National Defence committee  If I understand the question correctly, you're asking if we should use all of our capacity all the time. I think the answer to that is probably no. If the question is whether we should maintain what we think is the right amount of capacity, I think it's up to naval procurement ex

National Defence committee  I actually don't know anything about the Scandinavian countries' plans when it comes to missile defence cooperation. I literally know nothing about that, so I can't contribute anything. I can say more generally that when it comes to defence issues in the Arctic, we have a simil

National Defence committee  I think it depends. You began your question by asking about an increase in activity in the Arctic. I think most of that activity is not something that calls for an armed coast guard. It's mostly about keeping track of what is actually there, and trying to figure out when there'

National Defence committee  Do you mean, to make them say yes?

National Defence committee  Is that what you mean?

National Defence committee  I guess my brief answer is that there is no necessary connection there. There's nothing we can do on the security front that will influence how the energy relationship goes. Certainly there would be some people in Congress, for example, whose votes on a question like this would

National Defence committee  It certainly seems like the natural starting point, but—

National Defence committee  Well, the Americans are fully prepared to go ahead and build their own system on their own with little or no Canadian participation, and if they do, then it will be run through USNORTHCOM and other related commands. From their point of view on whether it has to be done through NA

National Defence committee  Well, we already are involved, more or less directly, in a lot of the tracking part of what BMD will be about, through NORAD, and it seems odd that we would think about participating in coordination on a response through something other than the institution that manages the actua

National Defence committee  Your question was what the costs would be. There are lots of different kinds of potential costs. There are financial costs, but there are also costs involved in both participating and not participating in terms of other things, like how much of our resources are put into that as

National Defence committee  Sure. I guess my short answer would be that clearly there was a renewal of a commitment to properly fund the forces seven or eight years ago, and that showed some really tangible results. Unfortunately, it hasn't necessarily been followed through on in all areas. People have talk

National Defence committee  I would agree with that. I think that if we're going to see the direct effect of that hollowing out of our defence capacity in the next 10 years or so, it's mostly going to be with respect to expeditionary forces and not necessarily continental defence. I think if current trends

National Defence committee  I agree. It sort of follows from the question that if we don't have the actual capabilities, then we essentially make ourselves irrelevant, and that is just as true on continental defence as it is on other defence.

National Defence committee  I would agree with that. It's important to recognize that maritime warning, whether it happens through NORAD or not, is an inherently much more complicated thing than air defence or air warning. If we go back to the Cold War context it's really just our air force and the American

National Defence committee  It is a security initiative. It all depends. The information will come up through the process, and then it can be shared in ways that are useful in other domains, but it is primarily a security initiative.