On the absence of an integrated strategy, since 2005 there was a strategy being unveiled. It hasn't.... There have been promises have been repeated over the last number of years that one was going to be coming out. We're still waiting. I heard rumours that it was to be as early as this April, but that has come and gone. So I know it has been worked on.
What are some of the mechanisms that could be developed?
I've put forward a suggestion elsewhere for maybe revitalizing or resurrecting the advisory committee on northern development, which used to exist in the heady days of the late 1940s, through the DEW Line, and right through into the 1970s. Taking it up to that level, you would have senior civil servants at the DM level, and with involvement, at this point, of aboriginal organizations.
There are also proposals about a domestic Arctic council, which would perhaps be called an Arctic Canada council, with representatives coming together from the federal government, provincial governments, and land claim governments, as well as various aboriginal international organizations.
I think all of this points in the direction of the need for a dialogue, once we get past the idea there's an urgent need to deal with a military crisis that in my view is just not there. We need to recognize that we have the time to sit down and talk and actually come up with a sustainable policy or strategy, something that we perhaps haven't seen since the days of the 1950s. But we all know that Diefenbaker's version was blurry when it came to actually implementing his great vision. I hope it's different this time around.