I would agree with my colleague.
Sovereignty has become a very emotional issue in Canada, a very touchy point that everyone wants to press but, when you look at the realities of Canada in the Arctic, its territory, its archipelago and its territorial waters, there is no sovereignty challenge at all. There's no contesting. There is contesting about the status of the Northwest Passage. There's a bit of contesting with our American allies about the Beaufort Sea but, by and large, no one contests our sovereignty, which is our authority to make decisions over what is to be done or not to be done with regard to our territory and the adjacent waters.
There is no sovereignty issue here, and it's time we stopped talking about that. My colleague Dr. Perry is dead right. This is really about defence and security in the areas that are beyond our sovereignty, territorial and territorial waters and how we deal with this problem. My suggestion to this committee is to drop this problem, because it doesn't get us anywhere. It assumes that there's some challenge, and there is no challenge.