Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I would like to take this opportunity to offer my hearty thanks to Mr. Oliphant for his generosity, which avoids us having to take up the committee's time to discuss speaking times.
I would like to come back to the very timely question asked by our colleague Ms. Bendayan, concerning the countries we can count on to protect the Arctic. While I do not want to appear to be speaking in bad faith, what concerns me is that some of our closest allies are disputing Canadian sovereignty in the north. I am thinking of the United States and Denmark, among others.
We are dealing with core issues concerning Russia's and China's ambitions in the far north, and particularly the Canadian far north. We will recall that a Chinese company wanted to acquire a mine in the far north. Can we really count on our allies to protect that territory, given the fact that some of them are disputing Canadian sovereignty over that territory?