National Defence committee  To reiterate that sentence, space defence is Arctic defence, Arctic defence is ultimately continental defence and continental defence is defending the northern flank of NATO. The NATO centre of gravity, with the addition of Sweden and Finland, has shifted north. The northern flank has become more important.

National Defence committee  That's a terrific question. If I could only find it, I have a nice little synopsis on that. The basic point is that we put a lot of emphasis on Russia and Russian claims of potentially putting nuclear weapons into space. Yes, we should be concerned about that, but nuclear weapons are 70-year-old technology.

National Defence committee  Add up the defence policy update. I don't know why the government didn't put this out there, but in my view of the defence policy update, if the government is serious about resourcing it, it gets us to 2% or more. Why we're underplaying our hand with the defence policy update, which I think is a pretty good update, I'm not quite sure.

National Defence committee  I'll give a short answer so you can come back with more challenges on this. Ultimately, given the challenges the defence force has, and given that we have a pretty good defence policy update but no real means the government has laid out to effectively resource that, I think we need to focus disproportionately on asymmetric capabilities, which is to say cyber and space, precisely because of the strategic depth argument that I made and precisely because it has a force multiplier effect for NATO's northern flank and, ultimately, for continental Arctic and Canadian sovereignty.

National Defence committee  What I submitted to the committee—the Five Eyes German-French initiative, with a clear vision for 2031—is where we need to put our resources. If you read that document, I think it is the best short-form articulation I have found of the challenges and how we can work together to draw clear red lines, deter our adversaries and enable the capabilities we need in everything from fighting forest fires to ensuring continuity of communications, civilian assets and the like.

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, members, thank you for your invitation. I'll be speaking in English, but I can answer your questions in the official language of your choice. Picture the following scenario. China wants to fire a shot across the proverbial bow, but instead of targeting U.S. infrastructure, which would risk drawing a strong response, China targets a Canadian satellite.

Science and Research committee  Yes. I would say that some would perhaps take a different approach from Mr. Hinton, which is that universities can do a significant amount of the legwork if they are told what the sensitive research areas are and what the potentially problematic countries are, and if they are told the specific entities and actors with whom they should be avoiding collaboration.

Science and Research committee  There are two problems here. One is researchers who, in the past, have had collaborations as co-authors, for instance, that would today be construed as problematic. How do we get them to atone for the sins of their past? The other is that there may still be reasonable grounds on which to have research collaborations with certain problematic actors.

Science and Research committee  It is a problematic issue. Certain notable countries in this field, such as Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom and France are much further advanced than we are. Germany is having pretty much the same conversations we are. However, since Canada has a very diverse society, some of our researchers present a very high risk in terms of vulnerability.

Science and Research committee  As an example, it took the government seven years to ban Huawei from Canada's telecommunications sector. So, in terms of the time it takes to make important decisions concerning national security and the ability of the national security intelligence system to facilitate relevant decision-making, it seems to me that this is not well calibrated in Canada.

Science and Research committee  The problem is the way we establish links between investments and—

Science and Research committee  There are three considerations here. One is that the data we have on China and Chinese problematic collaborations is more comprehensive in the public domain than that for other authoritarian hostile actors. However, the challenge by China, because of the nature of its industry and society, is perhaps also more expansive than that posed by other state actors.

Science and Research committee  Yes, but I would also say that in 2017 we had a qualitative and quantitative paradigm shift in the aggressive posture by China and the systematic leveraging of technology to undermine our way of life, which now poses an existential threat to Canada in a way that we did not have before.

Science and Research committee  I would say that since 2015, we've seen significant changes in Australia, in particular when it comes to foreign funding, including a foreign agent registry that requires universities to report such funding. We've seen aggressive measures by the U.S. administration, including the arrest of at least one very prominent professor for apparently having misidentified his relations.

Science and Research committee  First of all, thank you for your comments regarding the use of both official languages and for your concern in this regard. In the past, in other committee meetings, your Bloc Québécois colleagues have commented on the quality of my bilingualism. I am an immigrant to this country and I have made the effort to master both official languages.