I don't disagree at all with what Mr. Rohozinski just said.
My top three, very briefly—because I know we have to be brief—are these.
We need to invest at a national level. NATO is only as good as the sum total of the capabilities its members provide. Apart from some AWACS aircraft—and Canada now is rejoining that program, which we're very pleased about—NATO depends exactly on its ability to generate national capabilities.
I'm very pleased, of course, that Canada is increasing its defence budget significantly. I mentioned the $750 million Canadian over the next few years going into upgrading cyber-defence, for a proposed Canadian centre for cyber security and a national cybercrime coordination unit. These are good examples. Of course, we need resilience to be built at that national level.
NATO could help the defence planning process. It could help to guide nations to where their investments would probably be the most cost-effective. We can learn from each other. We can give countries realistic targets, of course, but we very much need the 2% mark of GDP to be reached over the next few years progressively, because of all the challenges we face, whether from the east, the south, or this homeland front that we've been talking about today. Those are three strategic fronts where NATO needs to deliver, and we need that 2% to be able generate the suite of capabilities we're going to need.
The second thing is NATO-EU. Although Canada is not a member of the European Union, 22 NATO countries are. When it comes particularly to this hybrid thing, the co-operation between the two institutions is key. The EU has things—the R and D money, the new European defence fund of 5.5 billion euros that's being set up to promote more research and development, and the way in which the EU works to regulate the environment. Think of the general directive on data protection that is now coming in, and the efforts to protect critical infrastructure. The EU has many of the assets, frankly, that we lack, but NATO has things, of course, particularly in the military field, that the EU lacks. Getting these two organizations not just to talk about working together and not just to organize seminars in Brussels, but also to really pool their efforts is going to be key.
Finally, exercising is important. These challenges today, as I say, present us with some difficult issues. How do you do attribution? When do you do attribution? How do you classify a hybrid attack? How do you respond? Frankly, like everything else in life, we need to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, not just military exercises—we have lots of those—but also political exercises on crisis consultation and try to work out which measure suits which situation best. The more we train, as with anything else in life, the more we'll be able to identify and deal with the real thing if it ever happens to us.