I don't do the NORAD responsibility piece per se; I work the theatre ASW with operational control authorities in the North Atlantic, like my colleagues, Commander, Task Force 84, in Norfolk.
Our job is to keep track of submarines that break into the North Atlantic from ports and oceans more distant than Europe. Our job, day to day, is to always determine where those submarines are. If they break out and are coming toward the North American continent, our job is to clean the ocean surface of all of those tracks—container ships, oil tankers, pleasure boats, and fishing ships—so you have a chance of determining where the underwater submarine is located. It's a very noisy environment, and ships are contributors to the noise of the sea. There are false tracks or they mix up the track information, because to hunt for the submarine you have to see past the ships and their noise.
One piece is the maritime domain awareness piece on the surface, and then we start the hunt under water. The hunt sometimes calls for Canadian Armed Forces assets, depending on the commander of the joint operations decision-making and the permission of government to deploy forces into the Atlantic. Generally, you'll go after a submarine with a long-range patrol aviation, or another submarine. Those are the two most useful tools: submarines and long-range patrol aviation. That's typically what we send forth.
We're at the point now of being able to send Victoria-class boats into these operations. That's the government's decision, and we'll wait to see what they say once I signal to the commander of the navy that HMCS Windsor is at high readiness.