Thank you, sir.
My desire would have been—and perhaps it was a little unrealistic in the political circumstances of the green paper and recognizing the fact that this is an unprecedented experiment—to have seen a broader opening statement about the kinds of national security threats that Canadians face now and are likely to face in the future. In part it would be to provide that sense of scope to Canadians, so that they could provide proper feedback about the instruments they might want to see deployed against this variety of threats.
It's one thing to ask Canadians what they think the best responses to terrorism might be. It gets more complex but perhaps more important to ask them what they think is the best mix of tools to deal with this range of national security threats. It does require education, and it does require people to understand that terrorism is just one of a number of national security threats, and it may not be the most important one that we face.
My concern is that if we focus too much on policy, regulation, and legislative changes, which are simply focused on the terrorism problem, we're going to leave ourselves with capability gaps, legal gaps, and policy gaps that are going to hinder our ability to deal with other kinds of threats.
The green paper was designed in large part to respond to election campaign promises and Bill C-51 issues, but I think it would have been helpful if they'd taken a fresh start on the whole question of what are the threats to Canadians that we need appropriate response tools for, and how do we build that balance that the government is so interested in. It's not just about technology. It's about the implication of other changes in our universe, including climate change. This is on the agenda of many of our allies. It's regarded as the number one national security threat for the United Kingdom in their annual threat assessments. It's high on the list of the director of national intelligence's annual statement on global threats that he presents to Congress. We haven't even started to have a conversation about what is the nature of climate change security impacts for Canada as an actor in the world and for Canada at home. The sooner we do that, and the sooner we broaden that discussion, the better off we'll be.