National Defence committee  Absolutely. My point simply is that we are not absolutely pure in our conviction that our partners must always be fully democratic countries. Within NATO, it's a very big concern that countries like Turkey and Hungary are straying away from fundamental democratic principles: abso

National Defence committee  The first thing to say here is that some of the newer members of NATO clearly deserved to become members of NATO. Think of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—independent countries that were invaded and annexed by the Soviet Union, and that became free and independent again only after

National Defence committee  Thank you very much. It's a great honour to be back. I'm going to address three issues today, but before I do so, let me tell you about an article I was reading this morning that was written four years ago by my friend Jack Granatstein, in which he raised the question as to whet

National Defence committee  During the Cold War, did we give up our sovereignty by allowing decision-making on nuclear deterrence to rest with the United States instead of Canada? I don't think so. We participated in the gathering of surveillance through NORAD. Right now, we're in a situation where the qu

National Defence committee  This is a U.S. weapon system. It's a step beyond what we've done before.

National Defence committee  We depend on other countries all of the time, right? We go to Afghanistan and we're getting air cover from the U.S. Air Force. We depend on other countries all the time. That's the whole point of being in an alliance—

National Defence committee  Well, we work with the—

National Defence committee  Even here, we're part of the Five Eyes system for intelligence sharing. That's protection of North America. We rely on other countries all the time.

National Defence committee  What I heard this morning was that the United States has told us that we would not be involved in the decision-making. They have not explicitly said that they would not strike at a missile coming towards Canada, if one were in fact coming towards Canada, which is unlikely, given

National Defence committee  There was one tweet from the North Korean information office that was making some unpleasant fun of our Prime Minister, but it wasn't—

National Defence committee  I do want to add something, if you'll just bear with me for five or 10 seconds. Canada also has a strong relationship with the People's Republic of China, and China is one of the very major players in this situation. If we're doing any foreign policy with regard to North Korea, w

National Defence committee  I can't put myself in the mind of the North Korean leadership any better than you can. What I can say is that they are likely following developments very closely, including testimony from this committee, and they would be aware that Canada has a somewhat different posture. We cho

National Defence committee  We can choose to defend ourselves, absolutely, but we would be choosing to defend ourselves by buying into and joining a weapon system that is primarily controlled by their arch-enemy. It's a U.S. weapon system. Yes, it is for striking warheads coming at them, but it is still a w

National Defence committee  If Canada were to approach the United States on joining missile defence, I would recommend that it be done very quietly, so that Pyongyang would not find out that we are asking questions about things like what the United States would need from us and how much it would cost. It's

National Defence committee  I have a very simple answer. I don't know, but we should try. You don't know until you try. This is an extremely dangerous situation. We may have an opening. I think we as a country have an obligation to pursue that, because we might be able to dial the temperature down.