National Defence committee  Certainly there's not much point in just collecting information and not having the capability to do something to act on that information. Whether or not all of those responses have to be things that are managed directly by NATO is a question to be worked out. I guess it depends

National Defence committee  I think there's no single thing that we have to do and many of the things that we would have to do in order to have a more ambitious assertion of our presence in the Arctic are things that have nothing to do with NORAD. To the extent that NORAD is relevant to the Arctic, it's mos

National Defence committee  I think that's right. I would just add there's nothing new about that. Our relationship with the United States in the Arctic has always been characterized by a kind of mixed agenda, where there are some things where we clearly do not agree and we choose to try to work around thos

National Defence committee  It's true there is political cooperation with them, and some very low-level defence cooperation, but to me it doesn't seem any more prominent than their respective cooperation with a variety of other partners. There has been an overplaying, I think, of the importance of the conne

National Defence committee  They've made a number of agreements recently, yes, but I don't think any of those agreements take away from the fact that their interests in the Pacific are not necessarily aligned. There is no reason to think of the potential threats that might be posed by either of them in the

National Defence committee  My thanks to the committee for the invitation. I'm very pleased to participate and look forward to the discussion that follows. Canada is confronted with a number of complex national defence questions today, and there's a danger that we will lose sight of the less urgent but mor