we need to deal with the increase in ship traffic carrying petroleum products and other potential sources of environmental disaster—

National Defence committee  That is an outstanding question. I'd say it reinforces the need to have a collaborative approach. Clearly the risk posed by a scenario such as the one that you have offered—to have multiple disasters—is of lower probability than to have one, but it can't be discounted and therefore ought to be part of the dialogue.

National Defence committee  As in so many cases, the differences in the structure of government between Canada and the United States make it difficult to apply lessons from one nation to the other. We have a system in which each governor has his or her own air force and army and the state national guard, and in state active duty those soldiers and airmen report to the governor, not to the President of the United States.

National Defence committee  It makes for enormous political complexity inside the United States. Thanks to the leadership of our governors, we were able to forge an agreement that provides for unity of effort between our governors and the Commander in Chief.

National Defence committee  I think of the Sun Sea incident. I think of risks that the maritime approaches to Canada and the United States would be exploited by adversaries, state and especially non-state; this needs to remain a focus of collaboration. I think of the law enforcement challenges posed by human trafficking and drug smuggling.