National Defence committee  I would be hard-pressed to come up with examples of companies or technologies, if you're looking for that level of specificity, that we might be interested in that I would want to talk about. Canada is a technology leader in many areas, and the Government of Canada has made a number of investments in capabilities such as RADARSAT that are extremely helpful from an intelligence perspective.

National Defence committee  Our role in all of that from a defence intelligence perspective is to remain alert to foreign activity or illicit activity off the coasts and in maritime approaches and to be aware of what's going on in those areas. Specifics around transnational organized crime in ports and the smuggling of weapons and whatnot is very much a law enforcement responsibility.

National Defence committee  I think there's a range of actions that might be appropriate, but certainly once they're inside 12 nautical miles and into territorial waters, that becomes a legal law enforcement issue much more that it is.... If there were to be Royal Canadian Navy or other Canadian Armed Forces assets used, they would have to be used in conjunction with the mandate and authorities of other partners and agencies.

National Defence committee  My major concern when it comes to threats to personnel is threats to uniformed personnel. I think that's what we've seen in the last couple of years. I think that Canadian Armed Forces in uniform are uniquely vulnerable, both because they're so easily seen and identified and also because targeting them has a certain symbolic value.

National Defence committee  That's a great question. I can paint you a very brief picture. The major changes in Russia, 10 years ago to now, and likely looking into the future, have been around the political attitudes in the Kremlin. I think they've made a series of decisions that have put them in a bit of a corner economically while attempting to advance their interests geopolitically.

National Defence committee  There's a strong sense, publicly stated by President Putin and other senior Russian leaders. They tend to see the colour revolutions in places such as Ukraine, central Asia, and whatnot, and attempts to democratize in some countries in their periphery as western-run influence operations to undermine Russian interests in those countries.

National Defence committee  I wouldn't necessarily tie that with piracy. I think piracy is an issue, but it is an issue that can be managed both by navies and by the private sector in terms of protecting their own ships as they move through some areas where piracy is rampant. Piracy is an issue. It has been an issue, obviously, off the Horn of Africa.

National Defence committee  We work very closely with our procurement staff, the navy, and the other services to ensure that there's a clear understanding of what we see in the future threat environment. At that point, it becomes the responsibility of the services and the procurement folks to decide what the appropriate response is.

National Defence committee  I absolutely agree that we need to pay attention to the state of the Russian economy and how it is doing globally. Obviously, energy is a big part of their revenue generating, on the economic side. I am not sure that being able to extract energy from the Arctic is a big driver of their current infrastructure push right now up there.

National Defence committee  On the domestic security side, with domestic national security terrorism and other threats, our specific interest in the Canadian Forces operations command and defence analysis more generally is really on the security of our personnel and our bases. That's really where we spend the bulk of our effort, in liaising with partners, whether they're municipal police forces or RCMP or CSIS and others, to make sure we have a good understanding of what the current threat picture looks like domestically and whether or not there are any issues that we're going to have to deal with in areas that we're responsible for, or people that we are responsible for.

National Defence committee  I can't speak to what's in Canada's national interest from my perspective. From an intelligence perspective, what we would want to be able to do when we look at a particular mission set of any kind is to look at the kinds of forces we might be deploying into that area. First and foremost, we would look at what is going on in that area and help National Defence and the government come to a decision about what kinds of forces are necessary to achieve what the government would like to achieve there, so to define the context for the government.

National Defence committee  As I said in response to one of the questions earlier, my interests on the intelligence side are really in having the best possible sources of information. There's no question that the more of the geographic spectrum you can cover—space, air, surface, and subsurface—the more information you have available to you and the better your knowledge is of what's going on.

National Defence committee  What I would say is that I am platform agnostic. I don't really have a view on what device you are using to gather that information. If the information is accessible, then I would like to be able to have access to it. I'm not too fussed about what those sensors are actually sitting on in terms of the kind of vehicle or naval platform that might be.

National Defence committee  The major changes I've seen over the course of my career, which is about 20 years now, have to do with rising uncertainty in the global environment. It's not always clear to me when we talk about how the world's more dangerous. I think in some areas that's true, but in other areas it's less so.

National Defence committee  In a way, I agree with you. It is not that we are not working on those scenarios, but most of our resources are allocated to supporting current operations. We certainly have an idea of what might happen. We submit the results of our analyses to the people who are in charge of equipment purchases so they can take them into account when they make decisions.