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38th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

0905

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson (Lethbridge, CPC))

Mr. Craig Forcese (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Mr. Craig Forcese

0910

Ms. Amy Groothuis (Foreign Policy Practicum, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Ms. Maya Khakhamovitch (Foreign Policy Practicum, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa)

0915

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Ms. Amy Awad (Foreign Policy Practicum, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Ms. Rachel Hird (Foreign Policy Practicum, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa)

0920

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Ms. Heather Watts (Foreign Policy Practicum, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Ms. Heather Watts

0925

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Ms. Margot MacPherson Brewer (Foreign Policy Practicum, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa)

0930

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Hon. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Oshawa, Lib.)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Hon. Judi Longfield

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Mr. David Eaves (Lead Author, Canada25)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Mr. Simon Robillard-Nicoloff (National Delegate, Canada25)

0935

Mr. David Eaves

0940

0945

0950

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Mr. Gordon O'Connor (Carleton—Mississippi Mills, CPC)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Mr. Gordon O'Connor

Ms. Margot MacPherson Brewer

Ms. Amy Groothuis

0955

Mr. Gordon O'Connor

Ms. Margot MacPherson Brewer

Ms. Amy Groothuis

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Mr. Gordon O'Connor

Mr. David Eaves

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Mr. Claude Bachand (Saint-Jean, BQ)

1000

Ms. Maya Khakhamovitch

1005

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Hon. Bill Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP)

Mr. David Eaves

1010

Ms. Maya Khakhamovitch

Hon. Bill Blaikie

1015

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Hon. Bill Blaikie

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Hon. Larry Bagnell (Yukon, Lib.)

Ms. Rachel Hird

Hon. Larry Bagnell

Ms. Heather Watts

Hon. Larry Bagnell

Ms. Heather Watts

Hon. Larry Bagnell

1020

Mr. David Eaves

Hon. Larry Bagnell

Ms. Maya Khakhamovitch

Ms. Amy Groothuis

Hon. Larry Bagnell

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Hon. Keith Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, Lib.)

1025

Ms. Heather Watts

Mr. David Eaves

Hon. Keith Martin

Mr. David Eaves

Ms. Margot MacPherson Brewer

1030

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Mr. Odina Desrochers (Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, BQ)

Ms. Amy Awad

1035

Mr. Odina Desrochers

Mr. David Eaves

Ms. Rachel Hird

Mr. David Eaves

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Mr. Odina Desrochers

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Hon. Judi Longfield

Mr. David Eaves

1040

Ms. Amy Awad

Ms. Rachel Hird

Hon. Judi Longfield

Mr. David Eaves

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

1045

Hon. Keith Martin

Ms. Rachel Hird

Hon. Keith Martin

Ms. Rachel Hird

Hon. Keith Martin

Ms. Rachel Hird

Hon. Keith Martin

Ms. Rachel Hird

Hon. Keith Martin

Ms. Rachel Hird

Hon. Keith Martin

Ms. Rachel Hird

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Mr. James Lunney (Nanaimo—Alberni, CPC)

1050

Mr. David Eaves

Mr. James Lunney

Mr. David Eaves

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Ms. Margot MacPherson Brewer

1055

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Hon. Larry Bagnell

Ms. Amy Groothuis

Mr. David Eaves

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Hon. Bill Blaikie

1100

Mr. David Eaves

1105

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

Ms. Margot MacPherson Brewer

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

The Clerk of the Committee

Hon. Keith Martin

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson)

CANADA

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

NUMBER 044

1st SESSION

38th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

* * *

¿ (0905)

[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson (Lethbridge, CPC)): Ladies and gentlemen, we'll call to order meeting 44 of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs.

We have quorum to hear witnesses, but not yet to pass motions. As soon as we have the latter quorum, I would like to deal with the second item of committee business, the notice of motion by Ms. Longfield. We have to wait for Judy because she's the mover, but as soon as she gets here, we'll interrupt proceedings and deal with her motion and get it off the table.

Today we have witnesses from the University of Ottawa and Canada25. We have Craig Forcese, assistant professor in the Faculty of Law. We also have Amy Awad, Nadia Campion, Amy Groothuis, Rachel Hird, Maya Khakhamovitch, Margot Macpherson Brewer, and Heather Watts. Then from Canada25, we have David Eaves and Simon Robillard-Nicoloff.

I understand that Professor Forcese is going to introduce each of the students. Are you all students?

Mr. Craig Forcese (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa): Several have graduated.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Each of them is going to give a little presentation on and explain the different areas they've been studying.

We'll just turn it over to you. As I said, we'll start with hearing the witnesses, but when Ms. Longfield, the presenter of the motion, gets here, we'll deal with that and get it out of the way.

So go ahead, the floor is yours.

Mr. Craig Forcese: Thank you very much.

On behalf of the foreign policy practicum of the University of Ottawa's Faculty of Law, I’d like to extend our thanks to this committee for inviting us to present our views on Canadian defence policy and the government’s recent defence policy statement.

In the foreign policy practicum, a team of law students completes a comprehensive review of a topic in Canadian foreign policy, with a focus on international law. The finished product is a detailed policy brief, submitted and presented to governmental and non-governmental groups.

In December 2004, the practicum produced and submitted a brief to the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade, in anticipation of the government’s international policy statement. The views reflected in that brief are the work product of the practicum and reflect the view of its members. That brief had a much broader scope than Canada’s defence policy.

In the few minutes that we have available today, however, each member of the practicum will reflect briefly on Canadian foreign policy in relation to key defence-related matters.

Amy.

¿ (0910)

Ms. Amy Groothuis (Foreign Policy Practicum, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa): Thank you, and good morning.

Today I would like to focus on one significant point regarding the defence portion of the international policy statement. This picks up on my presentation to the House Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade with the Foreign Policy Practicum two weeks ago.

The topic I would like to focus on is that of rapid deployment. Within that area, I have three associated points.

First, I feel there is not enough coherence between the defence and foreign policy sections of the IPS. For instance, the foreign policy section discusses the Stabilization and Reconstruction Task Force program, or START, which I understand to be a wider peace-building initiative than one of merely establishing and maintaining a rapid reaction force. This program is not mentioned in the defence section, which instead discusses the Standing Contingency Task Force, or SCTF. Will the latter force be integrated as a component into START? I point this out because I fear that without ongoing discussion, cooperation, and collaboration between the various departments and agencies of the government, work will be needlessly duplicated.

Second, the defence policy section does not go into adequate detail regarding Canada's continued involvement and contribution to the rapid deployment level program at the UN. The defence policy statement remarks that Canada “will continue to call” for implementation of the recommendations of the Brahimi report on peacekeeping. No further details are provided.

Maintaining a standing contingency task force is a much-needed first step, but it cannot be the last step. The Government of Canada must recognize that other countries need to be involved in similar undertakings. This is an area where we can and should be a leader. The policy states that the SCTF will be able to deploy within 10 days, which is admirable. Further questions arise, though, that must also be dealt with. Frankly, the statement is deficient in describing how the proposed rapid reaction force will be comprised, maintained, and deployed. Yet this is exactly the type of force that Canada is poised to be prepared to provide. I believe it is imperative that this be done under the UN banner, a point that the next presentation will underscore.

The process at the UN is under way, but has stalled. Let me reiterate that we are in a position to take a leadership role in this area within the defence and diplomacy areas, and we must capitalize on this opportunity.

My third and final point today concerns the Joint Task Force 2. This group was discussed briefly in the policy statement, and I mention it today, as it has proven capable of being deployed quickly. Forty of its members were in Afghanistan by December 2001, shortly after a political decision to become involved was made. What sort of operational lessons learned from this deployment will be employed elsewhere, perhaps with the SCTF? Further, what roles, if any, will the JTF2 play in the SCTF? I fear that the defence statement as a whole is lacking in detail in this area.

Thank you for your attention.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Thank you.

Ms. Maya Khakhamovitch (Foreign Policy Practicum, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa): Good morning. My name is Maya Khakhamovitch.

My submission today will focus on Canada's cooperation with the United Nations and NATO in achieving Canada's commitment to international peace and security.

Our government has repeatedly committed itself to the responsibility to protect. The report emphasizes that its task is not to find an alternative to the UN and the Security Council as a source of authority, but instead to make the UN and the Security Council function better. Yet the IPS commends NATO'S actions in the Balkans and its front and centre role in the fight against terrorism. If Canada's commitment to the UN is valid, then how can the bypassing and marginalization of the UN system by a “coalition of the willing”, acting without Security Council approval, be justified? While NATO remains a regional body, Canada needs to ensure that the NATO response force is not utilized to bypass the United Nations with unilateral military actions. Canada cannot simultaneously promote global multilateralism and support NATO's military interventions.

The IPS makes commitments to a number of different deployment forces. My colleague Amy Groothuis has discussed START, SCTF, and JTF2. The IPS further commits this government to taking a leadership role in SHIRBRIG, a multinational Standby High Readiness Brigade for UN operations. The goal of this organization is to reinforce the United Nations standby arrangements system. The benefit of SHIRBRIG is that it offers the UN relatively prompt access to a pre-established force that has standardized training, a high degree of coherence, and the capability for rapid reaction for up to six months. While the goal of SHIRBRIG is to provide effective rapid response at times of crisis, mobilization of this organization is still slow and inefficient. Each member country has a choice whether to participate in the mission and the number of troops that it will send, and the deployment process is subject to the UN's bureaucratic processes.

Canada's commitment to a leading role in SHIRBRIG thus raises the question of, are we stretching ourselves too thin? How many different deployment programs can we commit to and still play an effective role? Should Canada be committed to another peacekeeping group whose membership consists primarily of white and northern countries? If SHIRBRIG is the advanced mechanism for UN peace operations, which we believe it to be, why was there a delay in utilizing it in response to the genocide in Sudan?

Thank you for your time today.

¿ (0915)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Thank you.

Ms. Amy Awad (Foreign Policy Practicum, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa): Good morning.

In my presentation I will focus on two aspects of the Canadian Forces proposed transformation: the further integration of the different components of the Canadian Forces with foreign militaries, and the increased capacity of the Canadian Forces to participate in international operations.

While both of these have the potential to provide benefits in terms of the effectiveness of the Canadian Forces and the overall security of Canadians, they also raise a number of issues that must be seriously considered.

The IPS suggests that Canada should continue to pursue further integration with foreign militaries and a variety of joint missions and training activities. There is no question that a well-integrated military promises more efficient and effective deployment. That said, particular attention is required where our allies are known to act in ways contrary to widely accepted Canadian values of human rights and the rule of law.

By way of example, there is little doubt that through Canada’s operations in Afghanistan it has turned over prisoners to U.S. forces. Some of those prisoners, designated enemy combatants, likely ended up at the widely condemned Guantanamo Bay detention facility, designed specifically to escape domestic legal protections.

While Guantanamo Bay may not have been a Canadian idea, we are, by our actions, supporting it. That implicit public support for illegal and immoral activities of our allies can have negative security consequences that can easily outweigh any security advantages achieved by the better integration of our forces.

Similarly, the IPS also suggests that Canadian Forces personnel participate in more exchange, liaison, and training programs with foreign militaries. Those programs should be approached with the same caution as integrated operations. Our participation signals our implicit support for the actions of a foreign military. This should be of particular concern when militaries with persistently poor or even questionable human rights records are involved.

To help address some of these problems, I offer the following recommendations.

First, the Canadian Forces should have pre-set rules for dealing with human rights issues that arise specifically in the context of integrated operations. These should include, at the very least, a prohibition on handing over prisoners in certain circumstances. Where Canada anticipates that it will be unable to abide by those rules, it should simply refuse to participate.

Second, our participation in exchange, liaison, and training programs with foreign militaries must be assessed, at least in part, on the basis of whether our participation constitutes or will be perceived as constituting support for abuses by foreign militaries.

There is little question that for many years the Canadian military has been in a difficult situation, faced with an increased operational tempo and limited resources. The IPS suggests that this situation will soon change with new investments in both personnel and equipment being ushered in over the next few years. As a result, Canada may no longer be able to decline participation in operations on the basis that it does not have the necessary resources.

You might recall that in the lead-up to the American invasion of Iraq, the fact that Canada did not have the resources to join in the invasion was presented by some as a reason for Canada’s non-participation. Given the Canadian Forces' increased capacity, Canada will now need to put forward principled reasons for its non-participation in certain operations, as opposed to the more pragmatic reasons available in the past.

While Canadians may be proud to see their men and women in uniform working abroad, we should not assume that the people of the world--especially in Asia and Africa--look to them with the same sense of admiration. For many, foreign soldiers operating in their country represent an immediate threat to their sovereignty. Canada should more carefully evaluate its participation in missions and, at the very least, resist the creation of permanent military establishments outside of Canada. Ultimately it may make little difference whether such facilities were meant to be secret or not.

Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Thank you.

Ms. Rachel Hird (Foreign Policy Practicum, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa): Good morning. I will discuss weapons proliferation and Canadian defence policy.

The results of this year's nuclear non-proliferation treaty review indicate that combating weapons proliferation will require greater efforts in the future. If is often difficult for a state to hide an entire nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction program. What is difficult, however, is to ascertain the exact weapons capabilities of a state. A recent study commissioned by the President of the United States recognizes that intelligence can, at times and in part, be dead wrong. Intelligence, however, is only a supporting function for policy decisions. It is rarely responsible for making a war or peace judgment, especially when there is no evidence of an intention to launch a direct attack.

The policy decisions made by Canada regarding weapons of mass destruction need to be closely informed by intelligence. These policy decisions can also gain tremendous information and accuracy by working with multilateral export control and monitoring regimes. The IPS singles out export controls as one means to combat proliferation, yet it fails to elaborate further on what export controls to use. Not only are there international regimes that aim to monitor the transport of materials that could be used for biochemical and nuclear weapons, such as the Australia group, but there are ways in which individual countries can utilize export controls to secure themselves against illicit trade in proliferation-sensitive components.

Rogue states wishing to obtain WMD are increasingly able to turn to purchasing packaged weapons plants. Rather than creating new regimes, one idea to strengthen current non-proliferation regimes is to incorporate auditing authorities to investigate suspicious international deals that use the same channels as regular international trade. This would involve monitoring letters of credit and bills of lading, as insurance and customs agents need to check these documents against shipments to see what states are buying for such large amounts. If regimes are able to monitor not only the components of WMD but also the financial aspects in purchasing weapons and facilities, they will be better able to monitor weapons proliferation.

In addition to the illicit trade in weapons, there are also programs being implemented to arguably create new nuclear weapons and new zones in which these weapons can be used. Outer space needs to remain weapons free, and Canada should devote diplomatic efforts toward keeping outer space a weapons-free zone. Additionally, Canada should work to inform itself on the new U.S. reliable replacement warhead program and on U.S. efforts to develop new high- and low-yield nuclear weapons. Several countries have made it clear that without assurances that these weapons will not be used in an attack, they do not wish to discuss their own potential WMD programs.

While small and light weapons lack potential for the large-scale destruction of WMD, these weapons cause more deaths per year than weapons of mass destruction. SALW are for the most part technically simple, so rogue forces are able to arm child soldiers. SALW have not historically been faced with the same need for control as WMD, allowing for large stockpiles to accumulate. Development efforts will be faced with difficulties unless these stockpiles are monitored, found, and removed if necessary from public and/or private actors.

When looking toward the future of weapons proliferation, identification, disarmament, and even discussion will only become more difficult. The government has correctly noted that an integration of defence, diplomacy, and development is necessary in international policy, and it needs to be carried out.

Thank you.

¿ (0920)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Thank you.

Ms. Heather Watts (Foreign Policy Practicum, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa): Good morning.

My names is Heather Watts and I will be speaking about Canada's Arctic defence policy.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): You've just struck a chord with Mr. Bagnell, believe me.

Ms. Heather Watts: Good to hear.

As stated in the international policy statement, it is the first obligation of Canadian Forces to preserve and protect Canadians at home. This includes the ability to survey and control Canadian territories, including waters and airspace, as well as the capability to deter attacks on Canadian territory. These objectives require land, air, and maritime patrols of the Arctic.

Recent Canadian Forces exercises in the Canadian north have confirmed that Canada is ill-equipped to handle major exercises on Arctic terrain. These events were useful training exercises to assess cold climate equipment failure, geographic disorientation, as well as ice and weather complications for transport and personnel. These events also proved that more investment in training and technology is needed before the Canadian Forces is prepared for future sovereignty exercises in the north.

It is important to recognize that the sovereignty and security of Canada's north are connected. In order to ensure our sovereignty in the Arctic, Canada must be able to conduct effective monitoring and surveillance and respond to threats and emergencies. This can be done only through investment in proper technological and human resources.

One of the most efficient and cost-effective methods to increase and improve land and maritime patrols in the Arctic is to invest in local knowledge. The most obvious avenue for this type of investment is the Canadian Rangers. The Rangers are staffed by part-time, community-based reservists who already possess knowledge about the land and weather conditions. Investment in the Rangers now and in the future does not simply pertain to newer rifles or clothing. It also means supporting training in traditional knowledge and technical knowledge, investing in reliable transportation, and recognizing local capacity.

The projection for increased shipping in the region is high. This projection results from thinning Arctic ice cover, the growth of Nunavut, tourist interest in the north, and increased economic feasibility for the exploitation of natural gas. Increased shipping can result in several likely hazards, including smuggling, transportation of dangerous goods, hazardous spills, foreign military incursions, search and rescue, and infrastructure vulnerability. The role of the Canadian Forces in this regard will extend beyond typical reactive military roles to considerations of transportation, disaster assistance, and monitoring.

Increased human activity in the north means there will be an increased demand for search and rescue capabilities. The Canadian Forces needs to make sure it is ready to meet this challenge.

Northern people continue to express concern over the possibility for missile defence testing over the Arctic. In the past, the north has often been used for military testing. No military exercises should take place on northern land or in the skies without clear communication, consultation, and preferably consent of northern populations.

Canada's ability to ensure the sovereignty and security of the Arctic depends on an integrated approach among various government departments. The framework for the soon-to-be-released northern strategy has as one of its goals ensuring that “Canada plays a leading role and promotes concerted international action on circumpolar issues, and that northern concerns are taken into consideration in national efforts to reinforce sovereignty, security, and circumpolar cooperation”.

The objectives in the framework include ensuring security and surveillance in the north, cognizant of northern interests; reinforcing Canada's sovereignty over the Northwest Passage; effective northern-based search and rescue capacity; and leadership in matters of circumpolar cooperation.

Canada must ensure that its defence and diplomatic policies work together to achieve common objectives through cooperation and communication among government departments.

Thank you.

¿ (0925)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Thank you.

Go ahead.

Ms. Margot MacPherson Brewer (Foreign Policy Practicum, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa): Good morning. My name is Margot Macpherson Brewer. My chapter in the original brief focused on aid and development. I want to comment on elements of the defence policy that pertain specifically to international development and humanitarian assistance.

First I would like to raise issues around the 3D approach, which proposes greater integration of defence, diplomacy, and development to address international challenges. Second, I want to comment generally on the ambition of the defence policy. And third, I want to reinforce the importance of humanitarianism as a guiding principle for Canada and the Canadian military.

With the release of the defence portion of the IPS, an ambitious agenda for renewal of the Canadian Forces has been proposed, including working with Canadian diplomatic and development agents to address international challenges together. Within this context and largely due to the success of this approach in Afghanistan, the 3D has been an underpinning of the IPS.

I am concerned, however, that not only is this approach still very new, but it is not yet clear how these elements will effectively and consistently work together. Even as humanitarian and military forces cooperate more often in the field, the template for how best to do this has not yet been fully formed. The tacit knowledge and delicatesse required to conduct diplomatic relations takes years to acquire. The same timeframe is required for personnel to develop different types of expertise both in the military and in the international aid sectors.

Where is the thinking that explores how actors from these three very different spheres will learn to work together successfully while keeping their mandates and identities separate and distinct, and what strategies are in place to resolve internal conflict or power struggles? And what about the danger posed by hostile parties, who, seeing these factions work together, do not distinguish Canadian aid workers from the military, often putting aid workers at mortal risk, as we have seen with alarming frequency in Iraq?

The development assistance committee of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development published a report in 2003 that generated considerable concern in the global aid community. It suggested that increasingly, international development initiatives are in danger of being overwhelmed by national security imperatives. Indeed, the war against terror and the response to urgent humanitarian crises have diverted a significant portion of funds from the aid envelope in recent years.

Certainly, the global demarcation line that was 9/11 forced rethinking about the military's role. It brought a security focus back to North America and suddenly shifted our thinking away from the Cold War paradigm. But if international focus is concentrated on the war against terror, how will development and diplomacy retain their balance within the 3D dynamic?

As to my second point, we have seen that the world can and does change very quickly but the bureaucracy that runs it can be much slower to change direction. A DND policy paper published five years ago, “Shaping the Future of the Canadian Forces: A Strategy for 2020”, says it can take up to two decades to develop military capabilities. A broad range of changes is proposed for Canada's defence sector, which leads one to wonder if the Canadian Forces' agenda is too ambitious and how priorities will be set.

The Canadian Forces' rebuilding effort signifies a considerable transformation challenge ahead and for a very long time.

Third, I will end with a word about Canadian values as they are realized in the Canadian Forces.

Canada's collective commitment to humanitarian principles and causes is indisputable. Indeed, the role of Canadian Forces in humanitarian exercises overseas has been a point of national pride, but the scope, depth, and application of that participation from country to country has also been uneven. How will choices be made in future about which international crisis to respond to, and what criteria will they be based on?

A provocative analysis by authors Ian Smillie and Larry Minear cautions us that the political economy of humanitarianism means choices are often made less on needs identified by people in distress and more by political expedience and the criteria set by donors to provide grants and donations. Further, Smillie and Minear argued that a disproportionate focus on suppressing symptoms such as terrorism can perpetuate global conflict, especially when “humanitarian action is widely viewed as an optional, voluntary undertaking rather than a rights-based activity integral to a civilized, law-abiding, and peaceful world. There is at present no humanitarian regime...as there is in the refugee, trade, or nuclear nonproliferation spheres”.

¿ (0930)

There is no argument that security, both personal and national, trumps all other considerations until it is realized. While I agree that the renewal of the Canadian Forces is both welcome and absolutely essential, there are questions ahead. Where is the balance to be struck between security and development on the ground? Who will prioritize choices to meet the defence policy agenda? To reinforce the point made about increased integration by my colleague Amy Awad, in an increasingly collaborative international environment, what safeguards will be put in place to ensure that Canadian values and identity are preserved and respected?

Thank you.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Thank you very much.

Please stay with us, because there will be questions. The young lady who spoke about the north, be prepared, because I'm sure Mr. Bagnell will have lots to talk to you about.

Maybe the next group, Canada25, can move forward. While they're getting into position, I wonder if we could deal with Ms. Longfield's motion.

Ms. Longfield, are you ready to deal with your motion?

Hon. Judi Longfield (Whitby—Oshawa, Lib.): I am.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): We have had a duly constituted motion, and the 48 hours' notice has been given. It is moved by the Honourable Judi Longfield, member for Whitby-Oshawa, that the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs endorse the appointment of Mr. Yves Côté as ombudsman for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces.

Do you have any comment, Ms. Longfield?

Hon. Judi Longfield: My only comments would be that I was impressed with the depth and scope of Mr. Côté's presentation. I think this is something he wants, and he understands the importance of it. I think he can do it in a non-partisan.... I think there was some concern, perhaps, that because he came from the military it might be more difficult. I think it gives him the kind of understanding one would need to do this. He has big shoes to fill—I can appreciate that—but I would hope we could endorse this decision.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Does anybody else have comments?

Are you ready for the question?

(Motion negatived)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Moving on, I would like to welcome, from Canada25, David Eaves and Simon Robillard-Nicoloff.

The floor is yours. How much time do you think you're going to need?

Mr. David Eaves (Lead Author, Canada25): Probably close to 12 or 13 minutes.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): That's great. Go ahead.

[Translation]

Mr. Simon Robillard-Nicoloff (National Delegate, Canada25): Thank you.

I will begin by providing you with a brief description of Canada25 and tell you about the process that led to the drafting of our most recent report, entitled From Middle to Model Power.

Canada25 is a non-political and non-partisan organization. It is now three years old and has 1,000 members. Its membership is divided into chapters in various cities throughout Canada as well as abroad, for example, Paris, London, Boston and San Francisco.

The drafting of our report began during the fall of 2003 with a series of consultations over the Internet. At the time, more than 500 young people responded to our foreign policy survey and expressed their interest in this area. Subsequently, 11 round tables on foreign policy were organized in the cities that I just mentioned. Issues such as the environment and governance were discussed, as well as change within the armed forces. The summaries of these round tables are included in our final report.

Furthermore, 23 young national delegates participated in a meeting last year in Gatineau to finalize the report. We feel these young people are some of the most brilliant in Canada. The report is available on the Internet for the purposes of consultation at www.canada25.com.

David Eaves will now provide you with his critique of our defence policy and our foreign policy review process.

Thank you.

¿ (0935)

[English]

Mr. David Eaves: Merci, Simon.

I have a brief agenda and will just run through it very briefly.

What I would like to do first is talk about why it is that we should listen to young people. I would then like to share with you some of the broad themes that come out of the report we've submitted to this committee. I would then like to talk about what it means to operate effectively in what we term a networked world and draw on some of the specific recommendations in our report. Then I'd like to wrap up very briefly talking about the IPS and maybe the future of the IPS.

First, why is it that we listen to young people? A lot of people believe that young people are simply a constituency like all others and that we should engage them. My experiences, working with Canada25, reveal that yes, that is true, but there's an additional reason, which is that our generation—the generation that helped write this report—never lived really observing the Cold War. We were never alive during Vietnam and we don't remember Lester B. Pearson.

In contrast, we have grown up in a world with the free trade agreement, in a world with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in a world with the Internet. I'm not saying those things impact us uniquely; they impact all Canadians, but they impact us in a different sense, in that we never lived through what came before, so we are uniquely shaped by these events.

A document like the IPS, which really is a ten- to twenty-year project, needs to take into account not just where we are today, but where we're going to be twenty years from now. It's only in looking at young people that one gets a window into what that future Canada is going to look like. In many respects, we are the ultimate clients of the IPS. Consulting with us is incredibly important, because we're going to live with its consequences, be they good or bad.

As Simon mentioned, we gathered together over 500 Canadians, both within Canada and around the world, to talk about Canada's role in the world and the future of Canadian foreign policy. What I'd like to do with you is share some of the broad themes.

I think the biggest theme that emerged out of this, and it has emerged out of the other reports we've written, on cities and the brain drain, is that there is an enormous shift going on in how people view the world and how they think, and most importantly, how they organize themselves.

Specifically, the dominant form of organization, we believe, is shifting from one of hierarchies to one of networks. We looked at even our personal experiences to share this. For example, my parents' generation, and certainly those who are older, grew up in a world where at the family level, at the job level, at the national level, and even at the international level, the hierarchy was the dominant form of organization.

My parents grew up in a family with the father as the most senior figure, then the mother, and then the children, probably in order of birth. They worked in large organizations like GM, where there was an incredibly large hierarchy and information flowed to the person above you, and then the person above that and the person above that, and then the same way back down.

The government was an enormous bureaucracy, and the international system itself was a hierarchy, with the United States at the top on one end, the U.S.S.R. at the top on the other, and every state knowing its position within a hierarchy underneath those two actors; whereas people who came together with the Canada25 report have grown up in a very different world.

For example, in my family there are four parents; there are two mothers and two fathers. I have step-siblings. Where is the locus of power? Where is the hierarchy in that organization?

In the jobs I have worked at, in a consulting firm, there was an incredibly flat organization where I only had one boss, and teams were constantly created and destroyed in order to meet the needs that were being created by the marketplace.

Even in the international system itself, I'm not sure what the hierarchy is anymore. I wouldn't be so silly as to try to argue that the United States is not at the top of whatever the global heap is, but where does everybody else fall out? Are we above or below a China? Are we above or below a Mexico? A Brazil? I'm not even sure the term “hierarchy” is really helpful to us anymore in looking at the international system.

If we are living in what we might call a networked world, what does it mean? Today, at least from the perspective of our members, Canada is bound to the world by a series of formal and informal networks. These can range from being as simple as Canada25 itself, which is simply an organization of citizens who are concerned about issues, who have a global network where they come together and try to talk about these issues, to another informal network that is significantly larger, such as the G-7, which isn't necessarily a formal international organization but still brings together powerful heads of state, who try to mobilize the global agenda to accomplish a specific goal. But increasingly, it's the diffuse nature of the network through which decisions are being made and action being taken.

How, then, in a networked world can one operate effectively? We believe there are two factors that will, above all, determine Canada's influence in the world in this networked world.

¿ (0940)

The first is, can you connect with others? I don't just mean, do we possess the telecommunications and technology to reach out and engage the world? While this is an incredibly important aspect, the other side is, does one possess the soft power? Does one speak international languages? Does one know other cultures? Can one step into their shoes and understand the world from their perspective? Does one have a personal connection with another community so that one can engage them? These are the types of skills that will enable people to come together and actually achieve a common result.

The second is, can you solve problems? Your value in this world is determined by how people perceive your effectiveness in solving the previous problem. When our members got together and started to talk about the need to have some recommendations to make in this report, everybody on the committee wanted to talk about domestic issues, because there was a recognition by our members that when one is working abroad, one's credibility really comes from the ability to solve problems, and if one has domestic issues that have not been resolved, your credibility internationally is incredibly limited. So people wanted, in particular, to talk about the environment and aboriginal issues, because those are seen as the areas where Canada has the least credibility. So to be an effective international actor, we need to have innovative but solutions-oriented results in these areas.

In the networked world, I disagree with Naomi Klein, who says that brands are the greatest evil that ever existed. In the networked world, I think brands are going to be more important than ever. It's the brand of Canada and Canadians, perceived as people who can be partnered with effectively and who achieve solutions, that is going to determine our influence. What I've seen happen in the past in Canadian foreign policy that concerns me is that we've taken a branding approach, but we've gone about it in reverse, in that we pronounce ourselves to be experts at something, or we pronounce ourselves to be world leaders in something, and expect the world to beat a path to our door, and that's simply not the way it works. In this new world, the clothes are off. Everybody can see what everybody else is doing, what the problems are internally, what their problems are externally. To simply proclaim yourself to be something doesn't make you that anymore.

People want to actually see the results. So it's only by creating those results that people will come and beat a path to our door. I think there are some great examples of that already happening in Canada. For example, in the environmental area, a very narrow aspect is the issue of sustainability in cities, on which places like Vancouver have taken an incredible leadership role; now everybody around the world, even places as liberal and as progressive as San Francisco, fly their members to Vancouver to see what Vancouver is doing. So it's not that Vancouver stood up and proclaimed itself to be a leader in sustainability, but it just got on with the process of doing it, and now they have real influence—not just in this area, but in other aspects of municipal affairs, which gives them real power and influence.

So there are three recommendations in our report that I want to talk about, which I think reflect the issues that are addressed by this committee. I want to talk about one at the individual level, and maybe two at the state level.

The first is education. One of the key recommendations in our report is that in a networked world it's the capacity of individuals to engage with other individuals from other cultures and other languages that will give our country the kind of influence that we hope to have. So we make two recommendations: the first is that every Canadian should become bilingual in one of our official national languages and in another language spoken elsewhere in the world; and the second is that 25% of our students should have international experience, not just because those who go abroad will learn a different culture and how to engage with a different community, but because those who come back to Canada will help engage those who stayed here and enable them to develop the types of skills needed to engage other cultures and communities.

And nowhere is this more important than in our military. In the last six months, I've had a great opportunity to visit a number of our military bases and to talk with a number of military personnel, including going to the military staff college in Toronto where, I think, 10% to 15% of students are from other countries. There you have colonels and lieutenant colonels and everyone up to the rank of general who come to the Canadian staff college. It's the international experience brought by the other members that really enriches the environment, and it has the added impact of giving a personal network to these officers, so that when we do engage in manoeuvres and missions abroad, the officers have a personal connection with somebody in that military that they can draw upon.

¿ (0945)

The second recommendation is to have clear conditions for deployment. It's one thing to have an effective tool like the military, which really is one way we can go and deliver a solution abroad, to show our effectiveness; however, if it's unclear to our allies when and how and why we're going to use that tool, it's completely blunted. In a networked world where the partnerships you make are going to determine how effectively you can solve a problem, your allies want to know when and where you're going to commit your forces. In the Iraq war first we were on, and then we were off, and then we were back on, and then we were back off. It's that lack of predictability that makes us--not just to the United States but also to other people who are observing-- unworthy of their respect, unworthy of being a partner.

The final recommendation is regarding what I would call legacy alliances. I recently attended a seminar with the former CDS on NATO. A lot of the discussion was about what is going happen to small third parties like Canada now that NATO has the United States and the European Union, two major actors. There was a lot of discussion about the process and the function of NATO, but what was unclear to me in the entire discussion was the very purpose of NATO. I don't think Canada has engaged in a real policy debate about what purpose the numerous treaties--what I would call legacy treaties--that we're engaged in really serve anymore.

For example, everybody at the seminar really thought that our mission in Afghanistan was an incredible example of the successful nature of NATO today, about how it can go out and accomplish a mission. But if you ask the ordinary Canadian what we are doing in Afghanistan, they believe we are there under a UN flag. They don't think we are there under NATO.

So I think that yes, it was a successful mission from a military perspective, but if 500 body bags came back from Afghanistan, I think you'd have a Canadian public asking itself, what the heck was NATO doing in Afghanistan?

So we need to engage in a public policy debate on the treaties we're part of, particularly in the military context, and on what our expectations are for the missions they're going to send us on and how we're going to participate in them.

I also think we need to debate the role of Parliament in this. Parliamentary oversight and how we determine when and where we commit our forces is incredibly unclear to me . And I think Canadians would like to know whether the members of Parliament actually get oversight and actually get to confirm when our members are deployed and how they're deployed.

Regarding the future of the IPS, I want to touch briefly on the one thing I very much enjoyed in the IPS and the concern I have in going forward with it. The one thing I liked about the IPS is that there is a lot of talk about Canadian interests, but there is a lack of description of what those interests are. For me, this is a healthy turn in the Canadian foreign policy debate. For a long time, Canada has been focused on values when it comes to foreign policy, so here for the first time we've begun to enter the discourse of interests.

What I'd like to see this committee do, and the committee on foreign affairs, and Parliament in general, is to begin to lay out what Canadian interests are, because a robust Canadian foreign policy needs to be composed of both interests and values. It's the interests that will tell our allies what problems we want to solve, which people we need to partner with in order to solve those problems, what tools and mechanisms we're going to use to go about solving those problems.

And it's our values that will determine the boundaries of how we go about solving those problems, what we believe is a just way of solving the problem, and what we believe is an unjust way. And I believe we've done a tremendous amount of work around the values, but our allies are turning to us now and saying, what is it that Canada wants to accomplish? We want to work with you effectively, but we don't know what your goals are, and we can't partner with someone who is unclear as to what their goals are.

At this--what I believe to be--critical stage of the IPS, when it's now been released and there's a risk that the issue of foreign policy will disappear from the national agenda, I look to this committee, and I look to the foreign affairs committee, and I look to Parliament in general to really engage this issue and to begin to define what Canada's national interests are so that we can be an effective partner in the 21st century.

Thank you.

¿ (0950)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Could we ask the professor to come back, and when there are questions that are posed to certain individuals in your group, could they come forward? I don't think there is room for everybody.

Make sure when you come forward to answer that you identify yourself or bring your little sign so the recorder knows.

We have a seven-minute round. We'll start with Mr. O'Connor.

Mr. Gordon O'Connor (Carleton—Mississippi Mills, CPC): Thank you very much, and thank you, all of you presenters.

It's like a fire hose. I think there were nine or ten presenters covering different topics, so it's hard to focus on some kind of coherent subject.

However, I'll start with the law group from the University of Ottawa, who covered a range of topics. If you go down to the fundamental ideas behind them, I think all your people are encouraging us to get out into the world and get involved in the world.

I'd like to know why the Canadians and the Canadian Forces should be out acting in the world beyond our borders. Why should we be there?

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Is the question clear to you? Why should we as a country be active in the world ?

Mr. Gordon O'Connor: Why should we be prepared to launch contingency forces out in the world? Why should we be prepared to launch humanitarian forces out in the world? There's even suggestion in here somehow--I started to interpret--that we're supposed to go around the world and interfere in country after country, making sure that humanitarian activities are taking place, civil rights, and all these things.

I want to know what the philosophy behind this is. Why should we be doing it? There are consequences, not only in taxes but in death of our people.

Ms. Margot MacPherson Brewer: I think the question is excellent. As to my outline of where I think the military can play a greater or more visible role in terms of humanitarian assistance, my understanding is that the reality on the ground is that the Canadian military is working more hand-in-hand with our NGOs and so on in the distribution of food. I think of the recent experience in Sri Lanka, with the deployment of the DART force and so on. Part of it is that the military is already out there and making selections about where it wants to go. There was no suggestion in my brief that there be a more dispersed assignment of military forces to every humanitarian crisis that emerges. In fact, part of the problem and the issue I was raising is about the choices to be made, and how those choices will be made, and who will make them, and based on what criteria. That is the point I was stressing.

Ms. Amy Groothuis: Just to add to that a little bit, I, as well, wouldn't want to put forward that I was suggesting that Canada should necessarily be the world's peacekeeper or that we should be involved everywhere. The point I was really trying to make is that when a political decision is made--and I am certainly no expert in that--the forces that are deployed should be ready, well equipped, and able to move quickly. If Canada makes a decision to deploy soldiers overseas, then we should send them knowing that they are going to be able to have the full support, both physical--with equipment--and political, to ensure there are no needless casualties. I think that having rapid deployment forces, having some sort of standing contingency force, means we must ensure that once a decision is made things can move quickly, that's it's not then a question of figuring out at that point whether we have enough equipment, enough materials, even just enough tents for our soldiers in theatre. We want to make sure everything is ready beforehand.

¿ (0955)

Mr. Gordon O'Connor: I would like to carry on, because we're actually seeking information.

Do you have suggestions of what the criteria should be to commit our forces offshore?

Ms. Margot MacPherson Brewer: Where we can be most effective--I think that's the criterion that has to be set.

One of the things I find most interesting about the 3D initiative is that I welcome it. I hope that became clear in my brief. I think that's a logical direction to move in, not just by the military forces but also by development and diplomatic agents.

But there's not as much thinking at the present time.... In the IPS, for instance, CIDA has reduced its funding to 25 key countries, instead of dispersing funds--as they have in the past--far too thinly. I think that is the background work that has to happen before the next humanitarian crisis arises. And it will arise, because the crises seem to be getting more frequent instead of less so.

The call here is what background work is being done to actually determine what those criteria should be, on what basis, and must they always be political? The military is a politically driven force, to a large extent, as compared with international aid agencies or diplomatic bodies, which have a different agenda. They're all working with very different contexts. How do you marry them together, and where's the discussion happening behind the scenes that will help them make those choices when necessary?

Ms. Amy Groothuis: Just to add to that, I'm wondering if what you are reaching for is the responsibility to protect doctrine, if that's what you're referring to as philosophical underpinning. I am no expert on the responsibility to protect, but it is my personal belief that Canada should be engaged in the world, that we do have a duty that's larger than domestic defence, and I personally--I'm not speaking on behalf of anyone else in this group--would encourage Canada to remain actively involved in assisting in humanitarian crises around the world.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): I'll let Mr. Eaves respond to Gord's question.

Mr. Gordon O'Connor: Well, yes, I was going to ask him a question. Go ahead.

Mr. David Eaves: I think you're actually right to raise this concern. There is no end to the places that are in need of Canada and where our forces could be deployed effectively--depending on your definition of the word “effective”. My concern is, are Canadian Forces deployed in places Canadians care about, and where we have a clear reason to be?

One of the great examples I like to refer to is Lester B. Pearson's creation of Canadian peacekeeping. He didn't create it because he felt there was some need to go out and do good in the world; he created it because there were very clear Canadian national interests at stake. The first place we deployed ourselves was in the Middle East, because we were scared that a war there would escalate to a third world war, which would involve the Soviet Union and the United States. That war was going to take place in the skies above Canada, with fighter planes and nuclear bombs falling on Canada as those planes got shot out of the sky. So we had a very clear national interest at stake for being there.

That's true of subsequent deployments for a number of years as well, including a deployment in Cypress, because Turkey and Greece were going to go to war, threatening the credibility of NATO.

So for me, there needs to be a very clear national interest at stake to justify deploying Canadian military troops. Without that, I worry about the long-term political commitment of our politicians and the public to a force that is sent abroad. I can imagine nothing scarier than having a Canadian force somewhere out in the world without any long-term support from our members of Parliament and the Canadian public.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Thank you.

We move on to Mr. Bachand.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand (Saint-Jean, BQ): I would like to begin by congratulating the representatives from both organizations appearing before us today for their presentations.

Listening to you brings back memories of when I was your age. I was a unionist. I don't want to create a generation gap, on the contrary, I think it is important to build bridges and to see where we stand with respect to each other.

Only a few years ago I was in your camp. I wanted to right all the wrongs on the planet, I wanted fairness, I wanted to eliminate poverty. I had a union career for 20 years. When that ended, I felt I had achieved some things, but I had not succeeded in changing everything.

When I began my life in politics, I thought that I would be able to solve some issues, given that everything is decided within the political arena. If I were in your shoes, I would give the same kind of presentation. However, if you were in our shoes, you would understand why things do not always work as well as one thinks they may.

It is all very well to have good ideas, but when the time comes to implement them, problems can arise. I thought that now that I was in politics, I would be able to stand up and put a question to the minister. However, people from my own party told me that that was not how things worked, because they decided which questions were going to be asked. I tried to convince them of how important my question was, but they replied that 50 of my fellow members also had important questions and that is why they had to decide which questions would be asked.

What a beginning for an idealist such as myself! I had to convince my own party to ask my questions.

Furthermore, when one asks a question, when one makes a suggestion for action, when one has a philosophy and one suggests a new direction, the question is: how much will that cost? We're asked if we really want to increase the tax burden of taxpayers. By the same token, taxpayers say that they are already paying enough taxes.

If we don't want to increase the taxpayers' tax burden any further, then the money has to come from another department, but other departments' officials say that they need that money.

That is more or less how things work. I think you provided us with a very good presentation. We really need two days to cover all the issues raised. Nonetheless, I will have to pick one, because we don't have much time.

I would like to talk about foreign military intervention first. I didn't quite understand what the law faculty people told us during their presentation. We have to make decisions. Circumstances are not always identical. If we're asked to respond to a UN request, we don't really risk making a mistake, because the tradition is to respond. However other requests may be made, other actions may be taken. There's the right to protection, related to the Westphalian perspective. Darfur is a good example. We may want to go, but their own government is opposed to that. Should we go anyway?

What should we do in the case of voluntary coalitions? When the United States, who is our largest neighbour and who is squeezing us economically, tells us that it wants us to accompany it in Irak and we refuse, then there are consequences.

We cannot adopt a permanent position, because international law is constantly evolving. I would like to know how you think we can maintain an open mind and encourage international law to develop in the direction we want it to.

I'm a kind person, I don't like what is happening in Darfur. I would perhaps be willing to go there, but I know that if we are alone in going we'll take a real beating. I also know that our role should probably be that of convincing other powers to go with us. I think that we should be involved in resolving problems far from our own borders, because once they reach our own country, it is a bit late.

I would like you to expand somewhat on issues such as international law, military interventions under the United Nations, NATO, or the coalition of the willing, and I would also like you to talk about a new factor, which is the duty to protect.

À (1000)

[English]

Ms. Maya Khakhamovitch: I apologize. My French is not up to par at all, so I will speak in English when responding.

It is an excellent question and a very broad question. I'll try to answer it as much as I can.

I'm going to divide international law and interference into two stages, because that's the reality of the world we're dealing with. I'm going to divide it into use of force, where Canada or any other country has to go into a politically charged situation and use force in that country, and then I'm going to speak to peace-building and peacekeeping.

The use of force, as it stands right now, can only be authorized by the United Nations. Canada has made a commitment that it will use the United Nations as the only authoritative body that can authorize use of force, including the Security Council. Having made that commitment, we cannot turn around and use other international organizations, such as NATO, to go around or bypass the UN to try to interfere, even where interference is warranted. That was the point of my presentation.

Unfortunately, in the way that international law stands and the commitment that Canada has made to it, and to the UN and UN reform, at this point in time we need to go with the UN. We need to wait for Security Council authorization and wait for the United Nations to authorize use of force to go into politically charged regions.

With respect to the statute of responsibility to protect that the Prime Minister in Canada is pushing right now, there are a lot of really good ideas within that doctrine on how to work with the UN to allow us to go away and protect the countries and to go in and respond to the needs of crisis. A lot of that has to do with UN reform and a lot of that has to do utilizing other bodies, such as the General Assembly and the Human Rights Commission.

There's another capacity that we spoke about on the UN deployment, SHIRBRIG, START, and CSTF. A lot of those bodies can also deal with peacekeeping.

Once the United Nations authorizes an operation to go into the charged region, the point that my colleague Amy Groothuis and I are making is that we need to identify our commitments. We need to identify where our commitments are and which deployment force is there. If we identify those commitments and Canada commits to those organizations or groups, we then need to have the forces ready. We need to say that if we made this commitment, we're going to provide the people.

Once the United Nations had authorized or informed SHIRBRIG of possible deployment to Sudan, one of the problems that we encountered was that SHIRBRIG is a voluntary organization, which allows the country to decide on whether it would participate and how many troops they would utilize. What had happened was an unforgivable delay of at least three or four months, where the countries, including Canada, couldn't decide on how many troops to send out and couldn't organize themselves.

The point we are making is that if we are going to participate and if we are going to commit, we need to be more organized. We need to decide on where our priorities lie, and we need to commit to those priorities.

À (1005)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Thank you. Your time has expired.

Mr. Blaikie.

Hon. Bill Blaikie (Elmwood—Transcona, NDP): Mr. Chairman, I wanted to follow up on this whole role of NATO.

Mr. Eaves talked about the need for a debate about the role of NATO and Canada's role in NATO. It has been referenced in your answer.

One thing has concerned me over recent years. I remember being at NATO parliamentary assembly meetings debating what are called out-of-area operations. This was in the mid-1990s. It was a very radical notion. There was a lot of debate within NATO, at least at the political level, about whether NATO should carry on out-of-area activities.

Of course, that's exactly what happened in Kosovo, and that step was taken. It was quite controversial and was done without UN permission. Many people, at least in the early stages, who had always argued that we had to have UN permission, found themselves arguing that we didn't need to because of the humanitarian crisis, the need to protect refugees, etc. This was a difficult moral dilemma.

Do you have any reflections on what you think NATO's role should be? Do you share the concern I have that, to some degree, NATO has become a kind of western surrogate for what the UN really should be doing?

Certainly arguments that I made from time to time on the floor of the North Atlantic Assembly were that some of the arguments, particularly coming from the United States, were that NATO had to do this because the UN couldn't do it. I would get up and say that one of the reasons the UN couldn't do it was because they didn't want them to do it, they don't pay their dues, and they were actively undermining the UN. It's too convenient an argument to say that NATO has to do this because the UN can't. To the extent that you strengthen the NATO hand, if it comes at the expense of the UN, you're really building up a kind of parallel capacity.

Anyway, I want to get your views, not give you mine. Would anyone here, some of you or all of you, want to say more about how you see NATO and how it should or shouldn't develop, or whatever?

Mr. David Eaves: You raise a number of excellent points.

I'm not advocating for the dissolution of NATO. NATO is a wonderful organization. It allows for all sorts of coordination between our military and other militaries. It provides standards for process and equipment. What concerns me is that NATO still trains as though the Russians are going to invade. The organization is to my mind struggling for a mandate. I don't mind if NATO decides to do expeditionary forces that are going to be out of area. But I'd like to see an organized debate in Canada and all the NATO countries. Public understanding of the mission needs to be developed and engaged to give NATO a clear mandate. When NATO was created, it had a political mandate from the masses to prevent a Russian invasion. Whatever the new NATO goal is, it's not clear that there's a new mandate from the masses to engage in that mission.

There is a security sphere that includes North America and Europe. An enormous amount of trade goes on. There's an exchange of people, goods, and ideas. The protection of this sphere is still important. The challenge is to determine what the new threats are. This calls for a radically different type of organization with a radically different type of capability. It might be more of a criminal or terrorist interdiction force than the large tool used to prevent the Russian bear from coming over the mountains and seizing western Europe.

À (1010)

Ms. Maya Khakhamovitch: I'll speak on behalf of our group for now. Then if anybody wants to join me, they can.

You have raised some excellent points and valid concerns. There is the question of whether NATO is the western surrogate for the UN. We also have to be careful to ensure that NATO isn't a surrogate for the U.S. NATO does not have international law supporting it in actions such as Kosovo. It's true that Kosovo raised a lot of moral issues, and there is no sure answer on whether NATO's intervention was right or not. However, from an international law perspective, it wasn't valid. Not pursuing it after the intervention was the United Nation's choice, the international community's choice. If we as a nation make a commitment to support the United Nations, we have to support that commitment and not contradict it by aligning with NATO in illegitimate actions.

As to what the role of NATO should be, in this I speak for myself only. NATO has amazing military capabilities that could be put to use for peacekeeping or peace-building. It is still a defence organization, and if the members of the alliance are threatened, it is the role of NATO to protect them. However, this has not happened in the recent years. Therefore, utilizing NATO's military capabilities for peacekeeping would be an excellent role for the organization. However, as Mr. Eaves has pointed out, this would be something for the members of the alliance to decide. They need to define their mandate and decide where to proceed with it.

Hon. Bill Blaikie: Just as a follow-up, Mr. Chairman, the whole issue of parliamentary oversight was raised, and it's related to this. We don't have the same kind of debate in this country about our participation in NATO that other countries have. For instance, even with the expansion of NATO, every other country of the original 14 or 15 had a debate in their national parliaments and a vote on whether or not to accept the changes to the treaty. Canada was the only country that did not have a debate and a vote.

Now, the argument is that we have the Westminster system, but even in the U.K. they had a debate and a vote. What we have in Canada is very much a kind of executive dominance when it comes to these kinds of things. So I would certainly encourage you to think about that.

In terms of NATO versus UN, we're often caught, as Canadians, between what we're committed to in NATO and what we're committed to in the UN. The first thing that comes to my mind is with respect to all the things that we support at the UN with respect to the abolition of nuclear weapons, nuclear non-proliferation, and yet in NATO we're committed to first use. We're bound in alliance to the Americans, who are about as committed to abolishing nuclear weapons as Hamas is to abolishing terrorism. So we're in this dilemma between our NATO and our UN commitments.

As some of you have said, you young people don't remember the Vietnam War, and you don't remember Pearson, and you don't remember the Cuban missile crisis. I was 11 when the Cuban missile crisis happened, and I thought the world was going to end that day. I think my generation was much more sensitized to the possibility that the world could end through a nuclear conflagration. Even though I think you guys are much more sensitive to a whole lot of other things, I think there's a complacency about the continuing existence of nuclear weapons, both in state-run arsenals and in rogue arsenals, wherever they might be.

I'm wondering if in your work you're also working on how we rid the planet of these weapons that have the prospect of doing away with the whole prospect.

À (1015)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): The responses are going to have to be brief, Mr. Blaikie. You're two minutes over already.

Hon. Bill Blaikie: I got carried away.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): I think I'll let them respond in the next round. We'll have to move on. But I believe everybody got your point.

Mr. Bagnell.

Hon. Larry Bagnell (Yukon, Lib.): Thank you.

I'll give you some of my time if you want to answer Mr. Blaikie's question.

Ms. Rachel Hird: Okay. I'll go quickly.

One of the biggest problems with nuclear weapons right now in the process of destroying them is that there's a big contradiction between.... I'm just going to cite the American position, because it's the biggest one right now. They're in the process of revamping their nuclear stockpiles. Their position is that they have to either maintain their existing stockpiles or they have to create new weapons, because they want to have security in the weapons technology they have, pending a change in the global situation. They don't want to decrease what they have until they're guaranteed that they either have new, more reliable technology, or that what they do have from the 1940s is still working. So that's the big contradiction in trying to decrease arms all over.

There have been initiatives to try to reduce the stockpiles in Russia and what not, but as long as the U.S. has that position, it's really hard to try to convince other countries that they don't need to acquire these weapons. That's the big diplomatic crunch right now.

Hon. Larry Bagnell: Okay.

I'm glad you guys didn't find out too much about JTF2, because it's supposed to be secret.

Voices: Oh, oh!

Hon. Larry Bagnell: I think it would be great if you also had this discussion, Professor, with the policy people at Defence and Foreign Affairs. I think that would be a great dialogue for your class. They'd probably have more time than us, as well.

To Margot, sometimes you don't have to coordinate military aid in the military, because in the three-block war, the military--for instance, our provincial reconstruction teams--will do the aid.

To Rachel, I signed onto the non-proliferation, so you'll be happy about that.

And to Amy, John Godfrey and I made the same case in Parliament about the prisoners, strongly, so I'm glad you brought that out.

I don't have a lot of questions--to the surprise of my colleagues, I'm sure--but if there's anything else you want to say, Heather and David, go ahead. I want to make sure the Arctic gets good play.

Ms. Heather Watts: One thing I came across when I was preparing for the meeting today was that security in the Arctic is much more than just military security; it's also civil security, environmental security. Those concerns may be beyond the scope of what this committee is working towards, but in terms of the environment, search and rescue, and those types of things, a whole package of things needs to be done.

Hon. Larry Bagnell: What I was actually going to say to you was that if you could just take that very eloquent presentation and mail it to the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, for me that would be great.

Ms. Heather Watts: Absolutely.

Hon. Larry Bagnell: David, do you have any comments on Arctic sovereignty?

À (1020)

Mr. David Eaves: Not on the Arctic, no.

Hon. Larry Bagnell: Okay.

Amy and Maya, just on the international stuff, and organizations, I think it is one of the strengths of this Prime Minister to look at other ways to solve...not to diminish the existing organizations, or their fixing, which definitely should be done, but also, when a problem is not being solved, to do it with some other groupings, whether it's NATO or the coalition of the willing or G-20, whatever needs to be done to solve the problem.

If a family in Darfur, or your family, were about to be slaughtered tomorrow, I don't think the answer “We have to wait for the UN” would be sufficient. And this is my personal opinion, not the government's opinion. I think we have to, where possible, find ways to....

You know, if a person is starving to death, one answer is that it's a problem of society; we have to fix society so that there's not a soup kitchen, so that person doesn't have to beg for food. We'll work and fix the system for months and years, and get it fixed, and then they won't have to do that. But that person needs to eat tomorrow, too, so you have to do something immediately, I think.

I don't know if you have a further comment, Maya, on the international action. I think we have to take action now so that people aren't slaughtered in Darfur and Congo and Rwanda, and then we have to all the time fix up the United Nations and international law so that we get the long-term fix as well.

Ms. Maya Khakhamovitch: I would love to tell you that I have a clear-cut answer for you. In the original brief we presented, for 25 pages I wrestled with the same dilemma of what's the right action, what's the wrong action.

At the end of the day, on the interference such as what was done by NATO in the Balkans, there's a lot of question of whether NATO had done even more damage than they would have if they had they not gone in there and had they waited for UN intervention.

It is true that you can't tell someone in Darfur, or someone in Rwanda, or in any of the other crises we've had, to please wait, we're working on it. The only thing we can do right now, as a responsible country that is committed to the responsibility to protect, that is committed to such a doctrine, is to fix the process. In the responsibility to protect and the existing UN reform that's going on right now, they're working on correcting the process so that maybe in the next five years down the road, when we have another crisis like this, we'll have a much more rapid process that can address these issues. Sending out military action without knowing what is going on in the region, without knowing all the concerns, without knowing all the problems, at this point in time is not the answer. It could create a lot more damage than good.

Having said that, I know that saying we should wait for a better process is not the answer we want to give, especially considering these guys are repeating themselves over and over. For the next five years, our agenda really should be committed to improving the process. And if we can't, if we really come up this time with saying that the UN is not an efficient body, then go around it--use the General Assembly, for example, as is proposed in the responsibility to protect.

In addition--and Amy will speak more to this--once we commit to rapid deployment forces, another problem is that once we do get UN-authorized action, how do we organize our forces effectively? So once we commit to these rapid deployment forces, we need to understand where commitments lie, and we need to ensure that we have the capabilities to respond on immediate demand.

SHIRBRIG, for example, is one such response. It is considered to be an emergency task force that is supposed to train together, that is supposed to be organized together, that is supposed to be mobilized within a matter of weeks and to go into the region for six months. We have made that commitment, but such rapid deployment and such emergency cooperation has not taken place yet.

So that's another thing we can do, ensure that once the UN does ring that bell and say go in and do it, we are ready, we are working with other countries who are ready, and we can do it effectively.

I'll let Amy speak a little more to that.

Ms. Amy Groothuis: I think the only thing I want to add to that, perhaps specifically relating to this committee, is that this committee could look at the choices Canada can make for our armed forces on where they're going to be most effective. In some of my research, the term “niche peacekeeping” has come up. Are there aspects that the Canadian Forces can look at that Canada can be really great at, as opposed to being a jack of all trades and master of none? Can we figure out what aspects the Canadian Forces can focus on?

For instance, when there is a humanitarian crisis, we can say, there's this problem, and we have people in our armed forces who are eminently suited to go in and fix that problem. We won't be able to fix all the problems, so where can we direct our resources to where they are best utilized?

Hon. Larry Bagnell: I have a different question for you.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): You'll have to wait for the next round. You're over on this as well.

We pass back to Mr. Martin, then.

Hon. Keith Martin (Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, Lib.): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for being here today. As my colleague Mr. Bagnell said, your comments ought to be heard by a much wider audience.

I would recommend, just for your own interest, if you have a chance to read it, Samantha Powers' book, A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. If you haven't read it, if it isn't part of the course curriculum, please take a look at it. It's a scathing indictment of the international community's failure to deal with genocide, which leads to the first issue we are all struggling with.

In my analysis of this, it seems to me--and you're lawyers, I'm not--that we have a judicial framework without an enforcement mechanism, and we have a responsibility to protect without an obligation to protect. So my question to you, as lawyers-to-be, is how do we manage to square that circle and ensure that there is an obligation to protect so that we have an obligation to enforce the laws that are there within the UN?

In our experience, if you look back in history--Sam Powers writes a very eloquent dissertation on this--whether it is today's Darfur or formerly the conflict in the Sudan, Congo, Sierra Leone, today's Zimbabwe, earlier in Liberia--the list is long--the history of the UN shows an abysmal failure, an absolutely appalling failure, of the Security Council and the General Assembly to prevent the mass slaughter of thousands.

In many of your comments you said you want to wait for the Security Council, you want to wait for the UN, but I would argue that they have utterly failed in saving human lives. How do we square that circle? What do we need to do?

À (1025)

Ms. Heather Watts: Briefly--I know my presentation wasn't on that--I think that one of the problems in the situations you're referring to is in fact politics. You hear that politicians and other leaders are afraid to say the word “genocide” in situations like those. That's because once they call it that, there's an obligation to act.

We need to look at the reality on the ground and what is actually happening as opposed to trying to name it. At the UN, that's the problem--the politics and the in-fighting in terms of what we are going to call this situation, because if we call it genocide, the UN convention demands that we do something to stop it.

I think we need to look beyond labels and look at the reality of the situation. I agree that the UN hasn't been effective in dealing with these situations. I think ideas like the responsibility to protect, trying to get people to think outside the box, and looking at these situations differently are positive things.

Mr. David Eaves: You raise an interesting point, which is, is it the fault of the UN or is it the fault of the UN members? For me, there's an important distinction there. If you actually believe that the UN processes have failed, then I think what you're saying about the failure of the UN is correct. But if you think instead that actually it's just that the members have failed to commit politically to this, then I don't think you should talk about the failure of the UN; you should talk about the failure of the members of the UN to commit or care enough to solve these problems.

I want to make sure that we at least engage that question, because there are a lot of people who talk about the failure of the UN, when actually I'm not always sure that's what they really mean.

Hon. Keith Martin: Is it the UN or us?

Mr. David Eaves: The second point is that when it comes to the commitment of forces, if you really believe this is a critical issue, you can create a coalition of the willing and you can go into the Sudan or you can go into Rwanda. You can do that, but at the same time you can't turn around and say you're uncomfortable with what the United States is doing in Iraq. You lose the power to do that.

In this international system, the only power we really have is the power to model the types of behaviour we expect of others. Sometimes that means making difficult choices. But if you want others to behave a certain way, you have to at least model that behaviour yourself.

Ms. Margot MacPherson Brewer: I have another comment in response to that. In fact, this triggers a number of things for me, Dr. Martin, so thank you.

In my original brief, I quoted Charles Bassett, who's a former senior vice-president of CIDA and is now head of the Inter-American Development Bank--I hope I have that right--in Washington. Charles Bassett, who's a very insightful and knowledgeable person in the field of international aid, made a comment to me that I thought was striking. That is, why is it that we always have such difficulty coming up with money to prevent and stave off these types of crises, and then the minute they happen, the financial floodgates open and we've got lots of money to throw at the problem?

Another strong point I made in my original brief was the need for public engagement. I stress this again, because I think that the speed with which the world itself is changing is difficult for a lot of us to comprehend. We're all sort of skating on this new paradigm that's emerging in the 21st century. Why that is important is that Canadians are only just coming to an understanding, through good events and bad, of their role within the international context. There's still a tremendous need for public engagement in making Canadians aware of why global issues even affect them. As politicians and people who have to answer to people in your own ridings, you would understand how necessary it is to make that connection.

The problems don't just emerge overnight, which is the tragedy of it. They take years to develop. I believe the point was made here. To what extent do we listen to the danger signals that are emerging in hot spots around the world? And who is listening to them, and with what effectiveness are they making their voices heard? I think that needs to be looked at in more depth.

I would also, just on a final note, mention the knowledge management movement. I believe there may even be one that's emergent in National Defence. Why I bring that up here is that one single voice on any particular issue will have a difficult time making itself heard, especially to the media and especially in places where a sound bite isn't so important. However, the minds of many.... In fact, I think if you notice any kind of collective theme in our presentation here today, you will hear some themes that we hope are listened to and taken forward as our voice--even the fact that this book has been published, that people are actually identifying it, and also the book I quoted by Ian Smillie and Larry Minear, The Charity of Nations. The subtitle is Humanitarian Action in a Calculating World.

The world is different now. The world is different certainly from what it was 20 years ago or 50 years ago in the post-war era. We have a whole new set of rules to create and to pursue.

À (1030)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Thank you.

Odina.

[Translation]

Mr. Odina Desrochers (Lotbinière—Chutes-de-la-Chaudière, BQ): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome. I will give you time to connect to the most beautiful language in the world, French, and at the same time, I will point out that we belong to a bilingual country that respects both languages.

I would like to begin by congratulating you on the enormous task that you have accomplished and on the consistency of the responses provided by your group, under the coordination of Professor Forcese. I would also like to congratulate you on how well you prepared to appear before the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs. I would go so far as to say that you were better prepared than some of the official witnesses who have appeared before us.

Like my colleague, Claude, I began my career attempting to discover and understand what was happening in the world, and I was a journalist for 18 years. That is why my questions are very brief and very direct. I then decided that I wanted to change the world and be a part of current events, and now I am a member of Parliament. One day, if I write my memoirs, I will be able to say that I worked on both sides.

I took the time to look at your documents. You know, the world has changed since the famous events of September 2001.

How do you view Canada's role? The United States have some very aggressive laws. Here, we have legislation for the protection of information that is fairly far-reaching, the Privacy Act. How do you view the role of National Defence with regard to protection against terrorists? That is an important issue and I would like to know what you think about it.

[English]

Ms. Amy Awad: As a starting point, I should say we didn't consider this specific point as part of our presentation, so I'm just going to speak for myself. I'm not going to speak on behalf of the rest of the group.

It's almost self-evident that a proper strategy to combat terrorism will actually involve all aspects of government, so National Defence has a role to play in protecting Canadians against terrorism and other forms of attack, essentially.

Of course, there are concerns about the involvement of National Defence in anti-terrorism measures, because unlike traditional defence that involved armies and large groups of people, we're targeting individuals. This is usually the scope of the criminal justice system in Canada, and there are specific protections that are built into the criminal justice system for individuals who may not be accommodated as well within a kind of broader national defence framework, where national defence issues are taking the lead in the anti-terrorism measures.

What advice I could offer to the committee on this issue is just to be aware of that and that whatever role National Defence has to play, terrorism, because of its individualistic nature, involves individuals, and individual rights need to be protected in that process.

If you have any follow-up questions, maybe on something more specific, I'd be happy to address that as well.

À (1035)

[Translation]

Mr. Odina Desrochers: Would someone else like to respond?

Did you have a comment, Mr. Eaves?

[English]

Mr. David Eaves: Again, we didn't focus on the domestic implications of the war on terror in our report, so I will also be speaking more for myself, although having spoken with a number of members of Canada25, I think there's an enormous amount of concern about the direction and the scope of Canadian law and how it deals with the issue of terrorism and individual rights in this country.

Again, without a specific example, it'd be difficult for me to dive into it, but my statements would just reaffirm what Amy said. For us, the war on terror is not going to be won based on how many people we arrest or how effectively we target a terrorist group. Instead, it's going to be won on how effectively we preserve and protect the freedoms and rights that make Canadians the people we are. Insofar as this committee has influence on this debate, it's incredibly important to affirm that the rights of Canadians are protected and that situations like that with Arar do not occur again.

Ms. Rachel Hird: I would say that one role for National Defence would be to focus on how you incorporate intelligence into your decisions, especially seeing how intelligence information can be wrong and how it can be misinterpreted, depending on the policy views the people hearing the intelligence information already have. It's very difficult--I'm going to cite the Iraq situation again--but in the future, for any other country that could face a similar fate, it's very important that Canadian defence use its own intelligence and realize its own information and ask to see things for themselves before necessarily committing to going along on anti-terrorist operations. I would say that should also be a role.

Mr. David Eaves: I have one quick follow-up. One of the things this committee can do is this. The composition of the Canadian defence forces does not reflect that of Canadian society broadly. When it comes to the issue of defence, we need to have within the defence community the perspective of Arab Canadians, of aboriginal Canadians, and of other minority groups, because it's that community that can lend credibility and a voice to ensure that we have a defence policy that doesn't reach out and punish certain groups. It's that group that's going to enable us to understand the perspective. This committee, I think, has the very real task of ensuring that the composition of the Canadian Forces in Canada actually reflects the much more diverse nature of the Canadian population than what's found in the forces.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Thank you.

[Translation]

Mr. Odina Desrochers: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Judi.

Hon. Judi Longfield: Thank you.

I want to move to another area and look at the defence of the North American continent. That's certainly one of the roles we have to consider with respect to our defence policy.

I didn't hear any mention of NORAD in any of your briefs, and I'm wondering if there has been any thought or any discussion on the current roles of NORAD, how you see NORAD, and the possible expansion. NORAD is essentially aerospace, but they are looking at perhaps the marine and maritime aspect of it.

I'll start with that and then I have a few other follow-up questions. That's for whoever wishes to jump in at this point.

Mr. David Eaves: In our report we talk very explicitly of the extension of NORAD to sea operations, so I'll answer your question specifically by saying we see that as a necessity.

There's also a perception that there really is a North American defence arena that needs to be approached in a cohesive way, one that engages both the United States and Mexico, so we need to work closely with those allies. Different military treaties to better enable us to do that are something, the report argues, we would be in favour of.

It talks very specifically about ballistic missile defence. We purposely avoided a debate because what we wanted our report to do was to reach out ten years from now and not get caught up in the current debates, so maybe I'll speak just from a personal perspective. I sometimes struggle a great deal on the one hand with the idea that somehow it's okay for us to take a piece of metal and blow up another piece of metal at 20,000 feet, but somehow, when it happens at 100,000 feet, it ceases to be okay in the public's mind, or at least in the minds of many politicians. If that's what we're doing, then I think we need to have a new debate about ballistic missile defence.

My concern about ballistic missile defence is that it's not a defensive mechanism. If someone's going to launch a missile at this country, it's going to be fairly obvious where they're launching it from. You don't really need a system to stop that missile from coming in because the retaliation the United States is going to launch against that country will be so overwhelming that it would be a suicide attack. The circumstances where a country would choose to launch a missile at the United States might exist when the United States decided to launch a pre-emptory attack against, for example, North Korea, and in that pre-emptory attack it failed to destroy all of North Korea's capabilities to launch a counterattack. If at that point you used the ballistic missile defence to shoot down an incoming missile, it would cease to be a defensive mechanism and actually become an enabling mechanism for pre-emptory attack.

If that's where we think ballistic missile defence is going, then I think we need to also have a new debate about this and absolutely think very carefully about whether we want to be involved in enhancing the United States' capability for pre-emptory attacks.

À (1040)

Ms. Amy Awad: Without commenting specifically about the expansion of NORAD or other joint defence issues with the United States, I think there are a couple of things that need to be very clearly entered into the debate. I'm sure you've had members of National Defence here and they told you this is the ultimate way of leveraging our investment in defence; we make a small investment and get a very significant national security result. I think we need to bear in mind that the more we do this, the less control Canada will have over its defence policy. Some people say we don't really have that control anyway and they ask what difference it makes, but that needs to be a very important consideration as we move forward.

Whatever we expand, whatever we do, we need to bear in mind that to the extent we involve ourselves in things where we're giving away the decision-making capability, ballistic missile defence isn't only a problem because it may not work or it could be used aggressively. It's just that Canada will have no real role to play. Whether we're involved or we're not involved, we've lost the control over the airspace over our land. That's something that needs to be a factor in all our decisions in the future.

Ms. Rachel Hird: The only thing I would add to that--just expanding a bit on Amy's point, because I'm in complete agreement with her--is that when these expansions are looked at, just see how much money we actually have to put it and how much control, in terms of actual people with decision-making power at the table, was given in exchange for that. It is a situation where there is a very real possibility that if we say we don't want any part in continental defence, we will lose whatever remaining say we have. That's just something to consider when going forward. It will be better to work in cooperation if it means we can help direct that policy towards better efforts than just defence.

Hon. Judi Longfield: Do you see any role in tying trade issues to defence and security issues? Is there a quid pro quo, a “we'll do this if you do that” kind of thing? Should we be horse-trading a little more than we are now?

Mr. David Eaves: I worked as a negotiation consultant for four years, and everything in my training indicates to me that would be the wrong approach in this type of relationship. When it comes to the number of chips on the table, the United States has significantly more, and when it comes to horse-trading, we're going to run out of horses a lot more quickly than the United States is.

More importantly, we maybe in an advantageous position today in that we have a particularly big chip we can play, but the dynamic we set up with the United States when we do that will say this type of relationship, horse-trading, is the legitimate way in which we are now going to engage our relationship going forward. We can't turn around and say that when we have the bigger chip, we want to engage in horse-trading, and then ten years from now, when we no longer have the big chip and we need something or they want to do something and they have the big chip, say no, we believe in a relationship on principles in which the right answer is the only answer and we want to come to a common ground and use these criteria. It just doesn't work that way.

I think the onus is upon us to ensure that the process by which we negotiate with the United States, the type of relationship we want, is one we're always modelling. I'm very skeptical of the notion of horse-trading as a kind of a long-term strategy. While it may satisfy some in the short term, as a long-term strategy I think it would be absolutely disastrous.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Thank you.

We'll finish up the second round with Mr. Martin. Then we'll go to Mr. Bagnell, and finally to Mr. Blaikie.

Mr. Martin.

À (1045)

Hon. Keith Martin: Thank you.

I want to get back to UN reform. These are not academic questions. We're engaged in a process of UN reform right now, and there are some important meetings coming up on this issue.

Mr. Eaves, I appreciated the comments in your brief. You emphasized the importance of combat capability in our armed forces. Sometimes that's lost in the mix. We want to be good people, and the necessity of having combat capabilities is sometimes lost in the debate.

In respect of niche capabilities, the MTAP, military training assistance program, is something we are good at. Perhaps it's the type of niche you're talking about. In Sierra Leone, with a small number of people and limited resources, we were able to make a significant impact on something essential—security on the ground for the people there.

My question is, how are we going to pursue the small arms registry? If you were speaking to the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Minister of Defence, what would you say about what we should take to the table to strengthen the small arms registry? It's absolutely essential to address this capacity to kill people. It's a massive international health hazard. How would we convince other countries to strengthen the small arms registry? What do we need to ask when we come to the table?

Ms. Rachel Hird: One of the most compelling reasons for strengthening the small arms registry is that if developing countries agree to submit their statistics on small arms, registering their small arms, they would be increasing their domestic security vis-à-vis a future coup from a hostile power from within their own state. If the arms were registered, if they were properly secured, it would be more difficult for a rogue general, say, to get hold of them.

Small arms abuse has been closely linked to using child soldiers and to discrimination against women, because it's such a gender combat.

Hon. Keith Martin: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I'm referring to the P5. They're the primary sellers of small arms. That's where the rubber hits the road.

Ms. Rachel Hird: Okay, so trying to sell it to the P5, and why they should register....

Hon. Keith Martin: How do we deal with them? They're the biggest stumbling block in preventing conflict. What do we say to them?

Ms. Rachel Hird: One of the problems is that small arms are mostly produced by private companies, so it's not necessarily the governments that are producing them. You would be hard-pressed diplomatically to convince them to impose legislation to force these companies to register arms before they export them.

Hon. Keith Martin: That's the crux.

Ms. Rachel Hird: I don't know what you would use to convince them. It would be difficult. You could possibly link it back to their own domestic security. They would be preventing those arms from ending up in terrorists' hands down the road. You could use that. But it's difficult.

Hon. Keith Martin: Flipping over to non-proliferation and the new addendums coming out to the NPT, would you recommend that Canada strongly support these additions?

Ms. Rachel Hird: Such as?

Hon. Keith Martin: I'm referring to the obligations on the part of various countries to disclose materials and technologies that go into producing weapons of mass destruction.

Ms. Rachel Hird: Most definitely. It needs to be reported and it needs to be tracked. Export controls are the strongest mechanisms you have in combating proliferation.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Mr. Lunney wants to jump in with a short question. Then we'll have Mr. Bagnell and Mr. Blaikie.

Mr. James Lunney (Nanaimo—Alberni, CPC): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm jumping in late because I missed the first part of your presentation, and I do appreciate the opportunity to at least engage briefly here. And as much as I'm not a regular member of the committee, I found your presentation rather interesting and stimulating, and I appreciate the effort that's gone into it. It's great to see young people and future leaders engaging and thinking about these issues, and coming forward to the defence committee to try to advance them.

I'm interested in the concept here, and I like the way it's framed, “From Middle to Model Power”. I like that concept, because I personally think there is a role for Canada in the world and that we need to lay hold of it, and I appreciate the thoughts you've brought forward.

I'm looking in your report at the Vancouver meeting that was held, as one of many, I gather, from October 17 to 19 at the University of B.C. One of the four key areas they prioritized was creating partnerships with like-minded states. Here they make this simple statement:

While a commitment to Canada’s long-standing tradition of multilateralism should be maintained, we cannot address international issues through global institutions alone. Instead, Canada must acknowledge the limitations of those institutions and build partnerships with like-minded nations that seek to make a difference.

I think this point was raised by Mr. Bagnell, and certainly by Dr. Martin—the significant failures of our international institutions. In the UN, you have countries like Syria or Libya heading up UN councils or committees, and whether it's the human rights committee or the Security Council, we've ended up with a dysfunctional organization that is simply not capable of decisive action.

It seems to me that it wouldn't take a huge armed force in a place like Darfur, which we've mentioned here already, to make a difference there. But it seems to me that Canada, because of our very interesting multicultural makeup, is in a unique position to make a difference in the world by partnering with other countries. For example, if we wanted to move into an area like that, where there are very significant racial and ethnic and language components to the conflict, we could team up with other small powers that also have military forces and help to bridge some of those barriers. We could develop a force, incorporating some of our multi-ethnicity, very strategically to go in and make a difference and actually become the leader.

I'm wondering if all of you are in consensus on that, because we heard from one of the presenters that we have to do what the UN says. I'm wondering if there isn't some difference of opinion, or perhaps others of you might agree that there is a role for Canada in seeking consensus from other smaller powers to make a difference in the world in some of these regional conflicts.

À (1050)

Mr. David Eaves: What you're talking about doing is creating a coalition of the willing. In essence, you're talking about going out and getting a group of countries who think the same way you do, aligning them, and going and intervening in the affairs of another state.

In my own mind, again, with no choice being made, if you wish to do that, you can go ahead and do that, but then I think you place yourself in a very difficult position that you cannot then turn around and tell the United States that they are acting unlawfully and that we don't agree with the war in Iraq.

So if you'd like to create a coalition of the willing, I think coalitions of the willing are incredibly effective. NAFTA is a coalition of the willing; we didn't operate through the WTO, but we got together and created a free trade agreement. So I think they're incredibly effective in achieving change in the system. However, there's a price to be paid, and that price is that you can't criticize others who do the same thing, even if you don't agree with their goals.

Mr. James Lunney: Well, when lives are at stake and people, as Mr. Bagnell pointed out, are being dragged out of camps day after day, and women are being dragged out and raped at night when the few soldiers go home for the night, it seems to me that standing on a principle while people are being destroyed and genocide is taking place is not very helpful to the people in distress.

Mr. David Eaves: I'm not claiming this is an easy question to answer, but I am simply pointing out to you that if you go and do this, you would now enable other people to do this—and they may not have the same benign goals as you do. If you say it's legitimate for a coalition of the willing to invade another country and that the grounds for doing so can be determined by that coalition, then there's nothing to prevent an incredibly hostile or dictatorial state from saying, well, we're creating our own coalition of the willing and we're simply going to invade this country because we believe they're a security threat to us. The number of deaths created by that invasion may actually exceed the number you save in a given country that happens to be in strife today.

So again, I'm not saying you can't do it, but am simply saying that if you do it, there are enormous repercussions for how you can prevent further conflicts down the road.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): You're just about out of time, Mr. Lunney. I'd like to give somebody else an opportunity to respond to your first question.

Go ahead.

Ms. Margot MacPherson Brewer: What I believe I'm hearing from the committee is that this is an ongoing problem. How do you deal with both short-term and long-term objectives?

The short-term objective that you refer to is heinous, and one wonders how one can address it, but we are in a global situation at the present time where that is the reality that is being faced, and it is actually the most hopeful component, I think, of the 3D approach.

I would suggest that the military, development, and diplomacy all have different ways they might handle situations like that, and you have to do it without upending our relationships with multilateral institutions. There's no question about that. But the point I want to raise here is that the issue needs to be discussed. In the fact that it is being discussed in this forum and elsewhere, more humane-thinking people who are extremely concerned about the consequences of a Sierra Leone, a Darfur, or any other kind of crisis situation overseas can no longer stand the imbalance that's currently presented to us and look at due process when we're in a situation where, overnight, someone attacks a refugee camp and destroys a number of human beings.

My personal recommendation is for more discussion and a recognition that those situations exist, and as they do exist, then to propose solutions that can be more short-term without destroying our long-term integrity.

À (1055)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Thank you.

Larry.

Hon. Larry Bagnell: Based on what James said, Maya, if you could go sometime with Keith Martin to the Congo or Darfur, I'd like to hear your thinking after being in the immediacy of the situation.

Rachel, we did a study--it was in public, though--recently on our foreign intelligence. I think you have to remember that maybe we have one one-thousandth of the world's resources, and if we could do one one-thousandth of our own intelligence, we'd still need partnerships. Certainly United States intelligence has lots of flaws, but we have to work out what we have the capacity to do and where we could get good intelligence.

You're international lawyers. No one has mentioned that the international police force then would be Interpol. I have a personal crusade to try to beef up Interpol. We need it more and more. Canada is one of the biggest contributors, and all we put in is the price of a house in Toronto. Does anyone have any comments on that?

My last question is to David. You were talking about international exchanges, which is fine, but you also said we need to put our domestic house in order first.

We need internal exchanges first between Quebec and the rest of Canada so that every student gets to Quebec, and every Quebec student gets to the rest of Canada, to improve our understanding within the nation, and then I have no problem with the 25% of students also doing international exchanges.

Ms. Amy Groothuis: I can speak perhaps to your question regarding Interpol. It wasn't an issue that this group looked at either in our initial large-scale brief or in our discussion leading up to this presentation.

The only point I would make is that, from my understanding, our group at the University of Ottawa is a believer in multilateralism and in engaging other countries around the world in attempting to solve issues that Interpol would examine. So the only thing we could probably add is to say we would look forward to any recommendations that this committee would make about Canada's larger contribution to Interpol.

Mr. David Eaves: I don't disagree with you that Canadians should see more of Canada. However, I think international experience today is critical to the success of individual professional careers. In fact, when I look at my graduating class from high school, an enormous number of these people went abroad to learn Korean, to learn Japanese, to work internationally, because they knew those skills were almost a requirement to get a job back in Canada.

So while I agree that Canadians should know Canada, to have international experience is almost a prerequisite to function in the workforce today. My real concern, and the reason I think the recommendation is so important, is that I want to ensure that access to those skills isn't exclusively the domain of those Canadians who can afford to do it. If we want to have a competitive workforce, we need to open up the ability of international access to all Canadians, otherwise we're not going to have a level playing field when it comes to access to the jobs of the future for all Canadians.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Thank you.

Bill, go ahead.

Hon. Bill Blaikie: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I know David wanted to respond to something I said earlier, but I don't know if he still wants to. He could bootleg that in on the response to this question.

You talk about Canada as a model power, but then also refer somewhere to how you want to develop a model relationship between Canada and the United States. We're all trying to figure out what that ideal model is. I'd like to know a bit more about what you have in mind in terms of your actual proposal. Others may want to comment on this, because it seems to me this is one of the biggest challenges, if not the challenge for Canadians, this relationship.

We're going through it right now in Manitoba, on behalf of the whole country, with the Devils Lake diversion. We're about to have a situation where the United States will unilaterally engage in interbasin transfer of water and biota. It has refused to refer this to the IJC. This has all kinds of implications. People tend to see this as kind of a Manitoba issue, but if the United States can do this once without reference to the IJC, then it could divert water from Lake of the Woods without reference to the IJC, and it could do all kinds of things in the Great Lakes without reference to the IJC. So this is the thin edge of the wedge here, even though it's just a little slough somewhere in North Dakota. I don't know if any of you have turned your attention to that, but I think this is kind of a critical, immediate issue.

In terms of this model relationship with the United States, I got the impression from you, David--because you talked about being in favour of integrating the maritime component into NORAD--that it's close to the deep integration model that's being pushed by John Manley and the CEOs of the country. Is yours different in some way? How do you maintain the kind of independence of thought and sovereignty, and do that at the same time? I'd be interested in what you folks have been thinking about this as well.

Á (1100)

Mr. David Eaves: There's a lot in that question.

First, on the independence of thought, I know there's an enormous amount of concern. I find this especially when I talk to people in my parents' generation, who fear that Canada has become part of the United States. I lived in the United States for four years. I can tell you that if you can put me, blindfolded, even just in an airport anywhere in the United States or Canada, when you take off that blindfold I will know within 10 seconds whether I'm in Canada or the United States.

Many of the young people I talk to--not all, but many of them--don't share the same concern that Canada is going to become somehow melded into the United States simply as a result of closer integration, because there's a greater degree of confidence in who we are, what our value system is, and what our culture represents. There's an awareness of that, which I think gives people a bit of a feeling that there's a buttress against closer economic integration.

In terms of what we talk about as a model power, again I come back to this notion of how we really need to model the types of behaviour that we expect the United States to engage in when negotiating with us. I am incredibly concerned about what's going on with the diversion of the lake, because I think it's a step backwards, but it also reveals to me some of the problems we've had in past dealings.

Historically, we've relied on the kind of connection we've had with an elite northeast to maintain our relationship with the United States. The political power in the United States is shifting south and shifting west. I'm not sure what we've done to really engage the elites in those areas, and even along the borders. I know there are a number of border groups between governors and provinces, but the only incredibly active one is the one in the Maritimes. The other ones are significantly less active.

It's those types of relationships, the relationships between the governors and the premiers, between the local officials, the municipal officials, that I think will prevent problems like the ones you're talking about from happening in the future. It's going to be less and less the prime minister-presidential relationship that will prevent these, because these decisions are actually happening lower down within the countries. We need to have influence and contacts lower down and deeper into the United States than we currently do.

The most shocking statistic for me is, now that we've just expanded, we have 14 consulates in the United States, I think--that number is probably wrong--and Mexico has in excess of 30. How can we possibly expect that we have the same type of influence Mexico has, or that we're as aware of what's going on in all the small regional hubs in the United States and have the same kind of influence in those regional hubs as Mexico has, if we don't even have a presence in those places?

For me, the model relationship is, first, modeling the type of behaviour we want. It means that we don't engage in those activities, and when they do, we say, listen, this is not something that we would do, and we expect the same treatment from you. The second element is to really understand the United States. I think Jennifer Welsh is absolutely correct: there's an assumption in Canada that we know the United States very well; the fact is that we don't. We have no clue about the United States, about how it operates. Most people think if you can get the President to decide something, then it's going to happen, and it rarely happens that way. We need a real engagement with what the United States is, a kind of a study of that.

I definitely want the others to comment, so I'll stop there.

Á (1105)

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): The time is up, but if you have something, we'll accept it.

Ms. Margot MacPherson Brewer: My response is extremely short, and that is: be strong. When I say that, I mean that the best friends have the best boundaries. Within that context, those of you who are close to the fire, as it were, have the best perspective in terms of where there is this kind of slippage, where we are losing ground. Water, in terms of what Canada has to offer the United States as a resource, is probably one of the most telling.

That would be my final word: be strong.

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Very good.

Just before I thank and dismiss the witnesses, I'll remind committee members that some forms have been sent to you to fill out for our travel to Colorado, Virginia, and Washington. So for those of you who are left here, they should be somewhere. I know they're in my office.

The Clerk of the Committee: Right.

An envelope with the flights for the various trips was sent out late yesterday as well. Perhaps you could return that to the legislative box or my office as soon as possible, to indicate whether you are travelling with the committee and where you'll be leaving from and going back to.

Hon. Keith Martin: I have a point of order. This is really important, Mr. Chairman.

I think we should all congratulate Mr. Bagnell on his upcoming nuptials.

Some hon. members: Hear, hear!

An hon. member: Félicitations!

The Vice-Chair (Mr. Rick Casson): Larry is getting married? Good for you, Larry.

It will go without saying that she had better be a big pro-northern gal or she'll be in trouble. I'm sure she is.

I'd like to thank you all very much. Obviously you were well prepared, precise, and to the point. You had to be, when you're dealing in seven- and five-minute segments, as you saw. We do have a rather structured process to go through to give everybody an equal crack at it. It was well researched, well thought-out, and very well received by the committee. So congratulations on that.

Thank you for your time here today. Keep up the good work.

The meeting is adjourned.