National Defence committee  That's an excellent question, sir. I think that if we look at Europe since the end of the Cold War, a certain stability had arisen whereby there was excellent cooperation amongst all parties, both within NATO and the former Eastern Bloc. I think anytime you have an aggression th

National Defence committee  I think, as we've reported in the department, we've seen increased Russian aviation activity off NORAD's northern flank, both Alaska and the approaches to Canada. Taken in concert with what we just spoke about in eastern Europe, it certainly speaks to a change in approach, or a c

National Defence committee  With respect to the Baltic air policing, I think it's important to recognize that the territory of Russia is not contiguous, but that there is a small island of territory called Kaliningrad, located astride the Baltic states. In flying between its territory Russia flies along the

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to brief you on Operation Reassurance. Operation Reassurance refers to the military activities undertaken by the Canadian Armed Forces to support NATO through the provision of military capabilities for training

National Defence committee  The standing capacity of DART on high readiness is approximately 300 people.

National Defence committee  It would be a pleasure. Thank you.

National Defence committee  Absolutely, sir.

National Defence committee  I'd be very happy to. The capacity of the C-17 is upward of 120,000 pounds of equipment, a tremendous capability. But even to get to that final operational capability, it took six C-17 chalks, as well as Airbus, and some other supporting aircraft. The real challenge for us was t

National Defence committee  I can't speak to all allies. You're quite right. The U.S. response, which you would have seen very early on in Tacloban, is largely a result of the number of forces they have in very close proximity in both Guam and Okinawa. If I look at other allies, we were certainly the fir

National Defence committee  The DART is postured with a group of about 300 people in various capabilities, as I have described, but if the demand on the ground required more, we would then reach into other aspects of the Canadian Forces and offer contributions as the interdepartmental teams would suggest.Ha

National Defence committee  Thank you for the question. As I already mentioned, there are several components to DART. It is really a matter of meeting the needs. In some cases, however, we may not need to provide a reverse osmosis water purification system, for instance. When the commanding officer in the

National Defence committee  Budget is not taken into consideration at all.

National Defence committee  Both in this case and in general. This is not a question of money. We could have provided other vehicles, but we have benefited from the support of the Philippine army. We did not send all of our military stocks to the Philippines because that was unnecessary.

National Defence committee  Costs never come into play in my work. We never talk about the budget, but simply about what the Philippines needs. That's all.

National Defence committee  As I mentioned in my last answer, the cost associated with the deployment of the military capability is not a criterion that we use. We've identified the DART in total as a scalable unit and we are free to deploy as much of that capability, once given a direction to deploy. If we