There are a couple of components to that question. The first one right off the bat is ballistic missile defence. Since 2005, Canada's position has been that we're not participating in North American ballistic missile defence. Having said that and looping back to this defence policy review, I think that's certainly a question that could be considered in those discussions. I know that the minister sent a letter to this committee suggesting that as a potential area for you to consider.
For surveillance of North American approaches from ballistic missiles and from cruise missiles, again, we operate in NORAD headquarters. We have Canadians on the watch floor, and despite the fact that we don't participate in North American ballistic missile defence, our officers on the floor are not excluded from conducting surveillance and warning of airspace. NORAD has the capacity to detect ballistic missile launches from other countries, but it's important to focus on what NORAD is doing with ballistic missile defence, because it's not meant to be a defensive umbrella for all of North America against a big state-armed nuclear power like Russia. It is designed to deal with rogue states like North Korea or potentially Iran some day. It does have the capacity for ballistic missile surveillance.
In terms of cruise missile defence, we have a north warning system, which has been put in place across the Canadian Arctic and across Alaska. That system has some limited capabilities for cruise missile detection. I can't really get into them at this security classification, but this again is one of the reasons why we're looking at north warning system renewal as part of NORAD modernization, to make sure that our ability to detect threats to Canada is keeping up with the threat and how the threat evolves.