That's actually the most enjoyable part of my job, participating in an enterprise called the marine security operations centre. This is a day-to-day capability commonly referred to as the MSOC. It is headquartered in my headquarters building. It is very close to the search and rescue centre, and it's just feet away from my joint operations centre from which I command military operations. The MSOC brings the partners—the RCMP, the border security agency, Transport Canada, CSIS, coast guard, and the navy—to a common table, much like this, and the operators at that table have formed trusted relationships, and information from their networks comes to the table. It is not communicated directly between services because there's a jurisdictional and legal boundary between our information flows. But when people perceive something is going wrong on the seas, whether it's the border services or immigration or a criminal act, they talk because they want to know where the possible maritime track is. They want to determine if there's a requirement for a collective maritime response from all the parties that have maritime resources. The team works out the nature of the threat, who the lead agency is, and what they're going to do about it. Sometimes that leads to a minister-to-minister talk, so that military resources are engaged to actually go after the surveillance of the track.
It's a very effective system, sir. The MSOC is looked at by countries around the world as a model of whole-of-government inter-agency cooperation. It is literally done on a cigarette pack, financially, and in the spirit of collaboration, and I cannot think of a better model. It's just done between people in departments who know that the ocean is a difficult environment and they have to work together to get to the bottom of the threats.