From my perspective, if we're going to be a self-respecting country, ideally...we won't have it overnight but I think we need to have a year-round surveillance of the full extent of our territory. We aren't there yet. It won't come overnight, but that's the goal we should seek.
Our challenges, of course, are quite different from those of, say, Norway. They do have the benefit of the gulf stream, and their capabilities in terms of defence surveillance are a little less formidable. Russia does have similar challenges to Canada's. In my view, we should. If we're going to be a country from sea to sea to sea, we need that year-round capability. What is needed is a mix of surveillance capability on the defence, as well as search and rescue, and we aren't anywhere close to providing it as a country.
The situation in the north would not be tolerated whatsoever in the south, whether it be southern Ontario, southern British Columbia, or in the lower half of Alberta or other parts of Canada. It wouldn't be tolerated at all. We do need to have a very strong search and rescue capability in our north, and we do need, I would argue, permanent year-round Canadian Forces bases that have multiple capabilities. We don't have that. If you go by contrast and look at Alaska, and you look again at Russia, let alone the Nordic countries, those capabilities are there.
It's very important for Canadian Arctic sovereignty, and I'll come back on one point about Russia. I think Michael Byers is quite right. We do need to go to the fullest extent on the diplomacy route with Russia. With Russia, we cannot also be naive, either--I'm talking in general, about Russia's behaviour internationally. It doesn't always follow international norms. This is a big worry in Norway. They see the Russian bear resurging, and that is a concern.
So I think we always have to extend the diplomatic initiatives and strengthen those--I think that's vitally important and our best route--but we always have to back that up. In the international system, the effectiveness of search and rescue in terms of our credibility and in terms of surveillance of our north is vitally important, but so is defence. We need to have a presence in terms of defence, to have that credibility in order to assert our own Arctic sovereignty.