I think soft power has always been one of Canada's great strengths. You earn credibility through investing in defence and doing your share in terms of international defence efforts.
Monsieur Saint-Jacques referred to the Arctic as a place where we need to spend more on defence, and I agree with that completely. I think we could kill two birds with one stone. First of all, we could invest money to ensure that we have defence systems in the Arctic and for the Arctic, which would at the same time help us achieve the 2% of GDP required of us by our colleagues in NATO.
I think that's what we talk about when we say, “hard power”. It's the actual equipment and investing in the ships, the airplanes and the troops, and putting them on the ground where they are needed for patrols and to ensure that our sovereignty is respected.
There is a link between that and our ability to be persuasive through soft power at the table, because it's a matter of credibility. If you're not respectful of your obligations for defence, if you're not pulling your weight and if you're not investing in defence systems, your credibility when you use soft power is diminished, so I think they are linked.