Mr. Chair, it was an absolute privilege to represent Canada at NATO at my first defence ministerial meeting.
The feedback I received, with our re-engagement in NATO, was on the importance of Canadian leadership that was felt in the past and how we are doing it now by continuing the presence of our frigate in the Mediterranean and the air policing we have increased.
We are taking that leadership role. Only four framework nations have taken up that role: the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Germany. More importantly, the demonstration that we are making is that this is a battle group, a multinational battle group of many European countries coming together. It is because of the great experience we have in our Canadian Armed Forces that we are able to put this together, show great leadership, and show that message of deterrence. It is one thing to put things together but another to actually demonstrate that message of deterrence to Russia to complement some of the other work we are doing in the Ukraine as well.
There is a lot more work that needs to be done. When we conducted our defence policy review, my advisory panel went to NATO and discussed these things with them. We had that input into NATO defence policy.