Sir, the navy is pretty proud of the fact that it has a long heritage operating in the north and leading the rest of government to solve Arctic problems.
HMCS Labrador was a navy ship in 1954. It cruised the Northwest Passage, helped build the DEW line, and put Canada in the north in a particular period in time when sovereignty was in our highest demand, and there was a full-blown Cold War. All through the seventies and eighties we led science missions and universities to the north on our ships. We returned to the north with a vengeance after a 10-year gap in 2001, the year of 9/11. We are the ones who put joint task force exercises on the map in the north with Operation Narwhal, or Exercise Narwhal at the time, which has evolved into Nanook.
To us, the Arctic is a maritime domain. It's an archipelago, an inland sea, the Arctic Ocean, Baffin Bay, Davis Strait, and the Beaufort Sea. We have been a good partner there. We just need to expand the period of time when we can be the partner in that maritime domain, and that's what AOPS is going to give us.
If it comes down to search and rescue, you are probably going to have a maritime component, because the aboriginal peoples use the water to move in the Arctic. If it's going to be a loss of a helicopter or an airline crash in the north, dime to dozen it's going to find water and it's going to have a diving component. If it's increased shipping, there could be an accident. There could be casualties and evacuees, and that was the scenario of Nanook last year. Also, there could be an environmental element in our pristine north, which is something the coast guard and Transport Canada are focusing on.
The navy is well situated. It was well situated. It will be exceptionally well situated with the arctic offshore patrol ship. It's a big ship, long-range, high-volume, and multi-purpose. It's the perfect element of support—arms support, constabulary support—toward the other federal departments. We've already built the teamwork to be a whole-of-government presence in the north.