The Coast Guard is often the victim of its own success, because so many of its activities in the north are beyond the vision of what we see. We don't see them resupplying. We don't see them in the engagements.
What we know historically is that the Coast Guard has been vastly underfunded and has been asked, always increasingly, to do more and more difficult tasks. These tasks have become even more pronounced as climate change has, of course, added new environmental demands in terms of how they are responding to crises—not only flooding and forest fires but also decreasing ice cover. That means the Coast Guard has always been the agency that the Canadian government tells to go up and fix the issue.
As we enter into this new geopolitical threat environment, there is the realization that it's not good enough simply to have the Coast Guard dealing at the subnational, lower level of responding to threats: We have to figure out how in fact we can utilize these new resources for the greater security issue.
This is something that the Coast Guard is wrestling with right now. It's the issue of not only how we integrate it so that it can still meet all of the requirements that we've always called upon it to meet, but also how we add on these new responsibilities. This is very much a policy issue in motion, literally as we speak.
The Coast Guard will figure out whatever is required. They're going to be given four ships from four different shipyards. They will figure out all the first-of-class problems that come with that. They're going to figure out what type of training is necessary. The problem we always have is that they do it so terribly well that there often is a tendency to say that they have enough money and that they're figuring it out.
Ultimately, we come back to the issue that we see with Bill C-12. We see the new ships. We see the transfer to DND. Will the Coast Guard get the resources it needs to maintain itself and to fully fulfill itself as it is given more security responsibilities?