National Defence committee  Can I just add a quick thought?

National Defence committee  We're not proposing that Canada abandon good works. What we're saying is, let's divide up the labour—because we're diffusing a lot of effort, and there are other people who can spend more time, maybe more effectively, doing certain kinds of things—but also let's know what the business is.

National Defence committee  I think where we're going with these conclusions is to an appeal to people who value the interests of Canadians to consider the future a little bit more than the past. If you consider that there's a taxonomy of interest, the first and most immediate being the safety and security of citizens, the second one being their economic livelihood and prosperity, and so on, those two things ought to drive a lot more of our foreign defence policy than I think they have traditionally been doing.

National Defence committee  They can certainly look after themselves and their security. They could do a credible job if they ever got their act together—and some of them have—to look after the security interests of their neighbourhood.

National Defence committee  We just don't think that NATO should be the full answer anymore.

National Defence committee  Well, Mr. Alexander, you catch me a little off guard, because there was a point about a year and a half ago when I was asked to actually put together, in chart form, exactly the answers to precisely those questions. I think in general we took a little darker view of the strategic outlook than the NATO strategic concept displays.

National Defence committee  Sure. It's never been our intention to argue that NATO needs to disband or that we need to get out of NATO. The architecture we had in mind began as a concept at the end of the Second World War, that is, to create a United Nations organization. It was supposed to be an all-encompassing solution that would deal with international peace and security, economic prosperity, and social issues.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Chair, and honourable members. We have circulated our opening statement, so we will not repeat that in the interests of time. George Petrolekas and I will have a very few brief opening remarks just to kind of set the scene, and then we're in your hands. Your subject, and we don't want to sound patronizing, is an important one, because in fact it's our assessment that Canada has reached the stage at which it's probably important to go back to some first principles on the security and defence policy and look at our interests a bit more carefully than has been traditionally required of this country.