It's about presence, skills and diplomatic initiative. It's not always about investing more money in our foreign ministries to get the product, but it is about investing some more money.
I won't go through the world and list where I think we shouldn't have shut down missions and where we should establish missions. It's probably beyond the scope of this committee and the scope of my notes, which I have to do myself now that I've retired, and it's a real challenge. However, I have seen what I find is a real diminution of our capacity internationally, our knowledge base internationally and our skill set internationally, on some issues, and we need to rebuild it. When we're faced with a conflict like Ukraine, you need a whole-of-Canada effort to work and build support with our key allies, our like-minded partners, to maintain support for Ukraine. As I said, I give kudos to Ambassador Rae and his team in our missions around the world, but it's going to take constant care and feeding.
The other thing is that we have to talk to some of the countries that have leverage with Russia. That is going to be key to bringing about some kind of peace at some point, when President Zelenskyy calls the time for a peace settlement. We need China experts and people who are close to India and other places who can help to apply some pressure to Russia. You need a full-court press to convince President Putin that it's time to either lay down arms and come to a table or.... I can't even start to guess where this war will go in its next steps.
It's diplomacy, capacity and expertise, and links to talk to the bad guys and to the good guys to build up that support.