National Defence committee  Yes, thank you. They're increasingly there. It's absolutely essential that the civil sector be brought into this dialogue. Let me give you an example. Every utility has in its back pocket a plan for which facilities get their power restored first. Sometimes this is done on an engineering basis in your ridings—which substation to energize first and what order to go.

National Defence committee  The Department of National Defence and the Department of Defense are not going to be investing in utility resilience at all.

National Defence committee  But clearly, in the United States the Department of Defense is paying much more serious attention to what kinds of emergency power assets should be in our critical military facilities. Should we begin to develop micro-grids that allow for generation on a base in a way that makes the base still able to operate even if the surrounding power grid goes down.

National Defence committee  I do not know and I would like to answer that for the record. Increasingly in the United States we are providing Department of Defense equipment to law enforcement. That program is going forward very effectively. But for power restoration and infrastructure resilience, I do not know.

National Defence committee  Bien sûr.

National Defence committee  I'm sorry. Yes, thank you.

National Defence committee  I can hear, thank you. I apologize.

National Defence committee  I'd like to provide an answer for the record to that question. That is a very thoughtful question. Let me have an opportunity to come back to you after the hearing with an answer.

National Defence committee  Yes, absolutely. The smart grid and the Internet of things is going to provide for a more efficient operation of infrastructure and everything else that's now web-enabled to provide for more effective management of these systems, but the connectivity of these things to the web provides a potential means of attack to adversaries.

National Defence committee  I'm not hearing it.

National Defence committee  This, of course, is a sovereign decision for the Government of Canada to make regarding its own energy policy. But in the United States we recently, in fact just two weeks ago, took a very important step in the Department of Defense. I brought with me the first ever Department of Defense policy on energy, which tackles many of these issues in terms of the importance of energy to the Department of Defense and how to build resilience.

National Defence committee  The Permanent Joint Board of Defence provides the institution and the framework in order to advance these opportunities for collaboration. Our Department of Defense will always be in support of FEMA or the Department of Homeland Security for disaster response. Our Department of Defense will always be in support of the Department of State in international engagements.

National Defence committee  In the defence realm, I did not encounter any problems in terms of building a collaborative approach. Clearly on some issues, sovereign nations are going to make their own policy and they won't always agree. That's certainly the case with ballistic missile defence. That's fine. The important thing is to sustain the dialogue and, where each sovereign nation shares an interest in defence collaboration, to advance those opportunities.

National Defence committee  Let me give you an example of concrete collaboration that's very important now and could be built upon going forward, and that is collaboration in building partner capacity in the western hemisphere and beyond for defence and for disaster response. One of the very first meetings that we had when I came into office in the Permanent Joint Board of Defence included a discussion of how Canada and the United States, with full participation and leadership of DFAIT and our Department of State, could build on each other's comparative advantages in strengthening partner capacity in the western hemisphere, because Canada has some terrific programs under way—for example, in Jamaica, in order to train up Guatemalan helicopter pilots.

National Defence committee  No, it's an excellent question and one on which I think much further work needs to be done. Scrubbing malware from an operating system is utterly unlike re-rigging power lines. There are many fewer people capable of conducting these response operations. Sharing them between utilities could pose additional challenges.