Very briefly, any of the other Arctic countries are significantly better prepared than Canada is to provide search and rescue in their territory and, to some degree, in Canadian territory. There is some cooperative planning going on between Canada and the United States in terms of search and rescue in the western Arctic, and there is some planning, together with Denmark, concerning search and rescue between Greenland and Canada. There needs to be more of that.
The fact of the matter is that if there's a major airplane crash anywhere in the Arctic, we will be calling on our NATO partners to help. Certainly, I don't think it really matters to the passengers on the ground whether it's an American or a Canadian or a Danish helicopter that gets to them first. So there's cooperative planning on that domain.
We should also be talking with the Russians about cooperation on search and rescue. There's not a whole lot of activity that happens in the middle of the Arctic Ocean right now, but there are, of course, tourists and adventurers who do venture into that vast and inhospitable place. And yes, we need to be thinking ahead as to how we would deal with a crisis situation there.
But it's cooperation, not competition, when it comes to search and rescue.