Thank you for the question, Mr. Chair.
We do participate actively in NATO. Let me explain the constructs of how and where we participate.
You may have heard of the term “within the NATO construct”, and I'll define our contributions within that construct. There are also entities that contribute to NATO that are not within the NATO construct. For example, the NCI Agency I referred to is actually outside of the NATO construct. It was created in 2012 and was put outside the NATO construct deliberately so it could behave with a little bit more agility and more like an industry service provider. That came with hand-offs and exchanges around how our contribution gets calculated, because it is actually outside the NATO construct when it comes to looking at credits like flags to posts and our ability to work within the NATO construct.
Let me give you some numbers. Within the NATO construct, currently National Defence is contributing over 200 positions at a fill rate of about 96.6%. We are very active and very committed to filling our positions within the NATO construct.
Outside the NATO construct, our contributions are measured in approximately 120 to 130 positions that participate in activities in direct support of NATO operations or NATO support services, just by way of example.
Financially, the contributions are again spread across the different constructs of NATO. Let me see if I can give you some more detailed examples.
By way of example, in 2016 Canada's cost share of NATO was about 6.6% overall. In terms of funding for something like the agency, Canada was contributing about $20 million, and another $20 million was being contributed to the military budget. There were two contributions, in terms of the way you would add them up, but one would be inside the NATO construct and the other would be outside.
In terms of CIS support, which was part of the agency in 2018, the budget allocation was about $48 million. Canada's portion of that amount in 2018 is approximately $3 million. The agency needed, across the partner nations, about the first amount, and Canada's contribution is anticipated to be about $3.1 million, by way of example.