Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Mr. Trofimov, for being here. I'll try to be brief.
In August 2007, then President Putin stated that air patrols would resume, signaling they would become more frequent. He also stated, quite correctly, that international law does not stipulate obligatory norms for states to inform other states about the flights above the international waters bordering upon their territory.
There are two kinds of airspace, international airspace and national airspace. There's also a third kind. We have, as you do, what we call air defence identification zones, where aircraft operating in those zones are matters of interest to our particular countries. In 2007-08 there were 30 penetrations of air defence identification zones in Canada and the U.S. There were 28 NORAD intercepts of those penetrations, eight of which were conducted by Canadians. On only three of those cases was there notification given. So I would question a little bit the assertion that notification was given. And this is from NORAD documents.
Our interests in the Arctic are quite clearly, I think, economic, environmental, and security/sovereignty. Recently Vice-Admiral Oleg Burtsev of the Russian Federation stated that the Russian Federation was prepared to use submarines to enforce what they saw as Russian sovereignty in the Arctic. Could you elaborate on Admiral's Burtsev's statement?