Madam Chairman, to take it from the back part first, we do not think it will have a financial impact on us. It might have to some minor degree if we set up a planning cell or something like that to work more with the Americans. However it is their internal command structure.
The Americans have had a series of geographic commands that cover the world, except for North America which includes their own country. They have treated that differently. Now with the increased focus on homeland security, which they were starting to focus a little more on even before September 11 but particularly since September 11, they feel that one of their geographic commands should now cover the continent in which their country is located. It makes sense. They have a southern command which covers everything to the south. They have a Pacific command. The central command in fact which is headquartered in Tampa, Florida is the command that is dealing with Afghanistan.
The Americans have these geographic commands. They have some operational commands as well. They have nine of them and they are adding a tenth one to their system. It is called northern command. It is entirely an internal reorganization of the United States military.
Since the northern command will have as part of its interest the continent in which Canada is located, we are obviously interested in talking with the Americans about what that means. We have particularly focused on Norad because it is a binational command. We want to preserve Norad in that level of importance and we have accomplished that. They have agreed.
We are now going on to discussions to see if there are any other practical ways we might co-operate in terms of the defence of our continent. We approach these kinds of discussions on the basis of what is in our Canadian interests and what we need to do to ensure the safety and security of Canadians.
We will look at options, but none of these options will in any way sacrifice our sovereignty or our ability to make our own decisions or to command our own troops. We are not talking about putting any of our troops under any northern command. That is a United States operation entirely, just as no other countries in the other geographic commands are involved. It is the United States' area of interest and entirely relates to its own forces.
The United States has no control over our territory. We govern our own territory. We make our own decisions with respect to our troops and our territory. We will, as I said, continue to look for practical ways of co-operating. That is a matter that should be coming to the cabinet for some decision fairly soon on how we wish to proceed.