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CBC News
October 24, 2007

The Canadian military plans to buy a fleet of remote-controlled aircraft to patrol the Arctic, an official told CBC News.

Lt.-Col. Wade Williams said the drones, known as unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, will be equipped with cameras, radar, radios, electronic sensors and possibly even weapons.

They will fly day-long surveillance flights over water, land and ice while being piloted by an air crew stationed on the ground at a control station that could be thousands of kilometres away.

“I think UAVs will go a long way to alleviating the requirement to have constant manned aircraft in the air,” said Williams, who is with the military’s UAV program.
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Olivia Ward, The Toronto Star
Oct 24, 2007 04:30 AM

Every policy wonk dreams of gaining a firm grip on the ear of the body politic. But for Canada’s foreign policy community, taking a back seat to domestic issues has become a political fact of life.

Tomorrow, a group of experts, spearheaded by BlackBerry billionaire Jim Balsillie, will launch an enterprise aimed at putting the hot-button international issues of the day front and centre in Canada.

A five-star audience of politicians, pundits and top drawer corporate executives will be mustering at a gala fundraiser for the new Canadian International Council, a foreign policy research think-tank that will be a forum for some of the country’s best brains.

“The need has never been greater,” says Balsillie. “When you open the paper any day the big issues are global warming, energy security, Arctic sovereignty, Iraq, Afghanistan, humanitarian crises. It’s a perfect storm.”

Yet, he says, at the last federal election there was a deafening silence around foreign policy issues. And for the leaders, no public debate.

“We want that to change,” says Balsillie, co-CEO of Research In Motion, the Waterloo-based developer of the BlackBerry. “It happens in the United States and other countries. Why not here?”

The new council, modelled on powerful groups like the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations and London’s Chatham House, will promote debate on foreign policy and international relations, and publish work by a widely assorted group of research fellows.

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