We looked at Arctic sovereignty and put it in our defence policy in accordance with maintaining our sovereignty. It was going to take investments.
We had already started with the investments, for example, making sure we had the Arctic-operative patrol ships. In fact, we have the first one actually operating in the region and conducting tests. We're going to have six now, not just five. We will have 15 surface combatants as well, through a fully funded defence policy.
NORAD modernization and continental defence was the last pillar. We have outlined it in our defence policy. We are now moving forward with this. The reason we waited to do it is that we had to work in conjunction with the U.S. on this. We also wanted to make sure we did the proper costing and put the funding into it. This way, no government can come in and start cutting funding. Just like we secured [Technical difficulty—Editor] policy, we're going to do the same thing for the Arctic.
We also want to make sure the people in the north get the appropriate support as we make further defence investments up there.