National Defence committee  I'll take that one, because it's one that I've been very interested in. It's the issue of making sure that the navies of our friends and allies are aware of what our capabilities are. Our starting to integrate with the American battle groups really stemmed from an initiative that occurred on the west coast when the commander of the west coast fleet, MARPAC, simply had a good relationship with the commander of the American force and said, “Our frigates are really good, why don't you see how they can integrate?”

National Defence committee  If I may add, there's also something critically important here. Of course, I agree to a certain level. You don't want to simply mesh them together. On the operational side, there are all sorts of issues. What has been a major problem, however, is that the Coast Guard has traditionally seen itself as operators.

National Defence committee  The question I would like to be asked is how we get a political understanding that is ongoing. In other words, I love the type of work that the committee is doing and the questions they are asking, but you know the system in which the committee will be proceeding: you'll go on to other issues.

National Defence committee  The Scandinavian countries have moved very strongly towards going to a modular layback. If you look at both the Norwegian navy and coast guard, they can make their coast guard vessels the equivalent of a naval combatant by the usage of modularity in terms of missile systems, torpedo systems, and so forth.

National Defence committee  I can start with that. Yes, I'll start with that one. Dave is absolutely right. How can you construe it as anything else but limiting any debate? The problem that occurs is it doesn't stop debate. What it does stop is informed debate. You ask, what do we do as academics? Both Dr.

National Defence committee  Wow, that's—

National Defence committee  Go ahead? Okay. As I was saying on the Aurora, one of the critical things we have found—and the Russians and the Americans have found it—if that if you have a relatively robust size of airframe and it is not supersonic, you can actually make them. The new industrial capabilities mean that we're getting a lifespan out of these aircraft that exceeded anyone's expectations.

National Defence committee  I'm glad you've given me this opportunity because the issue when we raise maritime security in the Arctic—first of all, Dr. Charron and others are completely right when they say at the surface level there is co-operation. I agree with them. There's not going to be an issue of someone using military force to challenge over the extended continental shelf or resource grab.

National Defence committee  If you were to hand me a chequebook, the first thing would be to institutionalize and systemize a naval political capability of an ongoing examination of the maritime issue. In other words, the navy is very good at keeping this ongoing. They do their maritime strategy, their naval strategy, but there needs to be this ongoing process, maybe a committee system that's headed by the PMO, but something that keeps it at the high political level and is ongoing.

National Defence committee  Absolutely. In fact, it's even more ambitious. The open literature has said it's going to be 12 submarines. It's basically a conventional nuclear-powered French submarine that they're buying. With the Australian model, part of the thing that always drives anybody when they are getting their defence procurement done right—and this is the one thing that comes out in the open literature—is that the more the decision-makers see and feel that there are real security threats, the more you have bipartisan agreement.

National Defence committee  A challenge that always faces the Canadian navy is that they know they're going to have a limited number of hulls. We get back to hulls, of course, in this context. Anyone who has lived in Victoria or Halifax will know the distinction between a brown-water navy and a green-water navy, which are supposed to have a little bit of a coastal ability, and a blue-water navy, which means dealing with the type of storms we have off of both sides.

National Defence committee  Absolutely. We could have a nice argument. I would say that the Americans, particularly under FDR, very decidedly moved against isolationism in the post-Second World War period. That's a point of discussion we can have over a coffee or beer. On your point of what it means for Canada, you're absolutely right.

National Defence committee  Oh, I always disagree with Dr. Charron, to my peril. It's part of the overall package. This is the problem we face: it's not an either/or. She's absolutely right when she talks about information sharing, when she talks about the types of structure capabilities we need to put in.

National Defence committee  That's a very good question. The immediate overall answer, I'd say, is that it's not going to be a one size fits all. When it comes to certain elements of procurement, it's still going to be that you have to buy everything at once. For example, if we decide that we want to retain heavy armour, which at one point we were thinking of getting rid of, the Americans and everybody still tend to buy their Leopard 1s and Leopard 2s all in a bulk.

National Defence committee  The reality is, and this is the thing, as academics and politicians, we have difficulties. We like black and white, right? The issue is, of course, what do you mean by off-the-shelf technology? This is where so many of us get so tied up. We sit there and say that this is sort of pure, made at home.