English transcript

In terms of security guarantees that Canada

can offer, do we have the military bench strength

to supply troops?

Yeah, um, so I'll just give a high-level, um,

outline and answer your question. Uh, and I

say high-level in part because what we're doing

and, uh, and I want to salute, uh, Jenny Carrigan,

the Chief of our Defence Force, our National

Security Advisors, others who've been working

intensively, uh, in... intensively over the

last few weeks, but, uh, over the course of

the last months with their partners in developing

the operational elements of this. So I'm going

to speak in a high level. Um, recognizing there's

a lot more underneath what I'm about to say.

Um, the first line of defence obviously is the

Ukrainian Armed Forces, and one of the elements

of the 20-point plan, uh, peace plan, is going

to be the size of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,

which is considerable as it's negotiated now.

So the size would be very large. Secondly, there

is monitoring and other support, uh, logistics

support that would be provided, training support

to make sure, uh, that the Ukrainian Armed Forces,

uh, over the medium term and longer term, uh,

can defend themselves. Then the backstops become

the coalition, the willing forces, so-called

multilateral force, uh, of which Canada would

be a member under this framework, and very importantly

the United States is, uh, playing a backstop

role. Uh, do we have the... so to get to your

specific question, uh, do we have the, uh, the

bench strength, to use your term?

Well, we've been building that bench, um, and

we're going to continue to build that bench.

Uh, uh, the largest, uh, military buildup uh,

in generations coming over the course of the

next five years, an additional 80 billion, uh,

of investment, in part because of issues like

this, very importantly because of issues in

our perimeter. Uh, I'll point specifically to

the Canadian Arctic as an example there. So

yes, we do. There would need to be a redeployment,

um, but... the last point I'll make and, uh,

just to put in context, which... of course,

we're stronger together. So we're... we're as

part of a coalition, as part of a multilateral

force, coming behind and coming with the Americans,

that, uh, means that our contribution has a

much bigger effect than obviously we would if

we were on our own.