Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister.
I would first like to say that I welcomed your opening remarks. I liked what you said, even if it sometimes seemed not to correspond entirely to the response of the Prime Minister or the government. In any event, it is a good start, because what you said is what we are actually seeing at present when it comes to China.
Obviously, the Chinese people, and Asian people in general, are not who we are talking about, since our comments are always directed at the regime.
On that point, the Minister of National Defence, Mr. Sajjan, came to see us a few weeks ago, and there was a comprehension problem regarding the geopolitical situation. I would therefore like to come back to the questions about the security and defence of Canada in geographic terms.
At present, China considers itself to be a near-Arctic region. Officially, is China a territory that is considered to be part of the Arctic region as a whole?