General, I'm visiting the committee today and what an honour it is to meet you.
In your opening statement, you talked about how fortunate and humbled you feel for the opportunity to serve at NORAD as part of what this great country of Canada contributes. You finished by saying how proud you are to serve and to watch with the soldiers, sailors, airmen and airwomen of Canada and the United States and their extraordinary drive, professionalism, and ingenuity. I thank you for those comments because I think those are ones that our Canadian Forces people would all talk about.
With that, Canada is a much smaller nation in terms of population. In terms of relationships with our United States partners and closest neighbours, one of the essential issues around NORAD, obviously, is that we share many of the responsibilities and duties. We're always looked at as being about one-tenth of what the United States is, but I think the question becomes whether our troops are able to operate American equipment and vice versa. How important is that? Does it require extra training? Is that part of what becomes the norm for our men and women?