National Defence committee  Yes, sir. It's a combination of two centres. It's the MSOC paired with the joint operations centre which is my headquarters' watch floor.

National Defence committee  That's always a tough question, but I think I have a very recent example to illuminate what you're getting at, ma'am. In the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, there are many states and many regional conflict centres. There are many competing issues, and none more so than the flow of massive amounts of energy to the world markets.

National Defence committee  The Royal Canadian Navy has committed itself to being ready and available to deliver the Cyclone helicopter as fast as the Royal Canadian Air Force and the government elements of the program can deliver them to 12 Wing Shearwater. Right now, HMCS Halifax is working with the Royal Canadian Air Force and the contractor, Sikorsky, to go through the tests of the flight deck and the helicopter performance—the wind that comes off the ship and how it responds in rough weather.

National Defence committee  The ships were delivered starting in 2000 and they therefore had the technology of the 1990 to 2000 timeframe incorporated into the original build. It was a wonderfully capable technology in that era. You can imagine, though, the computers were fairly big and they ate up a lot of room and demanded a lot of air conditioning.

National Defence committee  I admit that we are a general purpose navy. We don't want to be pigeonholed in any particular niche, so we are trying to develop an agile, responsive, multi-purpose, retoolable navy, depending on the mission scenario. Our submarine, sir, introduces a very small submarine. It doesn't have the big underwater signature of a nuclear boat.

National Defence committee  I wasn't consulted. In the navy, one of the pieces that allows us to stay very competitive, very operationally focused is I was given the operational elements, the readiness elements of the navy, as a point of functional leadership. My colleague on the west coast, Admiral Truelove, was given the personnel and training domain.

National Defence committee  At Esquimalt?

National Defence committee  The Venture, the naval training school for officers, is a very historic and—

National Defence committee  No, not at all, because the Joint Task Force Atlantic only has 15 middle-ranking or higher-ranking officers doing the work. It's a latent force. It doesn't exist until a crisis occurs. Then the army, the air force, and the navy put in their operational elements to the force and they're directed by the commander.

National Defence committee  I'm going to have to be very circumspect. Submarines generate an intense amount of confidential information because of the sources, and how we know what submarines are up to is a very compartmental type of information. Suffice it to say, countries are building submarines. In the northern oceans new ballistic missile-carrying and new attack submarines have been built and are being trialled after a long lull in shipbuilding.

National Defence committee  I have no details about the issue you are describing. The initial training of officers occurs at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, for the navy. The detailed training of a mariner as soon as he comes out of the basic training at Saint-Jean is undertaken in Esquimalt. That's a very specific marine-based training using boats at sea, the patrol craft of our training system.

National Defence committee  That is a good question. Op CARIBBE is our foundation of operations in the Caribbean. Op CARIBBE is an inter-agency task force that goes after illicit trafficking especially in drugs. It is run by the department of defence while the U.S. Coast Guard actually does the interdictions.

National Defence committee  Sir, it goes right to the heart of my mission. With my mission, one of my principle day-to-day jobs is to develop domain awareness. Maritime domain awareness is more than just dots on a chart of the sea of positions of ships or ice. For every ship and every boat, it's an understanding of where that track is heading, who is the owner, agent, insurer, charterer, or broker, who's on that crew list, and what's in those cargoes.

National Defence committee  I don't do the NORAD responsibility piece per se; I work the theatre ASW with operational control authorities in the North Atlantic, like my colleagues, Commander, Task Force 84, in Norfolk. Our job is to keep track of submarines that break into the North Atlantic from ports and oceans more distant than Europe.

National Defence committee  As I have already explained a number of times, we must first work with the Marine Security Operations Centre. Have I understood your question?