National Defence committee  First, on propaganda, I think that requires a whole-of-society response, and as you said, Mr. Chair, we can learn a lot from countries like Estonia and Taiwan, which sit next to very powerful countries that engage very well in disinformation. They're better at it than we are. Part of it is that they have whole-of-society responses.

National Defence committee  I'm sitting outside of government now. I'm not really privy to the steps that are being taken and the hurdles inside. From outside, part of it is a capacity issue. As I said, if you don't have the people, you can't stabilize the Canadian Armed Forces enough to have the procurement experts, etc.

National Defence committee  There are some areas, like the Leopards. They were decisive in Afghanistan, but have we kept them up since Afghanistan? No. We cut air defence in 2012. There are all sorts of areas.

National Defence committee  I'm just in wild agreement.

National Defence committee  If you think about food shortages and the impact on food prices around the world and on grain supply, you don't think of it, but Rome FAO, our mission in Rome, would have been actively lobbying at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to talk about how we stabilize food prices and how we help the poor.

National Defence committee  Just to be clear, my intervention was about underinvestment in defence by successive governments. In a way, it goes back to about the 1970s. It's coming to roost now. To be fair, in the last two governments, there's been more focus on defence. As I said, the defence policy of “Strong, Secure, Engaged” was the most significant planned increase in defence spending.

National Defence committee  We all saw the pictures of the Russian tanks and other vehicles mired in mud because they hadn't bothered to change the tires in the two years in storage before they deployed. I think it's worse on the personnel front. As I said, with a combination of the Wagner Group and others, they're really stretching their conscription efforts into places that aren't sustainable for them, so they're doing very, very badly, but they are a very large country with a lot of people.

National Defence committee  How has our thinking changed? The orthodoxy when I was at NATO was that Russia had invested significantly in revamping and modernizing its military since 2008 and that they would be one of the more impressive fighting forces in the world. We discovered that wasn't as true as we had thought.

National Defence committee  I think that our reputation in NATO is pretty good, but the 2% goal—and it is a goal, and Canada has been clear that it is a goal and non-binding to governments now—is a very important political standard, a very important political measure that is becoming more important. It's becoming more important because of the war, but for us it's also because all of our allies are climbing higher and higher, and we're not.

National Defence committee  To win the war, I'll go back to weapons and ammunition, bandaged together. We're at a really critical point right now. I think that NATO has done admirably in supplying Ukraine, but there's a need to do more and do it faster, absolutely.

National Defence committee  It's about presence, skills and diplomatic initiative. It's not always about investing more money in our foreign ministries to get the product, but it is about investing some more money. I won't go through the world and list where I think we shouldn't have shut down missions and where we should establish missions.

National Defence committee  At the last NATO summit, there was agreement by all allies that the size of the existing battle groups that were created in 2017 would be increased and that new battle groups would be put in place. That commitment is there across all allies, and Canada has to meet that commitment.

National Defence committee  In 2008, at the Bucharest Summit, the allies agreed on a rather important sentence in the final declaration. I don't remember the French translation, so I'll tell you in English. It was that Georgia and Ukraine “will become members of NATO.” However, since then there have been no concrete technical steps along the path to membership.

National Defence committee  The challenge is that I haven't seen those documents. However, from what I understand is in them, I agree with some of the criticism and I really disagree with some of the other criticism. The first main message is that Canada really is a strong NATO ally. We have enormous respect there.

National Defence committee  I think that NATO unity has been rock-solid from the beginning, but there are some fault lines showing, as you mentioned. Some allies like Turkey and Hungary are starting to take positions that could harm NATO unity and could harm NATO unity on Ukraine, and I think that quiet, constant pressure inside NATO is needed to stay the course.