National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank the honourable members of the committee for making the accommodation of letting us testify by video conference, which has certainly been much easier for us, and I'm very honoured to be able to participate in your examination of

National Defence committee  Let me just add to that very briefly. I think one of the real problems that we have is that we're spending our time between Canada and the U.S. arguing over boundary disputes in the Beaufort. We are duplicating efforts in terms of our ability to provide security in the Arctic, fo

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for the question. This has been a perennial issue in the Canada-U.S. relationship. We have talked about missile defence since Ronald Reagan first proposed the idea of the strategic defence initative, and I think Canada's position has been skeptical that the te

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for the question. I think the first thing that would be very important for both our governments is to develop a familiarity with the drones themselves. Canada's participation in our drone programs in Afghanistan was pretty strong. As Canadian military officia

National Defence committee  Specifically with regard to cybersecurity, the challenge is that we are usually playing defence, so we are reacting to an event. In so many of the incidents where the law enforcement and the military have had to coordinate, for example, the Vancouver Olympics, they've had the ben

National Defence committee  If I can quickly respond, and very briefly, one of the stealth capabilities' big advantages is in more of a battlefield area. They're very important in areas like the Middle East, but in defence of the continent you don't need to be stealthy because you just need to be able to tr

National Defence committee  Yes, with one caveat. I think that as we get into these areas it's extremely important, because we are democracies, that we have the protection of oversight. That could be legislative oversight. That could be administrative oversight through judicial forums or committees. Our pu

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for the question. I'll take the first hit at that. I think we have spent a lot of time as friends—despite all of our differences in the Arctic, Canada and the U.S. are fundamentally friends—talking about this problem but not actually resolving it. It's amazin

National Defence committee  I would just say, sir, that I think you're on to something. I don't think Canada has to have identical equipment. What we find in the field is that often Canada is there, especially outside of North America, in small enough numbers that it needs to work within a larger American

National Defence committee  Mr. Williamson, if I could just quickly add, one of the things that I think has been lost in the debate is the way in which Congress set up the sequestration mechanism. It redefined the national defence portion of the budget, and then there was a budget that was sort of the domes

National Defence committee  Briefly, I think there is going to be an attempt to do both. One of the things about the next couple of years is there will have to be compromises between the White House and the Republican Congress if anything is going to be done. With the power, the veto, plus the ability to di

National Defence committee  It is a very sensitive situation. I would respond first with some sympathy for your constituency and the people in Canada who are dealing with this. It is very tough. In some ways it doesn't matter whether the motivation is political or whether the motivation may come from ment

National Defence committee  Sir, the only thing I'd add, and I don't want to take up much of your time, is that there are two issues. One is the vehicle for delivering an attack, and the other is what you attack with, chemical weapons, nuclear weapons, and so on. Non-proliferation efforts dealing with ord

National Defence committee  The difference between the various degrees of stealth is such that what we're really doing in the Arctic is letting them know that we know they are there and that we want them to turn around, so stealth is not as critical in that context. I know what you're saying; you never know

National Defence committee  Well, the United States has put its cyber-defence within the context of strategic command. Northern command is the home for NORAD, but even though we have organized it that way, we're trying to provide protection for not only military but also civilian services. I think, though