National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Ladies and gentlemen, it's a real pleasure to be here this morning and have an opportunity to share some of my ideas on the subject of NATO and more broadly on national defence. My ideas and my thoughts are largely formed from a period of five years in B

National Defence committee  The decision related to AWACS was made while I was in Brussels, and only for budgetary reasons. Nevertheless, NATO could not use those airplanes because some countries among the many participants felt that those operations were not appropriate for NATO, especially those against r

National Defence committee  NATO is founded on the principle of One for all, and all for one. The proof is in the action. For them, this is not something they can trust. We need to do something to show that we intend to be there if a threat arises. That's necessary after what happened in Georgia, in Ukr

National Defence committee  It's not uncommon for AORs, tankers, not to be armed. Some of our allies operate their vessels in that way, and sometimes they've had to, as one might say, “button on” capability to a particular vessel if it has gone into an area where there's been a particular threat. A decade

National Defence committee  Well, I would say wholly inadequate. Quite simply, we just don't have.... We have 12 Canadian patrol frigates, the world's longest coast line, a desire to contribute to deployed operations around the world. Our navy, I would say is, in my personal view, ridiculously small for a

National Defence committee  In my opening remarks I spoke about Canada aspiring to leadership. We aspire to leadership of military operations as well. So that's one aspect of why submarines are very important. If you want to produce senior military or naval leaders who have a broad understanding of how to

National Defence committee  It's a great question, but you know, I'm not sure that trying to move in that direction is a role that we would want to take on as a nation in the current environment. Quite frankly, as abhorrent as nuclear weapons are, their presence has undoubtedly contributed to global secur

National Defence committee  Absolutely. We are future loading so much of our defence capability that I believe a lot of it is at risk of being maintained. It's very much a problem.

National Defence committee  The real strength of the shipbuilding strategy would have been, in my view, to get us down the path of continuous shipbuilding. You get industry started and then you get into producing flights of ships and you continuously build ships. Much of the analysis today would say that it

National Defence committee  Yes. I'll be very quick. We need to remember that NATO wasn't started as an organization to do deployed operations, so there are widely divergent views within the alliance on what the nature of NATO operations really ought to be. There has been an enormous amount of reluctance o

National Defence committee  I've always viewed NATO as a bit of a buffet. Some of us like the shrimp and some of us like the beef. Every member of the alliance looks for something a little different from that buffet. They're looking for different things. We're not all on the same page and we should recogniz

National Defence committee  There's always been a challenge. We went through years of challenge with the brewing conflict between Turkey and Greece. There have always been challenges within the alliance, so this isn't necessarily something new. There is enormous propensity for any nation that starts to go d

National Defence committee  First of all, I think we need to remember that only two years ago, Turkey shot down a Russian airplane. Turkey is pursuing its own path. That path will sometimes mean that Turkey builds relationships with its nearest neighbours, and sometimes that path will be more focused on the

National Defence committee  I would agree that it's largely a political challenge. I'm not sure how you get the debate going. I'm not the expert in that area, but we're undoubtedly not doing it.

National Defence committee  I spoke about the Navy for a period of time when I came back from doing the counter-piracy, counterterrorism mission in the Arabian Sea. Truthfully, you'd speak to an Ontario audience and they would often say, “What do we need a navy for? We have a bridge.” When you have so much