National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. My name is Ferry de Kerckhove. I am the executive vice-president of the Conference of Defence Associations and the co-author, with my great colleague George Petrolekas, of that institute document I carried on my shoulder coming in. Hence, I have a

National Defence committee  It's interesting, because I was posted to NATO from 1981 to 1985, and they were already talking about the European stand-up force and all of that. Unfortunately, it has been much more a paper exercise than anything else. That's why I called the European Union a political dwarf, w

National Defence committee  Thank you for that. The answer could be a very flat “yes” and we could move to the next question, but I think it deserves a bit more than that. With what we are talking about, I think retrenchment doesn't enhance security; it's quite to the contrary. I think George put it ver

National Defence committee  I'll ask George to go a bit further into that one. What we have recommended in the strategic outlook is that some kind of code of conduct be established in terms of cybersecurity. I'm intrigued to see that Chuck Hagel has started a discussion with the Chinese on that one. It's g

National Defence committee  That's an interesting question. We cannot get caught in definition. There is no state threat, of course, because of our neighbour to the south. Today we don't face any threat from the United States; maybe 20 years later, when they'll be short of water, we will face a threat, but

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  George will go into the details, but he said it very simply, and it's what we've written: tell me what you want to do and I'll tell you what you need to do it. I think that's where the general failure on the part of this government is so far in not having spelled it out. George

National Defence committee  I was just going to add that we strongly recommend that we expand it to the maritime issues. In fact, were it not for some of the major sovereignty concerns the U.S. seems to have that are greater than ours, we could even integrate further, but I think we're already on the right

National Defence committee  Yes. I mentioned that because of the Beyond the Border theme, which is I think a very solid policy of the Canadian government. I applaud the efforts. I teach Canadian foreign policy at the University of Ottawa and I've worked very hard and spend a lot of time with my students on

National Defence committee  I think the famous argument over the Northwest Passage is that we claim they are internal waters for the most part, but for a small part of it, given the distance in it—and America will never recognize it—we've agreed to disagree. One of the aspects that is important to remember

National Defence committee  I've been to Halifax; I know the feeling. I feel the pain.

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, can I add a quick comment? I'll confess to you that in writing this document, we had a lot of consultation with other people, and we've always faced—and I'll be very candid about it—a problem with some of the leaders on the navy's side, precisely because there hasn't

National Defence committee  In fact, I was going to say, having done the Egyptian evacuation mandated by the Prime Minister and having sent half of my staff to Libya to do the evacuation of Canadians from Libya, I can tell you that I agree entirely. This is something that we have to have the capability to d

National Defence committee  That is the first recommendation we listed. It is our first fundamental recommendation. It reiterates what we previously said last year.

National Defence committee  I think there is a fundamental issue. The more the procurement is delayed, the more expensive it will be for us to buy the equipment and the fewer resources we will have to prepare our forces, in terms of training, staffing and basic equipment. That is the tragedy. The more we wa