Gentlemen, thank you very much for being here. I appreciate your service.
This may come across as a bit of a summary, but we know that our north warning system is aging, and the ice floes are receding, thus opening up the Northwest Passage and allowing increased activity and travel through there. There's also the question of who owns what in the Arctic, which may take a long time for us to figure out. I'm not talking about today, or even in the next five to 10 years, but possibly in the next 50 to 60 years.
General Bowes, I think you said something to the effect that there would be greater defence of the north. You didn't necessarily say there would be sufficient defence of the north. I guess my question would be, should our defence focus, our infrastructure investment, and our procurement focus be on all of these common occurrences in the north? Is that where we should be focusing our plans right now, on the issues in the Arctic strictly?