Mr. Chair, this speaks to what deterrence means in a Canadian context.
From our perspective, deterrence for a country like Canada is best effected through the broad grouping of allies, friends and like-minded nations so that we can have that collective deterrence. In the U.S. they're calling it “integrated deterrence”.
There are two aspects of deterrence: deterrence by punishment and deterrence by denial.
Deterrence by punishment is being able to retaliate by holding what the adversaries consider valuable at risk. We don't have a lot of that in Canada, but by working with our like-minded partners we can be part of that larger deterrence.
Deterrence by denial means that what the adversary wants to achieve will not be possible. That means being resilient. Even if they attack, they will not achieve their aims, so it's avoiding or removing those single points of failure in our system so that we can continue to operate even after an attack.