Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee. I will be brief.
I am pleased to appear before you today as associate deputy minister of national defence.
It's a tremendous honour to do this job. Working alongside the defence team that you see here, together with Chief of the Defence Staff General Vance and the entire Canadian Armed Forces leadership team is an immense privilege.
Over the last three years, I have worked with the Canadian Forces to help enable and facilitate the tremendously important work they do. Whether fighting forest fires and floods at home, deploying abroad to provide humanitarian assistance, or standing up for our values in conflict zones, the Canadian Forces do great work every day on our behalf. Being part of the team that supports them means that I get to come to the office every day confident that the work I do is important and meaningful and helps to make Canada and the world a better place.
It's not just a tremendous honour to start this new position alongside Jody and Bill and the new Judge Advocate General; it's also a great moment to take on new responsibilities.
Earlier this year, the Department of National Defence concluded the most comprehensive review of our defence policy in Canadian history. We now go forward on the basis of a sound policy footing. I'm particularly proud of the broad consultative process that kicked off that review. The online process, which resulted in over 20,000 Canadians sharing with us their comments and questions, would have been technologically impossible not that long ago. The round tables we convened with experts across the country were well attended and allowed our ministers and parliamentary secretary to hear directly from knowledgeable Canadians. Of course, dozens of members of Parliament, maybe some of them at this table today, held their own consultations in their constituencies and were kind enough to share the results with us.
Let me also commend the excellent committee work done in this House and in the other place; it contributed to our deliberations.
Mr. Chair, I come to my new responsibilities with a different background from most of my colleagues. I spent most of my career as a diplomat. I am, and always will be, a proud product of the Pearson Building. I hope this experience will help me to be of service to our minister and to Jody Thomas as they lead the department forward.
I served as the assistant deputy minister in the Global Affairs department, responsible for Afghanistan, among other countries, at a time when we still had a significant troop presence in that country. I've been responsible in the Global Affairs department for the Middle East twice in my career, and I have found that experience invaluable since we deployed our troops to the region under Operation Impact. I spent 12 years working in the Europe branch and in our mission to the European Union in Brussels. I found that useful, as Canada has assumed a new job as one of NATO's framework nations while deploying to Latvia for an enduring mission.
I've also, Mr. Chair, spent considerable time working with international organizations such as APEC, the OECD, the G8, and the G20. I am finding that time spent working in these organizations is applicable in other international and multilateral contexts, such as NATO, NORAD, or the counter-ISIL coalition.
Mr. Chair, the challenges facing the Canadian Forces at this time are considerable. The rapid pace of technological development alone means that we have considerable work ahead of us to ensure that our forces can do the work we expect from them. Our rapidly changing geostrategic environment, described in chapter 4 of our new defence policy, sets out some of the other challenges we face. If you haven't had a chance to read it, I particularly recommend that chapter. It's only seven pages long, and I think it sums up some of the tremendous challenges in the environment that shapes our work today.
One lesson I learned while working on Middle East issues and while serving as our ambassador in Iran is that long periods of stability can often disguise underlying social turmoil, occasionally resulting in rapid and even revolutionary change. Just think of the Arab Spring or the Iranian revolution. Periods of instability mean that our Canadian Forces must maintain high levels of readiness. We never know when they will have to deploy on short notice to far corners of the globe to deliver humanitarian aid, help prevent tragedies, or fight chaos and destruction.
In the months ahead, I hope to help the Canadian Forces maintain readiness, renew themselves for upcoming challenges, implement our new defence policy, and adapt to a rapidly changing world. Working with Minister Sajjan, Jody Thomas, General Vance, Bill Matthews, the JAG, and other DND leaders, I am confident that we have the team we need, a team with complementary skill sets, well balanced to respond to both the predictable and the unexpected.
If I have learned anything from working with the Canadian Forces these last three years, it is that teamwork is critical to responding to all great challenges. Of course, that team will need to transcend national defence. Modern threats to our security mean that we need to work as part of a seamless whole-of-government effort. Indeed, our team needs to work effectively with other levels of government.
I spent some time working in provincial and municipal government early in my career and I know that effective cooperation across levels of government will be just as important in dealing with security threats in the future as it has been in coping with natural disasters in the past.
Mr. Chair, I look forward to being part of the team.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.