National Defence committee  Yes. This is an intriguing subject, of course, and one that I think the committee is very well advised to be addressing. Given the types of changes that we are now experiencing, both in the context of the international security sphere and in the context of the Canadian security environment, the idea of how we now prepare for readiness, of how we now prepare for a rapidly changing international system, is probably one of the most critical questions—if not the most critical—facing the Canadian Forces today.

National Defence committee  They are an amazing group, to be honest. With the type of traditional knowledge they give, the ability they have, the manner in which they can train our forces is excellent. I think we are going in the right direction, and this started as early as around 1994, when we started beefing up the capabilities with better training, taking it more seriously.

National Defence committee  Basically, on each of the individual issues.... For example, with organized crime, you ensure that the RCMP is able to cooperate with those individuals who have had experience, let's say, with organized crime in diamonds. You ensure that you are able to monitor. It is an individual, almost issue-by-issue capability that you need.

National Defence committee  I believe we need to defend it by cooperative means. In other words, one of the best ways of defending what we need to have happen is to ensure that our neighbours are on the same page. You can enter into an international agreement to defend Canadian interests. That is the best of all solutions.

National Defence committee  That's easy. Yes. The reality is that it's restarting. We started these negotiations with all the countries. Once again, this is bipartisan. I give credit to both sides. It has been supported by the NDP. I haven't been able to find a Bloc position on the Arctic Council. The Arctic Council was a means by which, from an international perspective, we were trying to deal with these issues in a period of time when the Russians were amenable, I think, or much more amenable, to these types of issues.

National Defence committee  Just so that I'm perfectly clear, for the submarines you have to have increased underwater acoustic capabilities. We're not at the stage where satellites can do it yet--but yes, for the overall picture, absolutely.

National Defence committee  There are two categories of risk. There is first of all the ones that are high probability, low impact--the type of company, for example, that says, “I have a ship that's pretty substandard. I'm still able to get insurance for it, and I'm going to take a quick run through the Northwest Passage to save a little bit of money.”

National Defence committee  Enforcement means nothing, if you don't know who's coming. Let me add that when I say monitoring, it's not simply of what ships are coming but of what people are doing. We also—this is of critical importance—need to know the environmental monitoring, because that is going to be one of the critical points.

National Defence committee  The search and rescue issue is one of the critical points we have to be dealing with much more seriously. We've been lucky. We have had cruise vessels actually go up on the rocks. We had the Hanseatic beach off Cambridge Bay in the mid-1990s. Fortunately, she did not sink. She did not turn over.

National Defence committee  Well, this is one way international law tends to work in our favour. Basically, once the law is written, everything stops. I mean, international lawyers have a little bit of this conceit that when they have figured the problem out, that basically stops time. I'm being a little bit facetious here, being married to a lawyer.

National Defence committee  Well, of course that was a bit of a gross exaggeration. In terms of surveillance, the biggest problem we have is that because we have had limited capabilities, we don't know how bad the problem is right now. For example, there are allegations that in the Davis Strait both the Greenlanders and the Faeroese come over and as a habit illegally fish on the Canadian side of the delimitation line.

National Defence committee  Thank you, sir. That is a wealth of critical importance. In terms of the energy weapons, I agree with you entirely: you have to start looking modern. In terms of the surveillance capability, where Canada's trying to develop it--and I'm a firm supporter of it--is in the listening acoustic capabilities.

National Defence committee  They should be doing the security enforcement. It goes beyond just mere policing. You will have to have the top-level capability to ensure that the environmental standards are upheld. Just to think of policing, the RCMP or local police enforcement will not be able to do it.

National Defence committee  The American document makes it very clear that the Americans have recognized in the last ten years that their Arctic goes beyond Alaska. One of the big criticisms of American Arctic policy is that it has tended to be very parochial and to focus on just Alaskan events. First and foremost, the Americans say the Arctic is changing, and changing in a manner that makes the circumpolar nature of it that much more important.

National Defence committee  Well, they also said at the same time that it's like the Americans planting a flag on the moon; it didn't mean anything. It meant everything. When the Americans had Apollo, it basically said that their intercontinental missiles had that accuracy. In other words, it's a signalling.