National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. I am honoured to be invited to speak to this committee. The starting point for any conversation about Canadian security is that Canada is in a rare position in the world. Geography limits the threats that Canada faces, and its economic strengths and its p

National Defence committee  The interesting thing about the question we face ahead is that we've had a lot of confusion about what the purpose of this plane is going to be. The reality is that we're buying this plane for the next 20 or 40 years. The threats that we face today are not the threats we'll face

National Defence committee  I have to side with the Americans on this, that Canada, as a country that depends greatly on trade, depends on passage between other straits in the world. Our shipment of oil—if we want to ship it elsewhere—is going to pass through straits that belong to other countries. By the l

National Defence committee  I'm a skeptic, because I do think that in arms races, advantages get offset, particularly in that particular field. We've seen a lot stories about that lately. I do think that the concern for the next plane would be how much area it can cover, not necessarily measured entirely by

National Defence committee  I think the United States and Canada have a lot more in common than in conflict over protecting North America. The threats are similar—cyber, terrorism, those kinds of things, those distant kinds of threats. I think there's a lot of room to manoeuvre. I think we have a lot of exp

National Defence committee  I think that every year we delay these decisions, we're increasing costs and creating greater inefficiencies for ourselves. I'd say that while it would be nice to have a whole-of-government analysis of everything, I think we need to get straight the defence picture. For these kin

National Defence committee  Again, I think that the defence of Canada is most important. For the military of any country the primary purpose is defence of the homeland. But as I said, the Canadian ships, planes and soldiers are not going to be used in the next 20 to 30 years for most of their day jobs prote

National Defence committee  The principle is that Canada cannot fight alone in the world. One of the fundamental principles is multilateralism. Canada cannot fight alone.

National Defence committee  Canada will fight alongside democracies, dealing with threats to international security, and sometimes for humanitarian purposes that overlap with security interests. I don't think Canada has the ability to dedicate lots of resources to every humanitarian crisis. It's only going

National Defence committee  When we think about the Arctic, it's really the future that we're thinking about. There's not really a present threat as we speak. But the investments we make today obviously are important for the next 20 to 30 years. Is there a likelihood of a great threat in the Arctic? It's ve

National Defence committee  One thing that we have improved or that at least has the potential to improve the procurement process is the government's proposal for a defence analytics institute in which you have experts who are not currently employed by the government—I think—to provide outside analysis of t

National Defence committee  I see your point. I am not a shipbuilding expert, so I can't speak to the capabilities of the various shipyards. All I can do is look at things, as I always do, through a very comparative lens. What I see is other advanced democracies realizing that they have strengths and they

National Defence committee  I think when it comes to defence issues there's actually very little space between us. I think the Northwest Passage is really the one big issue on the table. I think ballistic missile defence is something that we have a squabble over in terms of what to commit. But I think Can

National Defence committee  In terms of the first question, I think that as we look out we have to think about the defensive systems that are flexible. For instance, the navy has had these frigates that have done many different things over the course of the past 20 or 30 years. We don't know exactly what na

National Defence committee  I think that institutions are hard to build from scratch. The reason why NATO is still around is because it's better than all the other possible alliances. NORAD is a good framework to build upon because it has a record of success, a record of cooperation. It's a pretty useful in