National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I'm Lieutenant-General Semianiw.

National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the invitation to address the committee. As the last commander of Canada Command, responsible for Canada's north from a military perspective, my comments today, as I'm sure you're aware, will be focused on the threats to Canada'

National Defence committee  Okay.

National Defence committee  That's a great question. The question was posed to the previous panel, and I think the answer is clear. At the end of the day, whether we would be on our own, nobody knows. That's where I take a slightly different view. I agree more with Dr. Huebert that we need to perhaps start

National Defence committee  Yes. It's a great question. As I said in the latter part of my presentation, that's something that needs to be looked at, because there are neither enough fighter aircraft nor enough personnel across the north or being moved into the north. Yes, you have Resolute, Yellowknife and

National Defence committee  That's a great question. I don't have the answer to that or the expertise to answer that question, but I can tell you that I have had the privilege of actually sitting [Technical difficulty—Editor] a number of times watching missile launches out of China. At a certain point, whet

National Defence committee  I would classify them as real threats.

National Defence committee  If you take a look very quickly at China's Arctic policy, published in 2018, you will see that China has proclaimed itself a near-Arctic state. It's not just China. The Arctic Council comment mentioned by the earlier panel is very true. I actually attended a number of Arctic Coun

National Defence committee  Yes, it is.

National Defence committee  Not yet, but they will be.

National Defence committee  I have no expertise on that. I don't know. I watch, as you probably do as well, only open sources. I'd have to defer to somebody else for a clearer answer to that question.

National Defence committee  Yes, there's a real need for that. If I look back to 2010-11, that was a concern. We did a number of trials and tests on having sensors on the ocean floor to know who's in the north. As I'm sure the committee is aware, there are submarines that go through our north—we would call

National Defence committee  That I don't know the answer to. You'd have to turn to somebody else for an answer to that question.

National Defence committee  Victoria-class submarines are not effective in the Arctic. I don't know how effective they are outside of the Arctic, but at the end of the day, I don't know if the military has a plan. It's always a great debate in the Canadian Armed Forces whether or not we need submarines tha

National Defence committee  I would throw out to the committee, with what we're seeing in Ukraine—and I'm Ukrainian; I have friends in Ukraine right now, but I'm not here to talk about Ukraine—is that a failure of détente? That's a great question. The short answer is no, but at the end of the day, we probab