Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and colleagues.
A good number of you have been involved with NATO Parliamentary Assembly's activities along the way. I'm here as a resource, to talk about parliamentarians' participation in NATO Parliamentary Assembly. David has talked about some of the advantages. I agree wholeheartedly with that. Professor Fergusson touched on a couple of reports that we've been involved with. I was the rapporteur on the missile defence report, but let me tell you how this ballistic missile defence report was generated. Then there may be some questions that flow from the parliamentarians' participation.
David, as secretary general, leads the secretariat. There are a lot of very talented people who work in your office. We're very fortunate to have those people working with us because they can provide a lot of the research and support. There's also the opportunity. From time to time, we find Canadians who are working on their master's or Ph.D. who work in the NATO secretariat, NATO Parliamentary Assembly secretariat, which is and that's a great experience for them, as well.
We are, as parliamentarians, keeping an oversight on the executives in NATO. David explained the evolution of that, so I think that's important for us to understand. From 27 nations, now, we have representatives of parliamentarians at our meetings. The purpose is to inform parliamentarians about what the executive is doing, and in Canada's case, what commitments the Minister of National Defence and the Prime Minister are making with respect to defence and security issues.
We organize ourselves into a number of different subcommittees. There is a political subcommittee, and a number of parliamentarians from Canada have played an important role in the political aspects of security and defence matters; an economics one; a civil dimensions one; a defence and security one; and a science and technology one.
I can think of Canadian parliamentarians past and present who have played important roles in each of these committees.
I participate at the overall level. The president is from Italy at the present time, and then there are five vice-presidents of the organization, and I'm honoured to be one of those at this particular time. In addition to that, for a good number of years, I have worked in the defence and security subcommittee. You can't cover everything, so you make some choices. Our Canadian NATO Parliamentary Assembly chairperson, Leona Alleslev, will help determine who goes to what committees. We sit down and work out what we should do in that regard. Defence and security has been my area; I was president or chair of that particular committee for a number of years and held various other offices. Now I'm rapporteur on that committee. That's how I happened to have my name on this particular report.
I come in to you for the background. The committee is very good from a background point of view. The secretariat put a lot of work into bringing this together. We did some outreach and we talked to the different countries involved more specifically. We didn't go to Iran for this particular report.
We did have a delegation that went to Korea and talked to the Korean defence personnel about their concerns with respect to North Korea and the expanding threat or menace that is happening there. That's the kind of work we do. That report has been done and adopted by the assembly, but we'll keep an eye on developments there. It may well be that we revisit some of the changes, some of the evolution that's happening, because it is evolving very rapidly, as you know, both in North Korea and in Iran. This becomes an important aspect of the ongoing oversight of the parliamentarians' role in this.
We're now moving into another area, which is the enhanced forward presence and Canada participating in the Balkans and in Lithuania in that regard, so we'll be watching that evolution and how that new initiative will be working.
Just generally, on the role of parliamentarians, we have a joint all-party committee that goes from the House of Commons and the Senate. Members of all parties in each of the chambers will go to the two major sessions; then those who are participating specifically on some subcommittees will be involved, all of which is to say thank you very much for supporting the JIC, Joint Interparliamentary Council group.
To support our NATO participation as parliamentarians is not inexpensive, but it's well worth it, as it gives us a very important role to play in balancing North America against Europe. It's always interesting. For many years—David will know—they used to talk about Europe and the United States, and we convinced them to include Canada in that discussion, and it seems to be working. We think we do have a role there.
The United States does play a very important role in this. In some international organizations you don't see the U.S. playing a major role, but it certainly does in this particular organization.
We have a great chance for parliamentary diplomacy as well and getting to know parliamentarians. You talked about knowing the upper House of our friend from the Netherlands. I'm sure I know who they are, and I know them because I have participated and I've been fortunate enough to get chosen to go on these various organizational trips to get to know parliamentarians from other countries. That makes it very helpful.
Are there any other points you wanted to talk on?
I'd like to conclude my opening remarks by reminding you that the Senate defence and security committee—on which I have served for many years—about three or four years ago came up with a report that we should revisit the missile defence situation in North America, whether within NORAD or separately. The time has come to do that. We have one report on that and the government probably needs another little nudge, maybe from a group like you, to convince it that this should be looked at. I think the U.S. would be open to discussion on that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.