Foreign Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, the United States, as the member correctly notes, conducts freedom of navigation operations throughout the world, but particularly in the Indo-Pacific region. The joint transit of the Taiwan Strait between HMCS Winnipeg and USS Dewey would not fall into the category of

Foreign Affairs committee  It's the case that China does claim much of the South China Sea as its territorial waters. Canada does not take a position on claims by any particular country.

Foreign Affairs committee  I would defer to my colleague, Stephen Randall, who is the director of our oceans law division, on that question. Outside of particular claims under the court in The Hague, as you mentioned, and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, my understanding is that we typically do n

Foreign Affairs committee  The member is quite correct that there are other aspects of the AUKUS agreement beyond the centrepiece, which was the Australian acquisition of nuclear submarines. There are such aspects as advancing applied research and innovation, emerging technologies, artificial intelligence

Foreign Affairs committee  It's my understanding that there is no exclusivity with respect to those other areas of the AUKUS agreement that would exclude Canada or New Zealand or the other partners of Five Eyes. AUKUS creates essentially a commercial deal around the nuclear submarine procurement and then r

Foreign Affairs committee  That is my understanding. Yes.

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't have much more to add. That was an excellent answer. I would just reiterate that any time there's an increase to operational tempo, there is a risk of accident, and there's a risk of misinterpretation. Certainly what mainland China has been doing with respect to incursio

Foreign Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, it's a very interesting question. Right now NATO is going through a renewal of strategic concept. It's something that's done roughly every decade. It is happening right now. The results will be announced this summer at the Madrid NATO summit. One issue under discussio

Foreign Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, of course different countries will assess their defence and security needs in different ways. I can say that right now our assessment is that Canada is not in need of nuclear submarines at this time, but to the extent that Australia is arguably our closest partner and

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. With your indulgence and with my apologies to Mr. Chong for my first answer to his questions, he asked at that time about transit at the Taiwan Strait. I answered that accurately, I believe. He asked a question about maritime claims in the South China Sea. I

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, and members of the committee, my name is Kevin Hamilton. I'm the director general for international security policy at Global Affairs Canada.

National Defence committee  Certainly I'm happy to take on the rest of that question, General. As the general said, we're monitoring the situation with every capacity that we have in order to detect instances of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Already Canada has been a leading state in referring th

National Defence committee  General, would you like me to take that one again?

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, yes, we've seen a number of attempts at ceasefires to open up the humanitarian corridors, and each time there has been a violation of those ceasefires by the Russian side. That's obviously a very cynical and cruel act. But of course, we continue to call on both parties

National Defence committee  I can't say that we have seen any explicit support by China for Russia in this. In fact, we took note of the Chinese foreign minister's recent statement that the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of any country should be respected and safeguarded, and that Ukrai