National Defence committee  Yes. I believe that increasing spending on defence—and there is movement in that regard already—so that we can make a larger contribution to NATO.... Also, and I said this earlier, I think we make such an important qualitative contribution in terms of personnel, leadership, and t

National Defence committee  I would completely agree. I think that it matters, absolutely. That is the crux of what I was talking about. When we have to revisit or rethink the metric, contributions of personnel at all levels of NATO operations, not just troops in the field, are absolutely critical for the f

National Defence committee  Yes, I think that's it. The reality is that a big alliance like NATO tends to move slowly. When you talk to some NATO officials, you get the sense that they are preparing to fight a pitched tank battle in Europe against Russia one day. That's not the way the war will...if there i

National Defence committee  Absolutely. One of the worrying things about the recent geopolitical shift is that it has brought back some of the old binary thinking of us versus them, the Cold War thinking. I think we have to get back to looking at this as a dynamic, rapidly changing security environment, wit

National Defence committee  I'd like to offer a slightly different perspective, although I absolutely see the danger of mission creep. This is a quote that always sticks with me. German defence minister Peter Struck, years ago when he was rationalizing the war in Afghanistan—Germany and NATO being in Afghan

National Defence committee  I don't necessarily think it would be a contradiction. When I was talking about a reduction of nuclear stockpiles, I wasn't necessarily talking about full prohibition or relinquishing or destroying all nuclear weapons. It's looking at strengthening the global regime, for instance

National Defence committee  Yes. I think all those are areas where a country like Canada has an opportunity to lead and to move forward. You can't do everything at once, of course. I mentioned these. It's a menu of opportunities. I think they're all issues that NATO is positioned to make headway on. Canada

National Defence committee  Yes, especially in light of what's happening on the Korean peninsula, and especially if you consider the fact that we have worsening tensions with Russia. In the past that has been an area where some headway was made in terms of mutually reducing nuclear stockpiles and so on. Tha

National Defence committee  That's a good question. One of the things is that it's hard, of course, to see a NATO mission in Ukraine, given the proximity to Russia and the existing tensions. I think also NATO has to be very careful in how it would see an intervention in the Middle East. I'll just say very

National Defence committee  No, because I actually do very much buy into the notion that our qualitative contributions are so great that I wouldn't put us there. I think that there are nations that are both underspending and not making the contributions to the alliance activities that are necessary.

National Defence committee  I think it makes a big difference. I think we carry weight, especially now with some of the geopolitical shifts we're seeing and some of the changing views of the United States and others. I think it carries a lot of weight to come from Canada.

National Defence committee  I think that's a good question. It raises another issue that, in a way, is an elephant in the room. NATO has often prided itself as being a club of liberal democracies, but the reality is that many member states are not as liberal and not as democratic as they were even five year

National Defence committee  Yes. What I would say, first of all, is that there's no question that there is a need across the board among NATO member states to increase defence spending to support the alliance. I am not an expert on monitoring, evaluation, and developing metrics to measure these sorts of th

National Defence committee  Great. Let me start by thanking the committee for inviting me to speak to you today. It's an honour for me to do so. There's no doubt that NATO is an indispensable pillar of the liberal global order that has been in place since the end of the Second World War, an order that has