Chris is probably going to be bringing a more fulsome security approach to his presentation, but I will say, first of all, that there has been a lot of focus on the 2% NATO commitment. That's what the Trump government is looking for from its allies, but I am hearing increasingly, and I believe that Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland has also been putting the case forward, that there is recognition for all of the other ways in which Canada contributes to the security of North America and the security of territorial United States.
When you add in all of the other mechanisms, whether they're NORAD, border security, border infrastructure, or information sharing, etc., that package is being taken into account in the United States.
When we started the NAFTA in 1994, the idea was to integrate North America on an economic level but also to work towards greater levels of shared foreign policy and shared integrative mechanisms such as we've seen in the European Union. We didn't have a method for doing that and, as a result, the trilateral security initiatives that might have gone along with the NAFTA have been a little bit piecemeal and have not really been formalized.
Every time we come up with an entity like the security and prosperity partnership of North America or the beyond the border agreement, people get nervous with all those initials and they throw it away.
Therefore, there has been an ad hoc and incremental alignment and integration of Canada, U.S., and, to a certain extent, Mexico in security measures to do with immigration and policing and cybersecurity and resilience against shared threats, both man-made and environmental, but there has not been any systemic institutional approach to doing this.
As a result, what we see now—what I see now—is that as we become more integrated in things like pre-clearance for air passengers, Canadians are getting a little nervous and saying, “How much information are we sharing with the United States? Is that a good idea? What are the costs and benefits of that trade-off between information sharing and easier access or information sharing and more co-operation?”
I think Canada, as it moves forward with greater North American security integration with the United States—which is not necessarily a bad thing and could be a very positive thing—needs to have an internal conversation to figure out its principles and values going forward in terms of information sharing, co-operation, and collaboration.