Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. Welcome to both of our guests, Dr. Lackenbauer and Dr. Leuprecht.
It's good to see you again, Christian. We've had many opportunities to have conversations in the past, and it's nice in this format.
If I may, I wanted to comment. First of all, we haven't spoken very much about the defence policy update that was released in April 2024. It was entitled, “Our North, Strong and Free”, and it focused on a number of things.
I will share with you as well, Dr. Leuprecht, that our policy work on that was informed, in part, by your own work in “Making Canada’s Arctic security paradigm fit for purpose”.
We talked a lot about the impact of climate change and the new technologies that were making our north far more accessible, but we also talked about the activities of our adversaries, in particular China and Russia, and some of the things that we were doing. I think it was really important to acknowledge those challenges.
One of the things that I have also learned in my fairly extensive work on defence in the Arctic is, you know, when I've gone to the Arctic, to people who live in those communities, particularly the Inuit, we talk about defending sovereignty and what that means to them. They say that it does not mean a fighter jet occasionally flying by. It does not mean a ship once in a while sailing through when the ice is out. What it actually means for them is infrastructure, significant investment in infrastructure. They talk about airport runways, highways, fibre optics, water treatment plants, power generation plants, and significant investments that could be multi-use to those communities. Of course, that presents a fairly significant challenge for us as well.
I would like your take on where we should be spending our money first. As you've seen, the Prime Minister, quite recently, in June of this year, made a commitment at the NATO summit in the Hague to significantly expand our defence expenditure. Additionally, there was a commitment to raise it over the next several years to as much as 5%, and 1.5% of that is an investment primarily in nation-building infrastructure, which has a security component.
Let me also agree with you that we've gone through decades of underinvestment in our national security, and I think that was born, in large part, of complacency. We were surrounded by three oceans, one of which was mostly frozen most of the time. We also shared our only land border with a benign superpower. Our complacency, I think, was based on a pretty fair expectation of how things would continue, but they've clearly changed.
I'd like your input on how we might best use our significant investments of $9 billion extra this year. In every subsequent year, defence spending will actually increase. What's the best way to invest that money?