This is John Batcheter, a conversation with Charles Burton of Synopsys, he's in Ottawa, on the eve of the NATO summit.

The question at hand is, does Canada increase its defense spending to 2% required by NATO?

Or, and then the attendant question is, does Canada believe in defending itself?

It has vast lands in the Arctic Circle and just below. Vast

lands rich of minerals, resources. Does it defend its sovereign territory? Is it adequate to the participation

in NATO given the ambition of China and Russia adversaries to patrol and to dominate the Arctic

oceans. Charles speaks to all this and speaks to the rhetoric also available to Canadian politicians short of that 2%.

Here's Charles Burton of synopsis.

Oh, I think that people speak out about it a lot, but it's really a question of when it gets down to

are we going to increase to 2% that's when the rhetoric takes over over the actual

intent and so I you know I don't think there's anybody that that says

Canada should not be defending itself and the Minister of Defense is trying to

assure NATO that we are exploring, I think is the way he put it,

possibilities with regard to icebreakers and submarines, but exploring is not the same

as committing and there tends to be a rhetoric on the part of the government that

this is terrible and somebody ought to do something about it without acknowledging that it's

there in fact the people who are in charge.