National Defence committee  Trump, to a certain degree, is making it a little bit easier for us. It's the one positive thing I might say about the Trump administration, because people can see how information can simply be lied about or repeated, and I think there's a greater willingness within Canada since

National Defence committee  One of the things we have to recognize is that it's not going to be cyberwarfare and conventional. The big danger we're now entering into, and we're seeing this very much in the Baltic and in eastern Ukraine, is that the Russians are starting to manoeuvre on how to make a cyber-a

National Defence committee  Traditionally, the major Canadian contribution, and often it goes unnoticed, is in fact that type of expertise. If we just refer to the gender issue, for example, how many Canadians know that the NATO war college in Rome is headed by a woman, and that she happens to be Canadian?

National Defence committee  I think one of the important things to notice, which supports what Alex is saying, is what the Americans have been doing in the last three months in Ukraine and the Baltic states, because you can see clearly that they've been increasing their presence in western Ukraine and, I su

National Defence committee  One of the programs that used to have tremendous impact in allowing us to reach students was called the security and defence forum. It was created under the Pierre Trudeau administration and subsequently supported on a bipartisan basis. This was a five-year program from DND, with

National Defence committee  You answered part of the answer I was going to give. It's at the attribution issue. The big challenge that we're facing in terms of cyber-attacks is that they are becoming increasingly sophisticated in hiding their footprint. We see, once again, that this is part of the methodol

National Defence committee  Yes, I do. The first thing, of course—I'll just echo—is the intelligence sharing. In other words, we are not going to hear about what they are really doing well in terms of giving the briefing. What has proven to be one of the more challenging issues for NATO is dealing with on

National Defence committee  Absolutely. Thank you, sir, for the very good question. I would like to make it very clear, I do appreciate what the government came up with in terms of Arctic recognition. They recognized that Russia has moved away from a rules-based international system, but more specifically,

National Defence committee  This is what I'm reading into the Liberal defence policy, because up until its announcement, Canada has always had an official policy that even when we invite NATO allies to have exercises with us in the Arctic, they are always under Canadian sovereign control. We never call it a

National Defence committee  I'm going to have to confess a bit of ignorance here, and it's something I'm quite ashamed of. I'm afraid your French went faster than I could understand, and the translation didn't come through, unfortunately. I didn't quite get the gist of your question. I'm very sorry, sir.

National Defence committee  The major issue is, first—and you've nailed it, sir—the situational awareness piece. I think there's been a growing recognition that we do not have the type of intelligence sharing for the high north that is ultimately needed in this context. We've seen, since 2007, the Russians

National Defence committee  I'd like to interject at this point, too. In my view, one of the most important impacts, or the educational basis, has to be a bipartisan or tripartisan understanding of the core security threats facing Canada. The education and leadership that our political elites provide direct

National Defence committee  There is your assumption within that question. Look at what both the Russians and the Americans immediately got rid of as relationships got better in 1988. The classification that the Russians first got rid of were their oldest nuclear strategic weapons, of course, but the next c

National Defence committee  Absolutely. This is something my students always have difficulty accepting, but even with the end of the Cold War, up to 2017, nuclear deterrence still remains the core security policy of the eight nuclear powers. Having said that, if you're going try to talk about disarmament, t

National Defence committee  Absolutely, and in terms of the AOPS, of course, they're being designed more for a constabulatory role, which is something that I confess I've been critical of, but for the next surface combatant, one of the major things they will need to do is to have an anti-submarine capabilit