Thank you very much.
I want to start by recognizing some people in my riding who fought in the war. We have a reserve OKIB, Okanagan Indian Band, and they have a proud history of fighting in wars.
William Smith was a tank gunner who was killed in France in 1944. Gunner Robert Sheffield, 19, died in the war. Flight sergeant Leslie Sparkes of the Royal Canadian Air Force died in 1942. Edward James Tronson went to war with four of his brothers, who all came home. Unfortunately, their mother, Louisa Tronson, died before any of them got home. I wanted to mention that.
I want to set the stage for the next question. It's an interesting one.
The modern battlefield in a symmetrical war is something we're seeing right now in Ukraine. There are two tactical scenarios for communication. One is the frontline cities. For instance, Kramatorsk is about 15 kilometres from the Russians. There is surveillance from satellites or high-level drones. There is medium-level and low-level surveillance. There are electronic listening devices and electronic scrambling devices. The GPS is foiled. Every time we try to use it there, it tries to direct us into the river. Listening devices are everywhere, and there is AI and advanced signals intelligence. At the zero line, which is a little closer to the Russians, in Kupiansk, electronic comms are simply shut down. There's nothing there.
This brings up a question I had about the code talkers from World War II. It seems odd in this highly technological environment to talk about something that was in World War II, but in the immediate tactical battlefield when communications have to be done, what about something like the code talkers? You would think that in a modern battlefield, you would just whip out your cellphone and use a translator device. Can any of the academics here tell me how many indigenous languages are actually on translation devices?
I've looked around, and I cannot find anything there at all. We have 80,000 Cree speakers in Canada. We have 40,000 Inuktitut speakers. In a modern symmetrical battlefield where electronic devices don't work—and this is a serious question—is this a possibility? Is this something that should be explored?