National Defence committee  Interoperability.

National Defence committee  As a political principle, I would certainly subscribe to the one that says, “never say never.” That's because circumstances change and people say, “Oh, I said never, but that was different.” I wouldn't say never, but I wouldn't encourage that type of conversation either, because

National Defence committee  That's what I say, but where would those conversations take place? How would they take place and with whom? That's why—

National Defence committee  —I come back to your parliamentary association. I think that's the perfect place. It is where members of Parliament from both countries can sit down, look one another in the eye, and say, “Look, we have real problems. I'm a Canadian politician. My people are saying to me, 'What i

National Defence committee  When I look at Turkish troops and American-backed Kurdish troops virtually shooting at each other, and various allies supporting the Assad regime, which most of us would agree is despicable, it's a threat to our ability to work on these issues. It's a good example of the fact tha

National Defence committee  I totally agree with you. When we were looking at this the last time the difference for the surface ships was $10 billion or $12 billion or something like that in the budget process. We knew that at the time it was going to be closer to $40 billion or $50 billion. That is a real

National Defence committee  At that time, there was a lot of tension around the NATO table—certainly at the Prague meeting. The Americans were very anxious to get support for the Iraq mission, and there was a lot of resistance from various countries, Canada and others, about what the NATO statement would s

National Defence committee  You might want to have a look at the House of Commons committee report on NATO and nuclear weapons. We did a report on denuclearization when I was chairman and Lloyd Axworthy was minister. We ran into a lot of problems over that report. This is a very tricky issue when it comes t

National Defence committee  In my time it was about the no first use doctrine; that was the whole debate. Frankly, I just don't know enough about the present nuclear thinking. A lot of think tanks and others are really puzzling about the best posture on this. I don't have anything to offer.

National Defence committee  Well, to be brutal, the barrier to Georgia is article 5 of NATO. Georgia's engaged in one Russian war in circumstances that we felt were rather.... I don't know who to point the blame to on both sides. I happen to know some of the Georgian politicians quite well. There was a litt

National Defence committee  As I am not familiar with that system, I cannot answer you. That is more of a technical matter.

National Defence committee  May I add something?

National Defence committee  There have been a number of examples of this in the past, while I was minister. NATO said it wanted to promise all its member countries certain operational tools, but as soon as the countries wanted to use those tools, they could not, since the country in question was already us

National Defence committee  As I said during my presentation, I think that what we are doing in Eastern Europe is very important. According to what I understood after my visit to Brussels, there are many logistical issues involved. We have to try to figure out whether it is really possible to carry out this

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you very much for having me and for being willing to listen to what I have to say. I'm so far out of things now, but I've had an opportunity to look at some of the transcripts and seen the evidence of Ambassador Buck and General Hainse and others wh