Thank you, Ms. Lambropoulos.
First of all, I think we have to prepare for many future contingencies and possibilities. Ultimately, at the end of the day, I turn to our military and security experts to determine the balance of probabilities and risks, because we're always managing risks.
Climate change is the existential threat to humanity. We're seeing its impacts most directly and urgently playing out in the Arctic right now. Where I see that affecting our defence posture is on questions around the Canadian Armed Forces as representing essential capabilities to deal with the emergencies in the north. We need to be able to respond, as a country, to humanitarian and environmental disasters of greater magnitude and frequency. I think this brings up pretty fundamental questions about whether we have the right force mix and structures to address these missions, in addition to operations across the spectrum of competition.
In essence, I see climate change as representing a clear and present danger to many of my friends in the north in a day-to-day way. That requires us to develop the right capabilities now, and at the same time to anticipate what stressors on the environment might bring in terms of the competition changing going forward, and potentially different patterns of activities or risks that we should be anticipating.
The fact that Canada has offered to host the NATO centre of excellence on climate and security in Montreal, to me, is a step in the right direction by our being leaders in understanding and anticipating some of those drivers and dynamics.