National Defence committee  Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and committee members. I'm delighted to have the opportunity to address you in my private capacity, although it's one in which I have been associated with the Royal Canadian Navy over many years. I'm going to drive a coach and horses through your re

National Defence committee  I think it's a huge factor, in the sense that we've always gone into battle and always deployed as part of a coalition. Our reliance on the United States is enormously important in a whole host of ways, whether it's intelligence sharing, whether it's access to missile calibration

National Defence committee  No.

National Defence committee  Well, this, I would suggest, is quite clearly at the cabinet level in terms of a decision. If we look at the United States Navy and we look at the Royal Australian Navy, they have both in fact tested Chinese pretensions. I use the word “pretensions” with intent, because the Perma

National Defence committee  As I see it, the maritime realm is where a good many interstate frictions are going to play out over the next quarter of a century. Then it comes to the theological issue of how many ships do you need to execute your responsibilities in terms of power projection and so forth? Cur

National Defence committee  The Australian experience is well worth examining, I believe, in the sense that they're now heading toward 2% in the largest recapitalization of its armed forces since 1945. Whether this is necessarily the Canadian model remains to be seen, but it demonstrates that it's doable.

National Defence committee  I would certainly come back to my original assertion, and it keys on what has already been said, that there's a need for dramatic urgency, in my estimation. I also think there's a need for more money. As Michael has quite rightly pointed out, defence inflation is probably 4% or 5

National Defence committee  Yes, we will be, but currently we're certainly not.

National Defence committee  One of the points made by my colleague Dr. Sokolsky was that in the Pacific region we already have major navies—Japanese, Australian, Indian, and so forth. As I suggest in my brief set of notes, what's beginning to emerge is a containment strategy, although all the players will p

National Defence committee  I think the navy has put a lot of time and effort into what it wants. That said, I think the navy is understaffed in terms of its technical staff that can provide the expertise to say this is what the warship needs and so forth. The navy is operating under severe constraints. Po

National Defence committee  I think the navy has to make a firm decision: this is what we want—point final. The problem with defence technology is that it's moving so fast. We're on the brink of Star Wars, literally, with a whole world of drones in the sky, in the sea, on the surface, and so forth fast co

National Defence committee  Someone has to hang by their thumbs if they don't deliver. Now when the thing goes down the tubes, everyone looks around for who's responsible. No one's responsible; it's “he said, they did”. We have to have much clearer lines of responsibility, in my assessment, in terms of deli

National Defence committee  Joel, do you want to go with that?

National Defence committee  That's a good question indeed. Let me talk about Russia for half a minute. I think we are all genetically coded to think of Russia as a superpower and a superpower that is re-emerging, but if you look at the Russian GDP, it's about the equivalent to that of Italy or Australia. I

National Defence committee  No.