National Defence committee  I'm terribly sorry. Your translation didn't come through at all. I apologize.

National Defence committee  I am indeed.

National Defence committee  It is a profoundly disappointing document. It's a Hail Mary effort by the Liberal Party, suddenly panicked by the realization that so many Canadians now consider defence and security an electoral issue, to address the shortcomings in defence. Much of it is not worth the paper it's written on, because it's pitched 10 or 15 years into the future.

National Defence committee  If we're talking about the Indo-Pacific region, when I wrote a critique of that, I suggested that it was aspirational and ambitious but 40 years late. In fact, we have come to the Indo-Pacific after the action has largely taken place. If we're having challenges meeting our responsibilities in NATO, we are in no position to fulfill our responsibilities in the Indo-Pacific, much to my deep regret.

National Defence committee  Personnel and equipment are the two things you have to move forward with, and with lightning speed. We are 10 years behind the curve because of a dithering delay, and this is what we have to do. Only with those can we even begin to contemplate having a real presence in the Arctic.

National Defence committee  Pardon me. I am sorry to interrupt you. Is there a translation available?

National Defence committee  Thank you so very much, Andrew. I apologize.

National Defence committee  Yes. I can hear you now.

National Defence committee  Thank you very much for that question. I apologize for not replying to you in French. To begin with, we have a lamentable inclination to freeload on our structural or institutional arrangements, particularly with the United States, and that, I would suggest, is a strategy that is rapidly becoming endangered.

National Defence committee  No, we cannot maintain these. We're in a state of complete delusion and self-congratulation about our performance. At the onset of the conflict in Ukraine, we had more than 80 tanks, but as a point of fact, probably fewer than 20 of them were actually available for service. The same is true across a whole array of equipment in the Canadian Forces.

National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

National Defence committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Bezan. I certainly appreciate your question. The DPU does refer, in a brief passage of half a dozen lines, to some specific requirements with respect to underwater sensors and so forth in the Arctic and elsewhere on the Canadian coastline. That's one issue on which the DPU is uncharacteristically specific.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr Chair. Let me commend you and your colleagues for this exercise. It's vitally important. I had a number of points. Let me jettison most of them and make just a few in the two minutes that are left to me. I would suggest, without risk of being exceedingly blunt and rude, that we have become, sadly, a nation of sleepwalkers when it comes to defence.