Absolutely. There are two drivers, and this is what's going to bedevil Canadian defence planners, because you are going to have to have the types of capabilities that Dr. Lackenbauer has talked about. You will need constabulary capabilities to deal with the inevitable ship issues that arise, maybe a grounding, a sinking...these are areas that have little infrastructure, little capability. We've been very lucky to date with the groundings that we've had, that they've been in good conditions. We haven't had to worry about loss of life. That will be coming.
So we're going to have to have a constabulary capability, the type of which we have on both the east and the west coasts of Canada. In other words, the Arctic Ocean is going to become much like the Pacific and Atlantic and that will require a certain set of capabilities. The more challenging capability and one view that Dr. Lackenbauer and I do disagree on, though, is we're going to have to figure out more in terms of our overall strategic orientation. We are not going to be able to sidestep the issue, for example, of participation with the American ABM system. The Americans are building it. It's causing a reaction and I dare say we may have to start looking at what the Norwegians are thinking about doing, and that is retrofitting their existing frigates to give them an ABM capability. They're good ships already and they're going to tie them in. That's the rumour I'm hearing at this point.
The question is, how do you have a naval arm and air capability that then can deal with both the constabulary capabilities that are going to be day-to-day—those are the ones that are going to get the most media attention—but also deal with the longer-term strategic changes? The Americans are moving away from nuclear deterrence. If they're successful with their ABM capability, despite what they say, that changes the balance. We, sharing a continent with them, will have to figure out what that means for our defence posture.
Now that's getting away a little bit from the Arctic, but a lot of our capabilities that we are going to have to be dealing with that will be Arctic-based. We will have to re-examine the north warning system under the NORAD nexus. We are going to have to revisit the decision that was made not to participate with the ABM. We are going to have to re-examine the decision that Canada had to say that we agree with NATO's position on ABM, which I would argue is somewhat contradictory.
All these issues are both the big and little and you have to do it at the same time with expensive kit, and that's going to be the real devil of dealing with these issues.