Mr. Chair, when it comes to protecting Canadians and our Canadian sovereignty, it is the most important aspect of our Canadian Armed Forces' work.
In the last 18 months, we have been focusing on making sure that our men and women have the necessary training, making sure that we are able to respond up north with Operation Nanook, making sure that we are able to respond to Canadians during national disasters, as we are doing now, and making sure that we move ahead with the procurement of equipment.
We cannot be an island of stability in an ocean of turmoil. Our navy needs new ships. Currently we have no joint support ships. We have an interim ship that is being worked on right now. We were talking about capability gaps. If we do not invest in our military, a capability gap will eventually turn into a capability loss. That is exactly what happened with our joint support ships. We are working very hard to move the process forward as quickly as possible so that we can project our power and support ourselves.
At the same time, we believe that we can work with our allies. We focused, as part of our defence policy review, on our sovereignty, looking at the north, looking at the Arctic. How do we complement what the military does? We are working with other departments, like the Coast Guard.
We are really focusing on this. I look forward to talking more about this in the coming weeks.