National Defence committee  I believe that if Canada is going to monetarily support and be a leader with a centre of excellence, it needs to align the capabilities of the Canadian Forces in that centre of excellence. We want to choose something that our Canadian Forces are able to do, so it's aligned with our allies and within the broader context of the alliance.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  Geography matters. If your neighbour were attacking you, you would not be thinking about the wider community threats. You would be solely focused on that threat that was closest to home. We can't blame our European counterparts for being that way. I just want to reiterate Mark's point.

National Defence committee  I was just referring to them as the core components. It depends on the type of operation. We can pick up on Mr. Garrison's comment on this idea that there are operations other than war, and the Canadian Forces are trained to do work in a very wide spectrum of operations. As Mark has suggested, they're highly respected around the world.

National Defence committee  Of different phases—

National Defence committee  Exactly. There's always a lead, and there should always be a lead.

National Defence committee  To begin, we as Canada, like other nations, experiment on other people's populations when we intervene. We don't know the effects of what we do in the medium and long term when it comes to peace-building and the other operations that occur after that kinetic application is over.

National Defence committee  I think it works in theory. I'm not sure about practice.

National Defence committee  Thank you so much for your question.

National Defence committee  The theory of identicide was created because of the phenomenon of the Yugoslav conflict and the intentional targeting and destruction of places—specifically, cultural heritage—that was intended to rid an area of the people who subscribed to those places, that cultural heritage. When you bomb their places, people end up moving out, and they never return because there's no connection to their places.

National Defence committee  Yes. It's based on the empirical evidence that Canada has supported NATO interoperability for at least 35 years, knowing that our Canadian Armed Forces use systems that are interoperable with those of the other actors. We don't necessarily do that in the same way with the UN. When we deploy into a NATO mission, we are mostly speaking the same language and using the same systems and ways of doing operations.

National Defence committee  The Arctic as a place means something to Canada. It means something to Russia, and it has a different modality for people in Scandinavian countries and Iceland. There's a different way of thinking about the Arctic from all of those different perspectives. In fact, there are multiple perspectives within Canada.

National Defence committee  Again, I would just take Mark's previous words. I'm not an expert in this area. The Europeans have to manage their own security, in a sense. They don't fully rely on NATO for those outcomes. They're a parallel security apparatus that has evolved in parallel with the NATO apparatus.

National Defence committee  I really appreciate the nature of your question because it gets at the issue, which is that we are dealing with people. We are dealing with people when it comes to intervening in the affairs of other states. This is what NATO does. We do this with our involvement in the UN, and we do it in our own remit with the Canadian Forces.

National Defence committee  The metrics component, understanding how to report to government, how to measure that Canada is getting benefit, securing itself as an entity called “Canada”, and strengthening its brand, its sense of self, and its sense of purpose in the world just by belonging—not questioning what we belong to but just by the nature of belonging—and the routine over almost seven decades—