Foreign Affairs committee  I agree with the way you've set out the problem. The United States is, shall we say, distracted, as is the U.K. I think it is important that the democracies do rally around what Macron has said, or rather the principles that Macron is at least trying to champion. Frankly, good fo

Foreign Affairs committee  Oh my, there's a long list.

Foreign Affairs committee  With respect to Ukraine, the only disagreement I have with the professor's chart is that I don't think Ukraine has deteriorated since 2008. I think Ukrainians are struggling with many of the same issues that we all face, but they are doing so under far worse conditions and under

Foreign Affairs committee  That's quite all right.

Foreign Affairs committee  Well, I already tried to give the answer to that when I referred to the declaration of principles. The Atlantic Council and Canada's CIGI decided that bemoaning the state of democratic deterioration in Europe, in the United States and around the world simply was a hand-wringing a

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you for this opportunity. I wish we were able to meet under more auspicious circumstances, but the fact is that the west, that is, the core of the world's democracies, comprising North America and Europe, is suffering a period of what I would call a democratic sag in self

National Defence committee  It's a combination. Russia is a value-extracted, not a value-added, economy. The lack of reform, lack of property rights and lack of rule of law is keeping Russia a kleptocracy with rent-seeking behaviour right now. Those are not the conditions under which there will be a general

National Defence committee  In general it's a good idea for Canada to work in parallel with the United States and the European Union. The financial and energy sector sanctions that the U.S. and the EU imposed on Russia are worth following up on. The Trump administration in my country poses special challeng

National Defence committee  On sanctions, the west in general needs to go through its sanctions escalatory options for either new Russian aggression in the Sea of Asov or in other places. We don't know where that aggression is going to be. We do have escalatory headroom. It is possible to find escalatory

National Defence committee  I want to add a point. The cyber-aggression that Russia uses in Ukraine, they will perfect and use against us. They already have. If I can make a provocative historical analogy, the Spanish Civil War was the testing ground for new methods of aggressions to be used first in Spai

National Defence committee  Canada's leadership of the multinational NATO forward-based battalion in Latvia is laudable. It's a good initiative, a good idea. The fact that NATO has now put forces into NATO's eastern tier is a big deal. That basically reverses 30 years of post-Cold War drawdown of American,