National Defence committee  My understanding of the leaks you referred to is that they're saying Canada.... The concern of some allies is that we cannot take on another operational assignment other than what we have now. That's the issue, and yes, we can't. That's why we didn't go to Haiti, I assume. The q

National Defence committee  My understanding is that we, the Canadian military, will work toward establishing, as a lead nation, a brigade group, but again, we are not the sole providers of forces for that brigade group. I'm sure that we are going around the NATO circles thinking there is another group of c

National Defence committee  Losing is going back to the 1991 borders of Ukraine, including the Russians losing Crimea and losing the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol. That's something they've always had. Even in 1991, when Ukraine became independent, the Russians had a lease arrangement with Ukraine to keep th

National Defence committee  Everyone loses. There are no winners and no losers, you can say.

National Defence committee  Well, there's nothing in the NATO doctrine that is in violation of the UN treaties.

National Defence committee  The first use or no first use of nuclear weapons does not in and of itself violate, as far as I'm aware, anything in the UN charter. I mean, the Cold War.... That policy has been in place since the early fifties.

National Defence committee  It's about arms control, and with arms control, yes, there is very little left of all of the agreements. I myself was part of the conventional arms control discussions in Vienna back in the 1990 period. That's all gone. START has been suspended. START is for the strategic level

National Defence committee  It's chicken and egg, but on the other hand, when you're physically at war, it's very difficult to construct confidence-building measures.

National Defence committee  Well, I'm one of those who believe in diplomacy and diplomatic linkages, because all wars end in some kind of negotiated settlement, or at least even a ceasefire. There was no negotiated end to the Korean War, but there was a negotiated ceasefire to the Korean War. That all happ

National Defence committee  Western support has already been factored into this offensive in the sense that the Ukrainians have been waiting and receiving, and are now integrating, the tanks, the artillery and the ammunition. The calculus is that this offensive has a reasonably good prospect, at least at t

National Defence committee  NATO has the deterrence. The deterrence has come from article 5 applied to NATO territory. There was no NATO or Canadian deterrent put in to defend Ukraine. In fact, before the war started, President Biden said very clearly that NATO would not go to war and the United States woul

National Defence committee  I have no disagreement. China is seeing this as a.... It can position itself geopolitically vis-à-vis the United States. The United States and China are the primary antagonists. As our guest has said, Russia is the junior partner here. The Chinese will not, in my opinion, allow

National Defence committee  On the question of a ceasefire after the offensive that's coming in the summer, the question is, how successful will the Ukrainians be? The Ukrainians have been very skeptical about ceasefires. They see a ceasefire as a temporary recess for the Russians so the Russians can then g

National Defence committee  Burnout is an extremely serious matter. As you well know, we're 10,000 personnel short. There's a rule of thumb for deployments. In Latvia, for example, it's one-third deployed, one-third training and one-third resting. We are not in a combat situation in Latvia, unlike in Afgha

National Defence committee  [Inaudible—Editor] huge. Let me just—