Veterans Affairs committee  The committee may decide that's a direction it wishes to explore. I certainly think, given the unique nature of service, that trying to fit the rangers into “normal” program delivery of Veterans Affairs services will be limited, given that the rangers live in isolated communities for the most part.

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely. A tremendous amount of respect is needed, which is why their roles, missions, and tasks have always had a provision for providing the information they gather over the course of their everyday lives in their local area and for making sure that information relevant to the military is communicated to it.

Veterans Affairs committee  Great. I think it's a responsibility of all of us to communicate and celebrate the various forms of service that the Canadian Armed Forces provide to our country. I think a lot of the attention and public association with veterans is with individuals who served overseas during the world wars, the Korean War, and of course more recently in Afghanistan.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's out of my area of expertise, sir. I can't provide you information on that.

Veterans Affairs committee  That's wonderful. I think, first of all, we need to open up a dialogue with the ranger community about this. I think the statistics from 2013-2016 indicated that the average annual national ranger release rate was about 3.8% per year. That means there are actually quite a sizeable number of them, some 5,000 rangers across the country who are leaving the forces.

Veterans Affairs committee  Certainly. There's been some fantastic work done in other countries, like Australia, New Zealand, United States, other British settler societies, as Dr. Sheffield referred to them a few weeks ago to you. Again, there is a lot of commonality across the board. It depends on what era we're looking at, as well.

Veterans Affairs committee  I'd defer to the DND-CAF ombudsman's report on that one. They did the more intense research on it. Their finding was that there is not reliable data on it. I'm not intending to speak for the ombudsman's office by any stretch, but they identified as an absolute need the requirement to make sure there's compliance with tracking of illnesses and injuries, as per proper reservist practice.

Veterans Affairs committee  Good afternoon. It's an honour to appear before the Veterans Affairs Committee today. As mentioned, I am Whitney Lackenbauer. I'm a professor of history at St. Jerome's University and the University of Waterloo. I'm also the honorary lieutenant colonel of the 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group based in Yellowknife, with 60 patrols spanning Canada's three northern territories and northern British Columbia.

National Defence committee  Canada and the United States both refer to one another as their premier partners in the Arctic, particularly in the defence domain. I think NORAD is a great success story. I fully agree with Rob that it should be an all-threat capability.

National Defence committee  Great, thank you. I think it's a wonderful question. Again, there are challenges and technical questions associated with UAVs. Given satellite capabilities and GPS when you get into really high latitudes, those, in my mind, are a very interesting science and technology question that Canadians can solve.

National Defence committee  I think the training centre is a good example of a strong success story. They're budgeted at $62 million, delivered for $25 million, by partnering with the polar continental shelf project, not only enabling training but also setting up infrastructure that's civilian and military, dual purpose, that can be used as a forward-operating base if that very unlikely scenario presents itself where we need to deploy to the region and sustain operations for a significant period of time.

National Defence committee  No, but I think the risk that he can play and whatever his motivations are—and there's lots of debate about intentionality—was it about getting access to certain seaports and getting access to certain gas resources that the shale revolution would allow Ukraine to go and exploit, and therefore use as a counterbalance to the influence of Moscow?

National Defence committee  All of the things you are suggesting hold true for the region you're talking about. What is the end state that he gets out of those bullying tactics in the Arctic, in a space beyond sovereign jurisdiction of Russia, beyond its historic area, where it doesn't have any rights that can be misconstrued and sold to the Russian people as legitimate?

National Defence committee  And you'd bring on the Third World War, and you're going to test those ballistic missile defences around Moscow—

National Defence committee  A colleague and I produced a report, which came out last week, called “On Uncertain Ice”. I'm very skeptical, at least within horizons where we have some sort of predictive capability, that the Northwest Passage as a transit route is going to be used for a high tempo of transits.