Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much for the invitation. I thought it might be helpful to pull together the testimonies heard to date. The conclusion I have reached is that there are two seemingly contradictory schools of thought on Arctic sovereignty, yet they are arguing for the same ends. For

Foreign Affairs committee  I too look to NORAD for an indication of the level of threats for Russia and China, and it's not specific to the Arctic. I think one of the problems is that Canada treats the Arctic as being separate and apart from the rest of Canada, but it's fundamental to what Canada is. What

Foreign Affairs committee  If that's directed at me, I think the general suggestion is yes, we're seeing that China and Russia have invested heavily in all sorts of weapons, and not the conventional sort. We're looking at what they can do in terms of cyber-meddling and cyber-offensive action. Both are inve

Foreign Affairs committee  That's a tough one. I'm not so sure. That's the wicked problem that you have, as members of Parliament. You have all these competing needs and you need to prioritize them. I like to look at Canada's national interest, though, as a guide. If we don't have the national interests p

Foreign Affairs committee  I think one of the things that successive governments have been able to do well is to leverage spending on defence to also benefit the Arctic. Something we may need to consider is that maybe we can achieve both via spending on defence. I'm thinking of things like the Canadian Ran

Foreign Affairs committee  Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer is the expert on the ranger program. They're not reserves but they are an arm of the army that is located in remote communities and in the Arctic. They're the eyes and ears of the Arctic. They are not combat-capable, but they certainly can report things t

Foreign Affairs committee  I swing back and forth on that. I think where NATO and NORAD work best is in covering those seams and gaps. I think North America is well served by NORAD. I think the preference of both the U.S. and Canadian governments has been that NORAD is North America. We always have articl

Foreign Affairs committee  When we create infrastructure in the Arctic—I think of Churchill—the infrastructure can benefit both defence and civilian needs. In fact, in a country like Canada with limited resources, that's something that we need to leverage. We have a number of very successful mining compani

Foreign Affairs committee  I'm not an expert in that area. I understand that a big report has just been released on all of Canada's ports—which ports are making money, which are successful, etc.—so I 'd really turn to those authors to answer this question. However, we have in Churchill the potential for a

Foreign Affairs committee  Ultimately, my argument is that we have to stop talking about Arctic sovereignty because it clouds other issues. When I speak to students, I say that sovereignty is four things, which I remember by the acronym TRAP: you have territory, you need recognition, you need autonomy to m

Foreign Affairs committee  On the one hand, the United States still treats UNCLOS as customary law, so it certainly follows a lot of what's outlined in UNCLOS. What it does prevent the United States doing, however, is providing data to the UN commission on the limits of the continental shelf for it to have

Foreign Affairs committee  There's no indication that the U.S. and Canada wouldn't co-operate together, especially in a search and rescue scenario because, first, that's the law, and second, there's also the search and rescue agreement, which the U.S. and Russia were instrumental in drafting. In a search a

Foreign Affairs committee  I think Canada does. The chair of the Arctic Council rotates every two years. We had our opportunity; the Finns now have their opportunity. The mandate of the Arctic Council is environmental protection and sustainable development. We're working towards both of those goals via the

Foreign Affairs committee  I agree with Dr. Perry. NORAD has been looking at this for a number of years. We've had a number of initiatives. It started with NORAD Next. We now have EVONAD. They're considering the defence of North America in the six domains, including domains we have yet to consider, and loo

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much. My remarks are prefaced on the assumption that Russia is a persistent threat and that we need to think about North America's security posture, not simply Canada's. Since 1938, a threat to either the U.S. or Canada is a threat to the other, and they are indiv