Foreign Affairs committee  I think we need to get very concrete about how we're going to speed movement across the border. And I would suggest that one of the things we could do with some of the new infrastructure money that is being made available not just in Canada but in the United States is to look tow

Foreign Affairs committee  I think it was last week that Paul Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, held up Canada as kind of the poster child of how to get financial regulation right and in fact argued that Canada is a good model for the United States. That being said, lecturing others on t

Foreign Affairs committee  The first comment I would make is that we shouldn't be looking too much into the rear-view mirror when it comes to Afghanistan, because with the change of administration in Washington there is a desire to turn the page and move forward with a new policy. That creates a window of

Foreign Affairs committee  Absolutely. And we in fact need to ratchet up the level of our research and engagement with other Arctic countries as part of a new stewardship approach for dealing with the Arctic.

Foreign Affairs committee  I have a short answer to that. If you think of yourself as being a mouse, you're always going to be a mouse. Our challenge, quite frankly, is to start thinking big in a selective way, along the lines that I have suggested in terms of global economic and security issues, and real

Foreign Affairs committee  I would refer all of the committee members to a very good paper in the second volume of our report by Don McRae, who is one of Canada's most distinguished international lawyers. It's a paper that's focused on sovereignty issues in the Arctic. Let me just summarize what his argume

Foreign Affairs committee  I would agree with your last observation that the objective has not been that clear. But that said, I think we are seeing convergence of both Canadian and U.S. interests in the region. Canada has announced that it's going to withdraw troops in 2011, and everything I hear coming o

Foreign Affairs committee  I think one of the challenges, certainly historically, is that until quite recently Afghanistan was not an American preoccupation, and that affected the entire NATO mission. Towards the end of the Bush era, Afghanistan, with the impending drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq, came to

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Both Professor Hart and I will be speaking to some of the themes that appeared in Carleton University's report, a blueprint for a new engagement with the United States, copies of which were sent to all members of Parliament. It is a two-volume