National Defence committee  We do treat them separately and we don't treat them separately. Certainly, for Canada, we are very cognizant of the fact that, for the U.S., cybersecurity is a major, major concern, so the U.S. is always going to be looking to us to make sure that, as per the 1930 agreement with

National Defence committee  When it comes to ballistic missile defence, I'll leave that to Jim. But this is what 9/11 taught us about the nature of states and nature of threats: that they can be both state based and non-state based. Also, this is why, with the increased concern on homeland security, NORAD

National Defence committee  I'll let Jim answer on the tracking of missiles, but NORAD has both an air and a maritime picture, and it doesn't discount something that looks odd by saying, “Oh, this is a non-state actor, so we're not going to pay attention to it.” Anything now that looks like a threat to Nort

National Defence committee  NORAD, when it comes to the Arctic, is going to be more concerned with the classic foreign defence aspects of this, because the military of course doesn't have the mandate to be fining ships for vessel pollution and things like that. That's done by Transport Canada and other agen

National Defence committee  The working assumption of both Canada and the U.S. that has been made about Russia is that it's a state like others that we always watch, but it's not necessarily an automatic concern. We have other organizations like the Arctic Council. We have agreements like the Ilulissat decl

National Defence committee  No, I wouldn't want to give that impression. The U.S. is still by far the biggest supporter of NORAD in terms of resources, financial and otherwise. It's simply a unique relationship now that USNORTHCOM and NORAD are housed in the same building—indeed, the commander of NORAD is

National Defence committee  We've seen increased concern about and attention to things such as: criminal gangs; terrorism, both foreign and homegrown; maritime threats that could potentially become more than a search and rescue scenario, where the actual event could threaten North America in some respect; a

National Defence committee  We're dealing with defence matters versus constabulary matters. One of the issues we have to keep in mind is that the military are not mandated to deal with constabulary issues per se; however, because NORAD has this air picture and now the maritime picture, they can often provid

National Defence committee  This is the reason that Jim and I really want to look at it. One of the things that struck us when we were interviewing people, especially military and other agencies, and we asked exactly your question about how the NORAD maritime warning is going, many responses were sort of li

National Defence committee  Jim is really the expert when it comes to space and the weaponization of space.

National Defence committee  No. I would leave that area of expertise to Jim.

National Defence committee  We can't underestimate the impact that 9/11 has had on NORAD. Whereas NORAD was focused on the assumption that it would be a foreign-based threat coming from outside of North America, 9/11 proved that it could be a threat coming from within North America, and it wasn't a defence

National Defence committee  Thank you. Well, I think NORAD is doing that, and it's prompted by the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, the NAS/NORAD, and with General Jacoby's enthusiasm to look at how NORAD is going to remain relevant: the model for future and emerging threats. These working groups—and hope

National Defence committee  Thank you. The only comment I would make in addition on satellites is that often they have a predictable orbit, so we have to ensure that we have the opportunity to see all of the Arctic in one go. That's the advantage of the long-range and short-range radars. If we were to co

National Defence committee  The only comment I can make is that right now NORAD's requirement is to protect NORAD assets. Whether or not it should then be responsible for tracking other cybersecurity threats—for instance, civilian apparatus—it would mean that we need to change the nature of NORAD and the co