Thank you.
As a former air force officer, and one who had the privilege of being involved with the 1994 white paper, I certainly can appreciate just how much work went into this document. I'd like to commend you and everyone in the forces and the Department of National Defence who worked on it, because this is a very comprehensive and impressive document. Thank you very much.
My riding is very concerned about defence and security, and was involved in the town hall in advance of the defence policy review, and just two weeks ago we had a town hall on NATO. One of the things that came up in that town hall was a concern about our commitment to the alliance and, in particular, the Arctic. I was very excited to see on page 80 that we have committed to conducting joint exercises with Arctic allies and partners and support the strengthening of situational awareness and information-sharing in the Arctic, including with NATO.
I wondered, Minister, if you could expand on that, particularly in light of the fact that we will have our NATO parliamentarians and senator allies coming to Canada to study our Arctic in September. Could you tell us what this means in a little more detail, and also share with us why it's important to Canada as one of the five Arctic NATO members, and why it's important to NATO?