Sir, first of all, I agree that this is an important area for us to be considering. It is the changes taking place in the north, I think, that cause us to look ahead and ask how we need to position ourselves to be able to respond to the safety and security threats of the future. I can't really give advice for the navy--my counterpart, Vice-Admiral Dean McFadden, commands the navy--but I certainly can talk about what I need as the commander of Canada Command in actually delivering capability in the north.
Do we need to relearn how to operate in that environment? I would say that in terms of naval experience, in terms of Canadian Forces experience on the water, we have been constrained from a lot of naval presence on the water in the Arctic. However, the Canadian Coast Guard has significant presence in the Arctic. They understand the region, they know how to operate up there, and I would say it's important at this stage--as we see a change in the environment that increases the level of activity and perhaps the frequency of naval presence that we wish to have up in the Arctic--that transfer of knowledge is very important.
We're looking at putting our folks into coast guard ships when they're conducting operations in the Arctic; we're looking at operating more frequently with the coast guard, and we do that every year up in the Arctic; we're looking at working with other navies, such as the Danish navy, that have experience up in that region so that we can get knowledge transfer there; and we're looking at continuing to exercise to push ourselves farther and farther north as conditions permit so that we get more awareness of the factors that we have to take into consideration as we adjust how we do our business.
I don't think we need to reinvent how we do our business. I think we have to be realistic about the navy's role in the Arctic, because there's really not a conventional military threat facing us up there. What that means is that we have to be prepared to have a presence. We have to be prepared to cooperate with others and, quite often, to deliver a capability that's needed to address safety concerns or security concerns early that are really within the mandates of other government departments.
Do we have to relearn how to do this? No, I think we know how to do this, but more of us need to get smart on it, and we need to be sharing information that we have and we need to be continuing to stay abreast of changes that are happening in the north.
How do we go about that? I've described some of the mechanisms, but I think it's really through collaboration and cooperation that we will develop the types of capacities that we need to operate up in the north.
We also need to look at our basic footprint as we move ahead, and there are some initiatives that have been described to this committee before to address that. We need to look at the types of vessels that would be available, and there are initiatives that have been described at this committee before that do that as well.