Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I was on this committee before and I'm glad to be sitting in again today. I knew you guys would be here and I'm sorry to have missed your presentations.
You are right, Mr. Robertson. We do have a brilliant diplomatic corps. We have very expert people who are well rounded, smart, know their files, and work hard. That whole-of-government approach is very important, but we're not sophisticated enough in this world yet that we can do without militaries at this point in time. The Canadian military, I think, has distinguished itself in its duties around the world.
I'll ask some fairly broad questions.
Our Prime Minister has been very clear with the G-7 and others about Mr. Putin. He said very clearly that Mr. Putin does not want to be our friend; he wants to be our rival. I think he has demonstrated that in many, many ways. Of course the west had hoped that integration with Russia through the economy and energy and things like that would calm the situation and that through this integration things would work out much better than they have. It appeared to be for a while, but clearly he had been signalling for a couple of years that something was about to change.
One of the key councillors in the European Union produced an article a few days ago that suggested that a couple of years ago when he called Ukraine an artificial state and suggested Crimea always belonged to Russia, that they thought he was somehow being flippant. So I hope two years on that they've realized this was no joke and that he was already testing the waters for these sorts of things.
Russia clearly has changed the equation geopolitically. It's changed the way we see threats coming out. We had hoped that was not the case, but a lot of this is Soviet playbook stuff that is not only 75 years old but I think goes back right to the Russian Revolution. They've perfected the technique of—