National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, I do not have the answer for that.

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, before I turn this over, perhaps, to the deputy minister or Mr. Quinn, I will say that we value our Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangement. We share intelligence back and forth all the time, and likewise with NATO. These relationships, from a defensive security per

National Defence committee  To be clear—and the minister alluded to this in her remarks—the engagement authority in Canada is the Prime Minister. The engagement authority in U.S. airspace is the President, regardless of whose aircraft are there. That's why we practise this. It's to be able to use another na

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, let me characterize that the first best shot direction I gave was related to who would take the shot. In terms of incident number four over Lake Huron and why it took two missiles...well, the first one missed. I will ask General Molstad, from a fighter pilot perspecti

National Defence committee  It's a challenge almost everywhere in the North. So the NORAD upgrade, especially with the new OTHR radar, is critical to our knowledge in this area.

National Defence committee  It is more than half the territory.

National Defence committee  There is always room for improvement. That's why we have a process that allows us, after every incident or operation, to look at what was done, what happened and what needs to be improved. In this case, in my opinion, we can improve our communications, but it must be said that t

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, I think these incidents have showcased the importance of NORAD for the defence of our continent. The information that was going back and forth was just as we practised and just as we trained. There was the consultation going back and forth and the sharing of awareness

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, our friends, partners and allies in the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific region are certainly interested in what is happening in the north, particularly those in the North Pacific, Japan and, to a certain extent, Korea. I am happy to say we have excellent relations with

National Defence committee  It's about the effort required. It takes a lot of effort to detect smaller, slower objects. I'm very happy that there's a new project, Pathfinder, that combines cloud computing and artificial intelligence to detect threats with lots of data. My colleague has something to add.

National Defence committee  You must remember that NORAD was set up to detect threats posed by aircraft and that aircraft are faster and larger than balloons. We now have to change what we focus on, and NORAD is looking at its role regarding surveillance balloons.

National Defence committee  That is an excellent question. Indeed, the cyber threats to NORAD networks are real. So we need to protect them and make sure the information is accurate.

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, the bottom line, from my perspective, is that we don't know. A surveillance balloon does perhaps provide some advantages in terms of its persistence over an area, but there are other capabilities—satellite capabilities as well—that could provide almost the same, if not

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, our joint task force north, which is located in Yellowknife, does extensive community engagement with the various communities up there. In this case in particular, on the shoot-down of the object in the Yukon, I'm going to turn it over to General Molstad to give you a

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, without getting into the classified realm, I would say that we have work to do. That speaks to the importance of the capability that the minister spoke about, the over-the-horizon radar, to provide us with that greater domain awareness. We have gaps in the north in ou