Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank both our witnesses for appearing tonight.
The first question I have concerns Russia's and China's military co-operation in respect to submarine capacity. I read with alarm when Nord Stream 1's pipeline was blown up in the Baltic Sea, blowing a 50-metre hole in that pipeline, because there were suggestions that Russia had committed this act of sabotage. It immediately brought to mind Russia's submarine capabilities.
That led me to think about what's going on in the Canadian Arctic with China and Russia, thinking about what submarine vulnerabilities we have, not just in the Arctic but on our Atlantic and Pacific coasts. I then started thinking about the myriad of Internet cables that carry the world's digital communications between North America and Europe, and between North America and the Indo-Pacific region. Many of those cables emanate from Halifax, Nova Scotia, from other parts of Nova Scotia, and from the British Columbia coast.
How important is it that Canada develop submarine capacity, to monitor not just the surface of our coastal waters, but also the submarine parts of our coastal waters, Professor Huebert?