National Defence committee  Thank you very much for the question. I think the first thing that would be very important for both our governments is to develop a familiarity with the drones themselves. Canada's participation in our drone programs in Afghanistan was pretty strong. As Canadian military officials become comfortable with drones, I think that will be helpful.

National Defence committee  Specifically with regard to cybersecurity, the challenge is that we are usually playing defence, so we are reacting to an event. In so many of the incidents where the law enforcement and the military have had to coordinate, for example, the Vancouver Olympics, they've had the benefit of advanced planning to work through some of the issues, to war-game them, and to test procedures.

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for the question. This has been a perennial issue in the Canada-U.S. relationship. We have talked about missile defence since Ronald Reagan first proposed the idea of the strategic defence initative, and I think Canada's position has been skeptical that the technology could work.

National Defence committee  Let me just add to that very briefly. I think one of the real problems that we have is that we're spending our time between Canada and the U.S. arguing over boundary disputes in the Beaufort. We are duplicating efforts in terms of our ability to provide security in the Arctic, following President Bush's national security presidential decision directive at the very end of his administration.

National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the honourable members of the committee for making the accommodation of letting us testify by video conference, which has certainly been much easier for us, and I'm very honoured to be able to participate in your examination of the future defence needs of the United States and Canada, and of North America.