Thank you for the excellent question. It's of absolute importance.
Just to add to your listing of the Russian.... We think the Russians have designed a special submarine. It's basically a typical SSN, the Belgorod, but it also has the capability of carrying a deep-diving mini-sub, and that's what we suspect was doing the cut.
Not only was Nord Stream attacked, but also—and this is something that Canadians are not aware of very much—prior to the onset of the second phase of the war back in February, the Russians also cut the fibre optic cable between Svalbard Island and Norway, where a very significant amount of information of a security nature is given.
Russians have demonstrated to us that they have this capability. Within the Canadian context, we really don't have any ability to respond. We have our four submarines, which are very capable, but, as everybody knows, they are not under-ice capable. This means that entire region is left open.
The problem we face is that even in terms of what the minister promised in June, in terms of remedying many of the aerospace difficulties, I think there is nothing in terms of the modernization of our underwater listening capability, and this has been brought out so brilliantly in the very recent audit that the Auditor General released in terms of how we were able to see what we're not doing for Arctic sovereignty and security.
We're not talking about it in the context of what we do with the Americans, and we're not talking about what we may want to do. We had one scientific program called Northern Watch, but nothing really came of that, so there is nothing, sir.