National Defence committee  I have colleagues who are looking at this. I will reach out to them and we will get you an answer to this.

National Defence committee  There's reluctance to use anything from sovereign assets, because the legal authorities are not clear. There are some very strong arguments that say these assets can be used. Ultimately, this is going to come down to either new legislation in different jurisdictions, some kind of court procedure, or some other procedure that will make all asset holders comfortable with using sovereign assets.

National Defence committee  That's a great question. It's not easy. It is very possible and very likely that without real coordination, donors are going to have all kinds of requirements generated by their parliaments and their aid agencies. We talk about the Marshall plan. The Marshall plan was one country to many.

National Defence committee  I'm afraid that would be beyond my knowledge of Canadian industry.

National Defence committee  Briefly, there may be opportunities for co-operation among allied defence industries. It would be worth looking at whether there are bottlenecks of inputs. I think Mr. Kelly's remark about preparing for the future is very important, too. Here at RAND, we joke that every sentence and every statement about security should end with “buy more munitions”.

National Defence committee  Absolutely. Certain steps can be taken to prepare for the Berlin recovery conference. I can talk about those in discussion. I will leave you with the following thought. Ukraine is an advanced, sophisticated country. It should take the lead on setting reconstruction priorities.

National Defence committee  Thank you, and I thank the members of the Standing Committee on National Defence for inviting me to participate. My comments stem from work recently completed with colleagues at the RAND Corporation. When we started this work on Ukrainian reconstruction, my senior colleague, Ambassador James Dobbins, who had worked in a variety of crisis situations, noticed that two elements were missing from other analysis.