National Defence committee  The short answer is yes. My advice for the government is to act as if you're 100% sure that this is not an international strait, that it's purely Canadian waters. If you act this way, you're reinforcing your position on the international level. Yes, there is a strong incentive t

National Defence committee  It is clear to me that you should hold in camera meetings in which you are allowed to access certain information. However, you should understand that neither we in the social sciences nor anyone else is really able to tell you what the actual situation is. If you invite a firefig

National Defence committee  The answer is no. On the contrary, standardized equipment affords many benefits. You can save time dealing with spare parts, know-how, expertise and so on. That makes it much easier to collaborate. The problems start when the equipment is highly diversified. I don't know of any

National Defence committee  There are three priorities, because they are immediate questions and problems. The first priority is scientific research. The sea bottoms must be mapped because we need to know that environment. Consequently, the scientific research conducted, in part, with the support of the Ca

National Defence committee  I suggest maybe we should avoid that expression, use it or lose it, because there's a problem with it. The Canadian position regarding the Arctic says this is ours because we have been using it for thousands of years. If you say use it or lose it, you imply we're not using it en

National Defence committee  Okay. Put it like that. Second, somebody will use it for a private company, people do sports and things, so yes, some people will use it, and the Canadian government has to be there to manage all these activities, as I've already said. The problem with the question you raised,

National Defence committee  In the short term, in the mid-term, I strongly suggest that we have a strong governmental presence there, just to establish the patterns, then we'll see about the future. But for now we definitely need a lot of governmental assets in that region. We can't escape that responsibili

National Defence committee  The first point is that, yes, there is a science called risk management. I mean, we define it by your vulnerability, the cost to recover, and the likelihood of events. You can make some very weird calculations, but I'm not good at it. Second, if you want to predict the future fo

National Defence committee  It's a complex question. First let me say that I don't see our sovereignty really at risk in terms of territory. No one has tried to steal Canadian territory, so the question is not there. It's much more, first, a question of symbols, and symbols are much cheaper than actual rea

National Defence committee  On NATO, one reason why NATO is talking less about the Arctic now than was the case two years ago is that the bell-ringer was Norway. Norway kept saying that the Russians were interested in the Arctic and it was a danger for them. Since they solved the conflict with Russia in Sep

National Defence committee  There are different perspectives on it, but some, especially the European states, are framing the issue in terms of the environment. They're saying that we must manage the environment of the region, because there are some global effects. I don't know to what extent they are using

National Defence committee  I don't see conflict, as some people are saying, such as a war or the use of force. I certainly don't see that. There's no reason for that to happen. Exploiting these resources will involve a lot of investment, and those who are investing don't want to put their investments at r

National Defence committee  There are many thoughts on this. The first one is that over the short and mid-term, there are no alternatives. We have to realize that these guys know how to operate in that region; they have all the assets to be there. No other department can do the same, except maybe the Coast

National Defence committee  Thank you very much. I will make my presentation in French, which is a bit dangerous because David Bercuson was talking about “readiness”, and I don't even know how to say “readiness” in French, but I'll try. First, I would like to thank you for inviting us here this morning.