Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for leading us in a very interesting discussion so far.
I want to first pick up on the comments from our CEOs and Mr. d'Aquino. I appreciate that you outlined three main concerns--energy, economy, defence and security--very appropriately and adroitly. We've had a good discussion about those. I want to pick up on the defence and security aspect that was discussed.
I noticed in your report that you talked about joint management of borders, a full NORAD mission. I think we've missed some opportunities there, and we're revisiting that. In terms of protecting our own huge borders, we're a little skinny on our own defences. It makes perfect sense to work on our perimeter of North American defences.
I think one of our sticking points really is the border. We had some discussions earlier about the thickening of the border, and we talked about the huge apparatus in the U.S. on homeland security, which is said to be bigger perhaps than our whole Canadian public service.
My concern would be this. You mentioned the US, with 9/11, and how that drastically changed our border. There was a remark about maybe 300,000 or 400,000 people a day crossing that border and that we're looking for maybe three to five potential threats. That single one--that's the whole problem with terrorism--actually has tremendous power, even though they don't succeed in interfering with our normal society's functioning. We had a very close incident with Ahmed Ressam. He was caught at the border with weapons that were headed for L.A. airport.
The challenge is how we deal with this border between us. We've been pretty skinny in our own monitoring of the border and probably very under-represented in terms of any serious protection there. With 9/11, the U.S. obviously has its own immigration challenges with people coming across that border. What do we do in terms of beefing that up? We're making efforts to arm our border guards and to establish more border infrastructure; those things were mentioned. How do we address that issue to facilitate trade and still maintain our sovereignty?
Mr. Chair, by the way, I'm sharing my time with Lois.