Thank you.
I'll follow through with a couple of points. Ferry didn't go to Club Meds; neither did I. I did tours in Cypress and Bosnia in NATO and made several trips into Afghanistan over the last decade, as well as dealing with a number of business interests, particularly in South America and Indonesia. I did serve as an adviser to General Rick Hillier for pretty much most of his time as both commander of ISAF and Chief of the Defence Staff.
Ferry has outlined a number of things that are trends, and I want to focus over the next four minutes on those things.
One of the critical influencers of policy right now on the global stage—and this is not just for Canada, but for other nations in the alliance—is literally a war-weariness of the last 10 years.
Part of it has been a great questioning by our public. Was it worth it, and to what end, and what did we deliver in a number of engagements? In the United States, it was specifically about Iraq, and then Afghanistan, for most of the western alliance. There was Libya, which I would argue has been left in worse shape post-Gadhafi than it was pre-Gadhafi. At least at that point, as Ferry often says, we had an enemy we could trust.
This has led to policy applications that are led by one consideration: that of having no boots on the ground, which therefore limits the flexibility of leaders and of nations to react to crisis.
The second thing is the fiscal crisis of 2008. Certainly deficits are a national security problem, and nations should not live in deficit. Therefore, reducing deficit is one of the prime functions of government, for certain. However, that also has to be balanced with enormous cuts made to the armed forces that reduce capability, and that's exactly what is happening now in almost every single nation in NATO.
There are deep cuts also in the United States, which are a combination of budget cuts and the effects of sequestration. They have a tremendous effect on the operational readiness of forces, so when we come to issues such as Ukraine, we start scrambling for solutions because we just don't have forces that are ready to go.
The combination of the two—weariness and the fiscal crisis—have also led to a bit of a reshaping in the interpretation of what is the national interest. I would say to you that for most nations, it has now become the primacy of economic interest, and therefore issues dealing with the security of the world order and the safety and security of its citizens are not necessarily based on projection of values and creating a value-based global system but on protecting national economic interest.
Those trends, as a policy effect, result in the desire to contain and to almost reflect through problems, as opposed to acting. To quote the Prime Minister in his speech in Calgary during the Conservative Party convention, we will “...deal with problems as they arise”. That's not unique to Canada. It's a trend we're seeing throughout the rest of the alliance as well.
That really becomes a fundamental problem of what we divine as the search for leadership, particularly as led by the United States. I will use a more proximate example, which is the western reaction to the takeover of Crimea in which NATO, the European Union, and the transatlantic link to that alliance are scrambling to find pertinent responses to the Russian move into Crimea.
The problem, not just from a military standpoint but also in Foreign Affairs and in CIDA and in all agencies of government that are involved internationally, is that it creates a particular problem because there is a lack of vision and we're not particularly certain of the ground we're occupying.
For the military, the problem then becomes knowing what kind of forces you need. The answer can only come from a vision that says what you wish Canada to do. It is not difficult to design forces. It is not difficult to design levels of readiness, the types of airplanes, the types of ships, but tell me what it is you want me to do.
Do you want to concentrate on continental defence, or does Canada have a role throughout the world? Are there emerging areas of the world that are more important than others with respect to Canadian interests? Those decisions and that guidance affect the shape of the tool that we create.
Is it a Pacific focus? Do we focus on full-spectrum warfare or primarily on peacekeeping? How large will the forces be? What are the no-fail priority missions here in Canada?
The answer to each one of those questions relates not only to structure but also to the procurement of equipment and capital expenditures for the forces. If your number one no-fail mission is search and rescue in Canada, fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft would not still be waiting 10 years for an acquisition.
With the emergence of the northern gateway pipeline and almost 300 supertankers per year visiting the coast of British Columbia and with Vancouver being the fourth-largest port in North America, our trade patterns are shifting, and security follows trade. Therefore, the types of ships and things we would wish to acquire have to dovetail with where Canada's emerging trade and therefore security interests lie. That's not to mention the demographic changes in the country, which are led by Asian immigration.
Finally, having that particular vision enunciated—having a clear, strategic view of Canada's national interests and in what regions of the world they reside—helps us in times of fiscal austerity. Then we can actually decide where we're cutting, as opposed to simply shaving ice cubes, which I think is the situation we find ourselves in now.
Ferry and I have almost jokingly called it “cuts by stealth”. Cuts are happening because of budget reductions, since we can no longer afford certain things that we wish to do or maintain things that we have, but we're not cutting those things based on clear strategic direction and a vision for the country going forward.
With that, unless Ferry wants to add something else, I think we're open to questions.