National Defence committee  I'll give you an example of how it manifests itself. When the United States announced its strategic pivot, part of that announcement also said there would be base closures in Europe, there would be reductions of brigades, and there would be reductions of troop commitments to Eu

National Defence committee  There are two parts to that. The alliance recognizes that there are differences in economic capability between nations. So they are taxed, if you will, for common funding programs based on the size of their economy, and so on. I led the NATO certification team to Slovenia in 20

National Defence committee  I don't think we said they're not relevant. We said they're past their prime, to be more specific. I did mention a particular area. I talked about five domains of warfare that are certainly recognized in the United States. Certainly, President Obama has been quite clear in a pol

National Defence committee  No. The very first step is to identify that it is an issue. The second step is to flag that to our diplomatic intervention to try to move NATO to recognize that it does have interests collectively beyond its borders, which it actually mentions in the strategic concept. It artic

National Defence committee  I try to retain some optimism. It did take 10 years, but there is now a heavy airlift capability in NATO stationed in Hungary, where they bought C-17s, something that was identified—that the alliance as a whole requires heavy airlift. The AGS program seems to be moving along, aft

National Defence committee  There are two different things we're talking about. I hope we're not confusing them. The very first thing we said was that there is a hierarchy of national interests. That has become more defined in the environment that we're living in—that environment being influenced by public

National Defence committee  They are, in fact, focusing us in those particular areas. One other thing, just to clarify, is that we did talk in the strategic outlook paper in general terms about Canada and Canada's interests, but there are also limitations when we're talking about the NATO strategic concep

National Defence committee  It includes parts of the land mass where there are areas of interest. Here is an example. The NATO Response Force was designed in 2001 to provide NATO an expeditionary capability and to intervene in a series of places. Haiti, after the earthquake, had absolutely no NATO involve

National Defence committee  There was a symptoms analysis. I'll add that a member of your committee knows more about Afghanistan than anyone else in Canada. It's the former ambassador, Mr. Alexander. Allow me to add a few comments. It's obvious that the Afghan state needs financial help, but beyond that,

National Defence committee  According to our Canadian, British, and U.S. partners, as well as other NATO countries, the short answer is yes. Yes, judging from what we have seen, the Afghan army will still need military support.

National Defence committee  I think for the most part successive Canadian governments have treated the Arctic as Canadian inland waters and have not necessarily welcomed NATO involvement specifically in the Arctic, as we ourselves try to wade through a number of issues. I'll give you an example from a que

National Defence committee  You articulated some of the threats. You mentioned cyber, and that is one domain that has not been developed, either from a policy standpoint or an understanding of what that actually means. When you think that the New York Stock Exchange can fluctuate in value close to 7% in one

National Defence committee  Sorry, the shift—

National Defence committee  I think that's exactly one of the things that we've described as things that we are seeing as a symptom of global financial crises. It is very hard, for example, if you're the Greek MOD at this moment to justify your 130-person Role 3 hospital in Kabul when people in your own str

National Defence committee  There are a couple of parts to that. I think there's absolutely a belief that we can better things. I recall one time walking outside of Bagram and watching a farmer trying to rebuild his farm. I thought, this is something really worth backing. The guy is sweating, working in the