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37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

0910

The Chair (Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.))

Dr. George Lindsey (Canadian Institute of International Affairs)

0915

0920

0925

The Chair

Dr. George Lindsey

The Chair

Dr. George Lindsey

0930

The Chair

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant (Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Canadian Alliance)

Dr. George Lindsey

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

Dr. George Lindsey

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

Dr. George Lindsey

0935

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

Dr. George Lindsey

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

Dr. George Lindsey

The Chair

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, Lib.)

Dr. George Lindsey

0940

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc

Dr. George Lindsey

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc

Dr. George Lindsey

0945

Mr. Keith Greenaway (Canadian Institute of International Affairs)

The Chair

Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC)

0950

Dr. George Lindsey

0955

Mr. Blair Seaborn (Canadian Institute of International Affairs)

Mr. David Kirkwood (Canadian Institute of International Affairs)

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

Dr. George Lindsey

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

The Chair

1000

Mr. Keith Greenaway

The Chair

Mr. Keith Greenaway

The Chair

Mr. Keith Greenaway

The Chair

Dr. George Lindsey

1005

Mr. Keith Greenaway

The Chair

Dr. George Lindsey

Mr. Clayton Beattie (Canadian Institute of International Affairs)

Mr. David Kirkwood

The Chair

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

1010

Dr. George Lindsey

1015

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

Mr. Blair Seaborn

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

Mr. Blair Seaborn

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

Mr. Blair Seaborn

The Chair

1020

Dr. George Lindsey

The Chair

1025

Dr. George Lindsey

The Chair

Dr. George Lindsey

Mr. Robert Edmonds (Past Chair, National Capital Branch, Canadian Institute of International Affairs)

1030

The Chair

Mr. Robert Edmonds

The Chair

Mr. Robert Edmonds

The Chair

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

Dr. George Lindsey

1035

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

The Chair

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc

Dr. George Lindsey

1040

1045

The Chair

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc

Dr. George Lindsey

Mr. Keith Greenaway

The Chair

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

1050

Dr. George Lindsey

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

General Clayton Beattie

Dr. George Lindsey

Mr. Dwight Fulford (Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies)

The Chair

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

The Chair

Dr. George Lindsey

1055

The Chair

Dr. George Lindsey

The Chair

Dr. George Lindsey

Mr. Robert Edmonds

The Chair

Dr. George Lindsey

The Chair

Dr. George Lindsey

The Chair

CANADA

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

NUMBER 026

2nd SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Tuesday, May 13, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿ (0910)

[English]

The Chair (Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.)): I'd like to call to order this meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), our order of the day is a study on Canada-United States defence cooperation and other related issues.

We have as our witness today Dr. George Lindsey, who is a senior research fellow with the Canadian Institute of International Affairs.

Mr. Lindsey, on behalf of the committee, I'd like to more formally welcome you here today. We're very interested in getting your comments. Obviously the issue of ballistic missile defence is very much front and centre these days. I gather you're going to be making some comments on that, so why don't I turn the floor over to you and let you get into your presentation.

Dr. George Lindsey (Canadian Institute of International Affairs): Thank you.

My remarks this morning will represent a summary of some of the discussions that have been held throughout the last couple of years by a study group of the national capital branch of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs.

Nearly all the members of our group are retired from many years of service in the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade or the Department of National Defence. They have been maintaining a close interest in Canadian-American relations and in what way the most appropriate military roles for Canada may be chosen for the defence of North American security. We would like to think that we're an example of how NGOs, or at least some NGOs, may be of use to the government in finding solutions to important national problems.

When our studies began, there was much public interest in the American plans for national missile defence, so we concentrated on that for the first year or so. Then, after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we expanded our horizon to include defence of North America against terrorism. Both of these subjects will be engaging the attention of the Canadian government and requiring decisions to be made during the next few years, but the one at the top of the agenda today seems to be ballistic missile defence. So I shall concentrate on the thoughts of our study group on the BMD problem, but if your discussions this morning turn toward terrorism as well, I would be glad to summarize what we have to say about that. An account of our conclusions regarding terrorism, as well as BMD, is included in the text that has been prepared for your committee.

It is useful to remember how Canada and the United States handled the problems of defence of North America during the Cold War. The Cold War brought the threats of nuclear weapons delivered by long-range bomber aircraft, launched from the Soviet Union. The shortest routes for these bombers to targets in the central 48 United States, as well as in Canada, led over the North Atlantic, Arctic, and North Pacific Oceans, and over Canada.

The first priority for defence was to provide early warning of the approaching attack so that the bombers of the U.S. Strategic Air Command could get airborne before they were destroyed on the ground. This warning was provided by the Distant Early Warning Line, extending from Alaska across the northern edge of mainland Canada to Greenland and Iceland.

The second priority was to provide active defence with interceptor fighters, surface-to-air missiles, and anti-aircraft guns, distributed across southern Canada and throughout the United States. The alerting, assignment, and control of these weapons was provided by the radars of the Mid-Canada Line, across central Canada, and a continuous network of control radars across southern Canada, the Pinetree Line, and throughout the central 48 United States.

This extensive system came under the command and control of NORAD, the North American Air Defence system, a truly international organization for which the Canadian-U.S. border had no significance. It is one of the best examples of mutually satisfactory Canadian-American relations we've ever had, and it brought access to Canadians of information and planning that would not otherwise have been available to us.

Then the bomber threat became overtaken by ballistic missiles. This included ground-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBMs, and submarine-launched missiles.

Again, the first priority was for early warning of the launching of Soviet missiles so that the American ICBMs could be launched before they were destroyed in their silos.

¿ (0915)

Powerful new radars were installed, but they were in Alaska, Greenland, and England, and formed the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, or BMEWS. They could track the early part of the trajectory of ICBMs heading toward North America.

Subsequently, BMEWS was followed by satellites in high geosynchronous orbits, able to detect the launch of ballistic missiles anywhere within an enormous area of the earth's surface.

Over a long period, the United States instituted several very large programs, hoping to develop systems to intercept ICBMs: Nike Zeus, Sentinel, Safeguard, and the Strategic Defense Initiative. None of these systems for warning or for active defence required elements to be based in Canada. Only one of these ever achieved deployment, and this only for a few weeks.

Thus, during the Cold War, defence of North America against the air threat called for an integrated system in which Canadian territory and the Canadian Armed Forces made a crucial contribution to the protection of the central 48 United States, but against the ICBM threat, Canadian territory and Canadian cooperation was not necessary for the protection of the United States.

With the end of the Cold War, there seemed little need to defend North America from long-range attack by ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles, or bombers. But for operations overseas, an increasing threat was growing from short-range ballistic missiles, SRBMs, some of which were used in the Iran-Iraq, Russian-Afghan, and Persian Gulf wars.

Today, large numbers of SRBMs are in the possession of many countries that seem to be likely opponents in the type of overseas operations that have been conducted by the United States and the Canadian Armed Forces.

The United States undertook several parallel research and development programs to extend the capabilities of some of their anti-aircraft weapons, to enable them to intercept short-range ballistic missiles. Good progress has been made with the army's Patriot and THAAD--that's Theater High Altitude Aerospace Defense--and the navy's Theater-Wide, and the airforce's Airborne Laser. This last one is specifically intended for anti-ballistic missile defence, rather than growing up from an expansion of the anti-aircraft role.

Most of these systems show promise that, with further development, they may be able to intercept not only short-range ballistic missiles, but probably also intercontinental missiles in the early and final stages of their long trajectories.

While the development of these defences against short-range ballistic missiles proceeded, and for reasons never convincingly explained, the United States became concerned over the possibility of attack on North America by ICBMs armed with weapons of mass destruction, launched from what they described as “rogue states” such as North Korea, Iran, or Iraq.

The Americans instituted a major program to develop a system to intercept these ICBMs in the mid-course of their intercontinental trajectory.

In order to reach the high altitudes attained in the mid-course of an ICBM and to make a successful interception, an interceptor missile needs to be boosted to a very high speed, provided with extremely accurate guidance, and able to manoeuvre in the vacuum of outer space. These are very demanding requirements, well beyond those necessary for interception of short-range ballistic missiles. Perhaps it's the most challenging technical undertaking that has ever been taken in the world. This is no mean task.

The current American plan for national missile defence calls for deployment beginning with a small number of these ground-based interceptors to be put in Alaska in 2004. However, discouraged by the disappointing results of their early tests of these ground-based interceptors, the United States has expanded its ultimate plans for national missile defence.

Now it's going to be a multi-layered system. Some weapons will be able to intercept ICBMs in the early ascent, and some in the final descent, as well as those designed against the mid-course phase of their intercontinental trajectories.

¿ (0920)

Interception in the early ascent phase will require interceptors to be located quite close to the launching sites of the ICBMs, possibly on ships or aircraft and far from North America. Interception in the terminal phase will require the interception of missiles to be located in the vicinity of the targets of the ICBMs, presumably mostly in concentrations of American cities.

For target acquisition and fire control, it may be necessary to site radars and the means to relay information well ahead of the areas to be protected. This suggests some installations in Canadian territory could become important for the defence of areas in the northern United States, even more so if protection were to be provided for the cities in southern Canada.

Well, that's the basis of what we think the world situation was.

What are the suggested roles for Canada? Well, here they are, according to our group:

Canada should agree in principle to cooperate with the United States in the planning of defences for North America against possible attacks by ICBMs, but we should make two particular means of cooperation--the ones we would prefer to concentrate our efforts on. One is to discuss with the Americans any requirements for the siting and operation of equipment in Canadian territory and see what it is they would like us to do. The second is for Canada to undertake active participation in the development of mobile weapons systems designed for the interception of aircraft, cruise missiles, and short-range ballistic missiles, and to give special attention to the extension of these capabilities to enable them to intercept longer-range missiles in the early ascent or the late descent phases of their trajectories.

What would this achieve for Canada? Four things:

First, we would enter into cooperation with the United States on continental missile defence and consequently strengthen the case for our continuing participation in NORAD, with expanded responsibilities and hopefully under the same terms that have been so successful in the past.

Second, we would contribute to the development of much-needed protection for overseas operations of the type frequently involving Canadian forces.

Third, we would contribute to the development of systems that may be able to intercept ICBMs in the terminal phase of their trajectory. That's the type of ballistic missile defence that is most likely to require installations on Canadian territory.

And fourth, this would provide opportunities for Canadian industry.

Mr. Chairman, that's the extent of my remarks about BMD. If we want to bring up terrorism later, we have something on that too.

¿ (0925)

The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Lindsey.

You have behind you a distinguished group of Canadians, and I think the committee would benefit from having them introduced. Would you be prepared to do that?

Dr. George Lindsey: I'd be delighted. Reinforcements forward.

The Chair: Perhaps--because I think we're running a little low on seating here--if some of the members would like to join us at the table, we could conduct this meeting a little bit more informally than we normally do.

While we're getting organized here, just for the benefit of committee members who may not have had the opportunity to read Dr. Lindsey's biography, he obtained a BA in mathematics and physics at the University of Toronto, an MA from Queen's University, and a PhD from Cambridge in nuclear physics. He worked with the operational research group in the defence research board of the Canadian Department of National Defence. He also headed the operational research sections in air defence command and NATO SACLANT anti-submarine warfare centre in Italy, and then as chief of the operational research and analysis establishment in defence headquarters from 1967 to 1987. Since retirement, as I mentioned earlier, he's been with the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies and also involved with the Canadian Institute for International Peace and Security.

Perhaps we could get on with the introductions, Dr. Lindsey.

Dr. George Lindsey: They're plugging in their hearing aids at the moment.

Here we have...I think of him as Air Commodore Greenaway, but he's also Brigadier General Greenaway, who's probably the leading Canadian in the examination of the Canadian north from the air and in ways of navigating over territory that's never been mapped before. So he has a really good background in air force things.

Mr. Dwight Fulford is a former foreign service officer who's seen action in many parts of the world as a member of delegations abroad.

We also have.... I should think you must have appeared in front of this committee many times. I don't know how to explain all the things you've done.

When we first read about him in the newspaper, he was in Vietnam and was taking signals to the other side because the Americans couldn't go, and since then he's had all kinds of extraordinary services in various parts of the world, particularly in things connected with intelligence and Canadian, American, and other foreign relations. We have Mr. David Kirkwood, and I don't know whether to say he's from National Defence or from Foreign Affairs, because he's spent parts of his life working for both of these organizations and has been a deputy minister in some sort of money scheme too.

General Beattie was one of our main leaders of peacekeeping operations in Cyprus, and he was also in charge of defence in the north for some years. He was involved in a previous study by the CIIA on northern affairs that produced quite a lot of interesting devices, so he has a lot to say about the north.

We have Bob Edmonds, who is also a foreign service officer, and he was the head of the national capital branch until a couple of years ago. He's been dealing with this sort of problem for most of his life. I think he doesn't like arms in space. We have all sorts of different ideas in our group.

Anyway, those are the ones who have shown up.

¿ (0930)

The Chair: Okay.

Perhaps we could get underway with the questioning now. We have Ms. Gallant for seven minutes.

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant (Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, Canadian Alliance): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

With the rogue states together with China now having access to intercontinental ballistics, does your organization believe it is now necessary to install anti-ballistic interceptors in the Arctic?

Dr. George Lindsey: I think most of the people whose work we've followed and respect don't really see a great threat from rogue states with intercontinental ballistic missiles, certainly not in the near future, and very doubtfully ever. Both of those things you mentioned--the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction and the acquisition of ballistic missiles of intercontinental range--are extremely difficult things to do, and only a major country working for years could do them. There is the chance they might be able to buy or steal or otherwise acquire a few things, and I think it's very likely they could get some biological or chemical weapons they would be able to use. But nuclear weapons are much more difficult, and intercontinental ballistic missiles are almost impossible.

We don't see why there's such a concern over it and why it should have such a priority in their defence spending. Now, if all they were going to do was work for years on getting better at defending themselves against somebody's ballistic missiles, that would be sensible. But to put it at the top of the priorities with all the other threats in the world--of which short-range ballistic missiles are a major one--would seem a far more sensible thing. Our attitude would be, well, we don't agree with the American priorities, but we see what they're trying to do.

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: Thank you very much.

You mentioned short-range missiles. How would your group propose to safeguard North American coastal waters against merchant ships who may have been retained by rogue states or terrorist groups and who are capable of launching missiles that would hit North American cities?

Dr. George Lindsey: I think this is one of the most difficult and most likely threats. Whereas overhead surveillance would tell you that a ship was coming, there are going to be thousands of freighters from all over the world and all over the oceans all of the time. You can't tell very much from an overhead surveillance whether something like that is being planned. I would say the only chance of effective defence against that is to be able to board ships and make a physical inspection before they've come into port.

Now, if we had a very good intelligence system that could somehow, out of all these thousands of ships, indicate such and such a ship is a bit suspect, or such and such a ship has come from a place where we think there might be terrorists or producers of weapons, then it would be selected for inspection, which would have to be done by things like coast guard cutters or small naval ships. They would put people aboard who would be allowed to go all over the ship. I think this is the only way you could stop a thing like that.

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: In your opinion, do these rogue states have the technology to be able to launch a short-range missile from coastal waters onto the continent, or do you feel that capability isn't realistic at this point?

Dr. George Lindsey: I think it is realistic. There are thousands of short-range ballistic missiles scattered all over the world, in the control of many countries, many of whom would have been part of the former Soviet Union. I'm sure a lot of those SCUD-like things are for sale or for theft.

Arranging to launch one from a ship would not be terribly difficult. Their launching facilities are not all that complicated. It would take some engineering with a freighter, but I think it could be done. I think it is a possibility. If it only had a high-explosive warhead, it wouldn't really do the most terrible damage; if it had a nuclear warhead, that would be bad news. But then that's asking terrorists to be a lot more advanced than we think would be easy for them at the moment. I think this is something that needs to be given a lot of attention.

¿ (0935)

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: You are mentioning that overhead surveillance would perhaps be able to detect something like that. Would not the satellite-based IR sensors be able to detect it in time?

Dr. George Lindsey: Well, once the missile was launched, yes, it would. But if it's a short-range missile, its time of flight is only about eight minutes. And if it's come closer to shore and it's aiming at closer targets, it's much less than eight minutes. To keep the whole of North America on a sort of eight-minute trigger is not an easy thing to do.

Also, you'd use up quite a few of the eight minutes asking, what's that hot thing there where ship so and so was--it's moving, it's moving. You would realize it was a short-range missile within a few minutes, but it would require really rapid and remarkably precise operation of the system, and there wouldn't be time for somebody to phone the president or look in a book. And then, if they did know it was a missile, providing defence against short-range missiles all up and down the coasts of North America would be a very heavy undertaking, one that I think would not be practical to do.

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: If the technology were in place for these space-based lasers, would even they be in a position to do so?

Dr. George Lindsey: Oh, the technology is here. That's what the systems to defend against short-range missiles do, and that's what they did successfully in Iraq a couple of weeks ago. But you'd have to have so many of them all up and down both coasts, and they'd have to have soldiers on three-hour shifts standing there, and if one of them happened to look out the window and use up some of your eight minutes, it'd be too late. It just doesn't sound very practical.

The Chair: Thank you, Mrs. Gallant.

Mr. LeBlanc.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc (Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, Lib.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And thank you very much, Dr. Lindsey, for your comments and for bringing such a distinguished group of your colleagues here this morning. The vast array of experience at this table is very interesting to note. I think we can learn a lot, and I think Canadians can learn a lot, from your experience and the work you have done at the institute. So thank you.

Dr. George Lindsey: Well, I think I'd go back to the model of NORAD where we were hand in glove, absolutely in cahoots with the Americans. I don't think we lost sovereignty; I think we simply re-established it, if you like, if it had ever not been established. I think to enter into discussions with anybody about anything doesn't interfere with your sovereignty.

Questions may arise about who has the authority to make a decision. There may not be time to consult Ottawa and Washington. Perhaps we have to say that a general in Colorado Springs has the authority, and perhaps he's an American, but when he's on leave it's his Canadian deputy. That doesn't seem to be losing sovereignty to me; it's simply making a sensible arrangement with a colleague. Now, the colleague happens to be ten times as big and a hundred times as powerful as us, so it's not a coalition of equals, but we can't help that. I don't think our sovereignty is in danger there, no.

I can see some danger if we take the other line and say we're not having anything to do with it because we're all pure and clean, and you can do what you like. Supposing they discover they want a radar station in the north, or they want to put some weapons somewhere up in the northeast corner because it's the right place to do it, and we say they can't. I don't know what will happen, but I think the way the Americans behave today they will ruddy well come and do it for us.

I think that is really more likely to be the case over the other subject, terrorism. If we establish a good overhead surveillance system of the uninhabited parts of North America, so we know what's going on in our own country, it strengthens our sovereignty. If we have arguments over the Northwest Passage or something, if we know what's going on there, instead of having to read about it in the New York Times, it strengthens our sovereignty.

If we don't do it and the Americans want to know what's going on up there, they will come and do it for us. So I think the sovereignty question is very central to this, but turning our back on the United States is a way to lose it.

I don't know if some of our more erudite people would have anything to say about this.

¿ (0940)

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: I'd be curious. I don't know, Mr. Chairman, but if Dr. Lindsey's colleagues have anything to add, it could come from my time. I think it would be an interesting discussion.

I'm learning about these things, but as I understood it, one of the options, if Canada agrees to discuss how we could ultimately participate, was the opportunity to locate the national missile defence in NORAD, as opposed to an American-only command, Northern Command, for example.

In my view, that would ensure that Canada has a legitimate and real role in understanding and cooperating on something like national missile defence, as opposed to simply being an observer. Do you think this is a fair assumption as well, that NORAD is a better vehicle in which to operate such a missile defence, as opposed to some American-only command?

Dr. George Lindsey: I certainly do.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Mr. Chairman, I was curious when Dr. Lindsey talked about opportunities for Canadian industry. In my mind, this is one of the reasons the government should understand more about what the Americans are proposing, and discuss with them ways in which perhaps we could be involved, because it may offer opportunities for Canadian industry, as you yourself said.

I'm wondering if you can expand on those possible opportunities. You talked about some sort of mobile weapon system as a way for us to involve Canadian industry. I'm wondering if you or your colleagues have a sense of where current Canadian industry could be involved, to the best of our current understanding of the American plan.

Dr. George Lindsey: Well, I'll say something and then I might ask Air Commodore Greenaway to add to it.

Canada has had quite a good series of successful experiments to do with space. RADARSAT was a real breakthrough, and the people who did it are still around looking for business.

Part of the game depends on sensors, infrared, ultraviolet lasers. Canada is near the top of the heap in pursuing some of this technology.

A great deal of it depends on information transfer over large distances in a short time. We've had to do this because we're such a big, spread-out country anyway, so we're pretty good at it. Then there's the current information processing where you get information from all sorts of places, all coming into one place, and somehow or other you have to get one picture that summarizes it all. This is a form of electronic technology where Canada is no mean player.

When it comes to airborne and shipborne things, this isn't quite so much industry as military, but the navy has had many years of surveying things over the North Atlantic and it's pretty good at it, and it has been pretty good at inventing or developing equipment to do it. The air force has done a lot of things in the north.

I'll ask Air Commodore Greenaway to say a word about that if he would.

¿ (0945)

Mr. Keith Greenaway (Canadian Institute of International Affairs): Yes.

I'm going back about 40 or 50 years. The air force had responsibility for doing the photography of Canada to develop our first set of maps of the country. When they completed the trimetrogon program--that was a vertical and the two obliques--then it was handed over to industry to follow up with the verticals. Through this technique, moving it out of the military, we developed a very good capability--in fact it was the best in the world--on this photography. Through CIDA this was employed overseas and in Africa, and we made a good name for the country on it.

Out of this, of course, we moved from the photographic to the ultraviolet to the various other parts of the spectrum. And in this area we can compete easily with the Americans.

The point is we have not had the large operational requirement or the industry to compete with. Many of the ideas we have come up with in Canada wind up being developed below the border. This is typical of the navigation aids we developed. In any of the advanced aircraft today, you can go back and say that the philosophy came out of Canada because of problems we had with the magnetic pole in our country and the extreme convergences and meridians. But our internal domestic requirement and our industrial base were not large enough to take it overseas to the same degree. It was picked up primarily by the Americans.

Could I just digress for one moment? I think it's all right for us to be very critical of the American view that they are threatened. We say, well, they're not threatened. This is our interpretation. But if the Americans feel threatened--they are our neighbours, and if they feel threatened, it's their dollars being spent--we can alert them to that.

However, we are their good neighbours. We have trade with them and that. Okay, so how can we help them? We don't agree with them on a basic principle, but it's no good for us to be yapping at them all the time. Let's ask them, where can we help you with what you consider to be your threat?

We divide it and send a line down the middle on this. We can say we don't agree with you, but we will help you out on this, knowing full well that behind the scenes there is a good opportunity for our industry. I would go the other route, but we're blocked out.

That's where I feel very strongly, as George did, on the work in what we call the terminal, short-term stage. This is a very useful area. We have had work. The Oerlikon plant down on the Richelieu has a very good ADATS system. In fact, it is better than the PAC-3 of the Americans, but there is a political problem with selling it there, as you may know. But that system was good. As you know, that system was used for defence coverage when the G-8 was meeting in various places. It was a Canadian system, which we developed basically from Canadian criteria. We don't hear anything about it. It's been our policy not to publicize weaponry, but it is a defensive system.

The Chair: Thank you.

Perhaps, Air Commodore, we can come back to this at some point. Mr. LeBlanc's time has expired.

We will go at this point to Mrs. Wayne.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC): Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm truly honoured, Dr. Lindsey, to be in the company of so many who have the Order of Canada. I see the pins are there, and I think that's wonderful, I really do.

I have had major concerns for Canada. I say this because at one point in time, following September 11, we found that they had a list of all of the nuclear power plants in Canada, and one was the one in Saint John, New Brunswick, which is my riding, Point Lepreau. We are closest to the U.S. border there, as well. So some of these terrorists were taking a look at the nuclear power plants in Canada. I've had a major concern since then.

Also, as I stated, there were 23 reservations made out of Saint John to go to New York City, but they weren't kept. And then, after September 11, there was one that was made and it was kept. But when the chap got to Toronto, they called up from Toronto and said he had a false passport, a false ID, false everything. His picture was in the paper as to who he was.

So I think we have a major role to play here. We've always felt safe and secure and so on, but I think it's time for us also to be on our toes and to watch and be very careful in the future, because I really worry. We should be working with the Americans when it comes to missile defence. I think we should be working with Americans for defence, period. I truly do. We are neighbours. Yes, we have our sovereignty, as Dominic has said, and we want to keep our sovereignty, and we will. They're not asking us to give it up.

I have to say that I'm very concerned. When I look at your presentation and, as Dominic was referring to, at what we could be doing here in Canada, you said here we should volunteer to cooperate with the Americans, and I think you're right.

You also said undertaking research and development of mobile systems designed for air and missile defence, pursuing technologies that show promise to improve capabilities to intercept short-range ballistic missiles and eventually also the first and the last parts of the trajectories of intercontinental ballistic missiles would offer prospects for participation by leading Canadian industries that possess relevant experience in developing the technologies needed for space vehicles, aircraft, wide-spectrum sensors, long-distance communications, computers, and information processing.

I think that's very important. It truly is, in this day and age. I have grandchildren, and I worry about them now, because I don't think that everything is as safe and secure as we would like it to be. I believe there are those out there who will be looking at Canada as well as the U.S., because we are so close to that U.S. border. So I really and truly believe that we should be playing a role.

Mr. Chair, I would like to see our committee go down to NORAD. I would like to see us there, the sooner, the better. I think it's very important that we go and talk to those people down there, that they see we are willing to participate, that we are willing to work with them, and let them know that.

If we don't go with the ballistic missile defence, do you think, Dr. Lindsey, that we will still be part of NORAD, or will they say that's it for Canada?

¿ (0950)

Dr. George Lindsey: Madam, you've covered quite a lot of points there. I think I might ask Blair Seaborn to help me out on a couple of them.

First of all, you mentioned nuclear facilities, and then later on you said that we have many other valuable things that could be targets for terrorists. That is very true, and I think as the energy crisis develops the Americans will become more and more anxious to have Canadian power and Canadian fuel and gas transferred over the pipelines. A lot of the pipelines are in uninhabited territory, practically defenceless. The nuclear power generating station would be a tempting target. It would take a fairly sophisticated weapon, I think, to destroy one, because, for their own reasons, they have very heavy shielding all around everything. If somebody could break one open, that would be very bad news, for sure.

In general, I think you are supporting what I say about Canadians taking a certain initiative, trying to look at useful things we can do, and do them. I think that's really fundamental. It's often criticized that we are always reacting: we sit there, and the Americans think of something and we say yes or no. Why don't we think of something? We should, and we should do something about it.

Here, we have the very happy possibility that what we would do to make the Americans feel happy would be good for us, too, and that's where I think money would return two for one.

I think Blair Seaborn must have thoughts about all these sorts of things. He was a real expert on nuclear things, and he still is. Perhaps he's not allowed to talk about it, though.

¿ (0955)

Mr. Blair Seaborn (Canadian Institute of International Affairs) It's nothing about not being allowed to talk about it. My expertise, if there is any, had to do with the disposal of nuclear fuel waste.

On the other question, however, I'm not terribly knowledgeable other than to reinforce what I think you said, that the very construction of most nuclear power plants is such that it would be very difficult to break into them.

I was involved in a recent panel in South Africa and in doing some studies there, and our judgment was that even trying to hit a nuclear plant with an aircraft was not very likely to create large damage because of the surrounding structure that was there.

However, I have a nuclear physicist friend on my right. If he'd like to speak to that question, I'll let him do so.

Mr. David Kirkwood (Canadian Institute of International Affairs): I think I'll pass. My nuclear physics expertise ended in 1950 when I left Chalk River.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Being in my city, with the largest privately owned oil refinery in Canada and then the nuclear power plant.... And we are sending over nuclear power to the U.S.A. We have a contract with them. So we have a partnership with the U.S.A. Perhaps it's because I have two brothers who are businessmen in the U.S. that I really feel very strongly that we need to work very closely with the U.S. as our partners.

Do you feel that if we don't become part of the ballistic missile defence program, we will still be part of NORAD, or will that be the end of it, with the U.S.A.?

Dr. George Lindsey: Well, I think a lot of people whose occupation demands them to keep really close track of that don't know the answer to that. I think the United States is determined when its own safety is at stake. As Keith Greenaway pointed out, it doesn't matter whether we think they're in danger; if they think they're in danger then they're going to do something about it, and they're not going to let some other country that disagrees with them get in the way.

So I suspect that if we don't play ball with them over ballistic missile defence--and remembering that the bomber threat is just about gone--probably NORAD would shrink to something of far less significance. They might still have something to do with air traffic control and that sort of thing, but I think we would lose one of our most valuable links with them when we're in a way equal and we're privy to a lot of discussions we wouldn't get otherwise.

A lot of Canadian officers who have served in the NORAD headquarters at Colorado Springs find after they have been there for a few months that the Americans forget that they are not Americans, and they're really in the family, and that's good.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Yes, indeed.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Thank you, Mrs. Wayne.

Dr. Lindsey and Air Commodore, I have a few questions, following up with respect to the air commodore's comments.

You really stimulated my curiosity in terms of your comments with respect to the Oerlikon ADATS system and the low-level air defence capability that we've had in the past in Canada. It seems to me, in terms of the discussion of this layered system of missile defence, we have some of the components already in place, when we look at, for instance, the ground-based radar and the access to space sensors that we have through NORAD and some of the hardware we have, like the Oerlikon system.

But it seems to me as well, when we look at what has been talked about in the U.S., in terms of intercepting missiles in the boost phase with a sea-based system, the Americans are using the Standard Missile-3, the SM-3, off their AEGIS-class destroyers. We use the SM-2, I gather, off our Iroquois-class frigates. Could you describe a little bit about what it would take to upgrade some of these systems? For instance, give us a bit of an explanation as to what the Oerlikon system was intended to counter. Obviously, it seems to me that it was a theatre missile defence system.

Can you also expand a little bit about the capabilities in relation to the PAC-3 system, the Patriot Advanced Capability-3 system, because the PAC-3 system seems to have gotten some good reviews out of Iraq in terms of the interception of some missiles. Perhaps you could provide us with a bit more information on that subject, because I can tell you, all of us sitting around the table are more or less neophytes on the subject.

À (1000)

Mr. Keith Greenaway: The PAC-3--and in fact the PAC-2, if you go back--were never really tested outside a very controlled environment. The PAC-3 shot down a British aircraft, which it shouldn't have shot down, had the system been operating properly. There's a lot of development required on the PAC-3 yet. It was thrown in very quickly, and there was a lot of hype and publicity with it.

There is a philosophy in the American.... I spent about eight years total with the Americans on R and D, two years operational with SAC. They have a tendency to take a system that has a possibility and introduce it and then let it grow. In the initial stages, when it goes in, it normally fails miserably, and they keep working on it. This is very difficult for us and others. You read the reports coming out, and you're never certain whether this is factual or a sales pitch for it.

The PAC-3 has not really been tested. Even in the current war it had some very serious failings in sorting out what was enemy and what was not.

The Chair: I understand, though, that they did manage to shoot down one or two missiles with the PAC-3 system. Maybe I'm in error that way in terms of my impressions. You would probably have more information on it.

Mr. Keith Greenaway: I'm still suspect about that. I'll just leave it that way.

The Chair: Could you talk a little about the Oerlikon system in relation to our own capabilities that way and what it's capable of doing?

Mr. Keith Greenaway: The Oerlikon was developed to meet a Canadian army requirement, basically anti-tank and anti-aircraft, that range. But they've extended it into the final stages of intercepting an ICBM, in the terminal stage of it.

They had hoped to get into the American market, but it was like us trying to get into the American market with aircraft--very difficult--and they didn't succeed.

But the Oerlikon system has been tested in the field continuously, and they've expanded it, not only the range for the low-level aircraft but also the vertical range, to include the intercept of missiles coming in. These are done, and the firing of them is controlled automatically. The intercept, detection, and the firing is interconnected.

It's a very straightforward system, from that point of view. It's a good system, and I would suspect that if we were into any agreement with the Americans on ballistic missile defence, they would be most happy to see us with the Oerlikon-type system as in the terminal defence.

The Chair: Dr. Lindsey.

Dr. George Lindsey: With respect to how the American system worked out in the recent war, the Americans claim that the PAC-3, the Patriot system with the more elaborate system in it, did shoot down nine short-range missiles. They were very short-range; they were sort of being lobbed from the bottom part of Iraq into Kuwait. They said they got nine of them. We'll see whether that's true or not, but even if it was only say five out of nine, that's some success.

À (1005)

Mr. Keith Greenaway: I want to mention that some of these missiles that were of Russian design had greater power than the framework could carry, and some of them disintegrated.

When they analysed it after the Gulf War, that is what had happened. They found out that where the PAC-2 was trying to shoot down these missiles, they weren't. They were shooting in the direction of them, but a lot of these missiles were disintegrating because the structural design was so weak.

The Chair: Dr. Lindsey.

Dr. George Lindsey: If we're going to say some more about the anti-aircraft end of it, General Beattie is one of our crack anti-aircraft specialists. I'd ask him if he would like to say anything.

Mr. Kirkwood has a thought about another part of the question.

Clay, would you like to say anything about the anti-aircraft part?

Mr. Clayton Beattie (Canadian Institute of International Affairs): We have troops training and being qualified in the ADATS system. I think you're aware of that. We're trying to keep in there and keep that alive. None are deployed operationally in the field at this point, but they're available and taking part in training exercises.

Mr. David Kirkwood: Mr. Chairman, on a different aspect of the matters before the committee, I'd like to say a word about the question with regard to sovereignty that was raised by Mr. LeBlanc. To do this, I would like to compare two situations that have been important in recent months in Canada-U.S. relations.

One situation has to do with the U.S. position on Iraq, where we were subjected to very heavy pressure to participate in the U.S. action along with Britain. We declined to do so in the absence of UN endorsement of the operation. That was very clearly an exercise of sovereignty, and we exercised our sovereignty in that case because the government concluded that what the United States was proposing to do was wrong, was not the right way to deal with the particular problem.

The question of our relationship with the United States with regard to North American defence, to anti-ballistic missile defence, and so on, also involves--or in many people's eyes involves--the question of sovereignty, but I think there's an important distinction to be made. What the U.S. is apparently contemplating in that area is action to protect itself in terms of threats it perceives. As Dr. Lindsey has said, we disagree with them a bit about the priority of the ballistic missile threat to North America, but I don't think we can raise any objection to the United States' desire to protect itself against threats that it perceives to be real.

I don't see any problem about our own sovereignty in cooperating with them in such action, action that is not unjustified in any absolute sense, as far as we're concerned--the priority may be wrong, but that's another matter--particularly if cooperation offers a variety of incidental benefits to us directly. To cooperate there is a positive exercise of sovereignty.

I think there has been some tendency in public discussion to see the two issues as somewhat similar. A lot of people in Canada weren't happy about the U.S. position on Iraq. There are people in Canada who consider that the United States is overly militaristic, overly aggressive, and that ballistic missile defence is just one more manifestation of U.S. militarism. I think the analogy is a false one, and it has tended to confuse the discussion.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Mrs. Gallant.

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: Mr. Lindsey, the eight minutes for the short-range missiles is still concerning me. With the technology as it now exists, or perhaps what they are working towards in the future, would the space-based laser system be adequate to take care of a number of these threats? As you said, it was impractical to put the missiles in place or board all the ships that are within our coastal waters, even from suspect countries.

What is your knowledge of this?

À (1010)

Dr. George Lindsey: The space-based laser is one of the projects that is, I think, furthest from completion. It's an extremely difficult technical problem, because lasers are a little bit like light: it doesn't take much energy to have a tiny light bulb, and yet you can see it miles away; but if you are going to use the laser to destroy something you have to deliver a tremendous amount of heat in a short space of time, and that takes millions of times the power that it takes to simply illuminate something.

Lasers have been very successful as a sort of equivalent of radar for detecting the range and the bearing of something or of sending signals. But to make it into a weapon you have to have a very great source of sudden power, and that, with the present technology, requires a great deal of weight and a great deal of fuel.

A land-based laser is almost with us. The Americans have a weapon that has succeeded in actually destroying some rockets in flight. I don't think they have got around to ballistic missiles, but they are on their way. But that's a huge construction, with, I don't know, thousands of pounds, and it's not mobile.

It would be easier to put it on a ship. It would be more difficult to put it on an airplane. It would be even more difficult to put it in space. But the airborne laser is one of the major projects, and that does try to put a weapon in the air that would be able to destroy a missile in the early stages of its flight. The advantage of the laser is that it concentrates a little bit of heat, a terribly hot spot.

In the case of a ballistic missile, if it has a liquid fuel the tanks are quite thin. They're just barely strong enough to hold the liquid. And if you burned a hole in it some of the fuel would spill out and it would either catch fire and explode or at worst it wouldn't go where it was supposed to because it would have lost some of its fuel.

I don't think there is much doubt that a weapon based on a laser is going to come, but now to put it into space you are really asking for a lot of difficulty. If the airplane now is so big and heavy that it can hardly have the capacity of even carrying fuel for a long sortie, then it's going to be hard to get it into a space vehicle that's supposed to be up there for a long time. Every extra kilogram costs a great deal to put up into orbit.

I think the airborne laser will come some day. A space-based laser is here for detection and the collection of information. It's not here as a weapon, and it won't be for a long time. But they are very promising to try to catch something in the early part of its flight, and no doubt that will be worked on pretty hard.

Like radar, lasers work in the dark, but unlike light they don't go through clouds. So if you were dealing with a short-range missile, it doesn't take very long to complete its period of burnout, less than a minute. And if it's going to be under cloud cover for a good deal of that minute then your chances aren't very good, but you might have to take your chances.

Having an airborne weapon on station to protect one target 24 hours a day requires at least three aircraft taking turns and a couple more in the barn. You probably need five aircraft to keep one on station, and it won't be able to cover a very big range. So to put a whole string of these things up and down the coast I think would be prohibitively expensive. I think if we watch it we'll see lasers doing more and more and slowly becoming weapons, as well as objects of collecting intelligence. But it's not easy and it's not here yet.

À (1015)

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: Thank you.

I'd like to talk about de-weaponization. One of our witnesses here is an expert who studied or worked with nuclear fuel waste. I'd like to know, in your opinion, the transformation of nuclear material from the bombs to a fuel for nuclear reactors.... Are you familiar with the MOX fuel project? How do you see it as being an overall key in getting rid of the weapons of mass destruction, nuclear in particular?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I think it is the system that has been set up between the United States and Russia primarily whereby the Americans will take a lot of that plutonium and agree to burn it in American reactors. And there was some suggestion of Canadian reactors, but I don't know where that stands now. It's a useful way to reduce the amount of plutonium that could be available for military purposes.

I have not followed it recently, but I believe the success is fairly good in using that mixed oxide fuel for the reactors and that they are making progress on it, thereby helping to reduce. But this is only where you have a willing state at the other end, namely Russia, saying yes, we'd like to get rid of some of ours, we don't want it, and we'd like it if you could help pay for it by buying it and using it in your reactors. That's a good bit of collaboration. It really doesn't help very much where there is an unwilling state and a state that wants to have some plutonium for some nefarious purpose.

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: So if we make the plutonium more valuable by being able to transform it to fuel, then perhaps government officials in Russia would be more apt to keep track of the plutonium rather than allowing it to go on the black market to rogue states.

Mr. Blair Seaborn: Part of the deal, of course, is that they are being paid to get that plutonium, but there will always be temptations for somebody in the nuclear establishment in Russia to sell a little bit of the stuff on the black market. I think this helps to reduce the amount that's likely to go there, but it doesn't entirely limit it.

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: Thank you.

How important do you think it is for Canada to have its own foreign intelligence organization?

Mr. Blair Seaborn: I'm afraid I'm about 12 years out of date on my intelligence activities, but I remain a little bit skeptical about setting up a foreign intelligence collection system. For one thing, it is extremely expensive to do. It carries very considerable political risks, and I'm not really convinced that most Canadian governments would have the gumption to stand up for it when things go wrong. Things do go wrong when you get into foreign intelligence. I suspect that's been one of the main reasons why we haven't got into it, the expense and the political expense when you get some sort of an exposure of what's been happening.

We have a very good system of sharing intelligence with a number of close allies now. Canada makes a reasonable contribution to that total overall effort, particularly through signals intelligence, which you're not even allowed to mention now in public. I don't know whether it would be totally cost-effective to make our added contribution through our foreign intelligence collection system.

There are different views on that, and I could probably argue it both ways. On balance, I tend to say I don't know that it's worth getting into.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Gallant.

Dr. Lindsey, I'd like to ask you some questions that would seem to me to be right up your alley as far as physics go and just general scientific questions related to missile defence in relation to how the system works, or how the system is supposed to work.

There has been some coverage in the media recently about Canada being the principal debris field for any missiles that are intercepted, nuclear, biological, or chemical, potentially. I am not much up on the science of this, but it seems to me that if the system were to work the way it's supposed to work in terms of the interceptor hitting the incoming missile--and I'm sure you'll correct me on this if I am in error--I think it's something in the vicinity of about 17,000 miles an hour that these missiles are travelling, with a kinetic energy that would be involved in terms of the two missiles smashing into each other.

What sort of danger is present, if any, in terms of let's say the interception of a missile in mid-course, in terminal phase, or in boost phase as well, in terms of surrounding populations? Can you give us your analysis of that situation?

À (1020)

Dr. George Lindsey: I think the threat would depend very much on what was in the warhead of the incoming missile. If it were a high explosive probably there would be an explosion way up in space, 200 or 300 miles above the surface of earth, and that probably wouldn't do any harm at all to anybody.

If it had a biological charge in it, then that stuff would be distributed way up there and I think it would be so dispersed and so subjected to sunlight and zero pressure and so on that all the bugs would die and it wouldn't hurt anybody.

If it were a chemical thing, I don't think a few hundred pounds of any horrible chemical dispersed in the upper atmosphere is going to come down on earth with any great danger.

If it were a nuclear warhead and it didn't explode, then presumably it would come down with a thud somewhere, and if it didn't go off then one would hope that somebody in North America would discover it and it would be deactivated. But if it went off and we had a high explosion a few hundred miles above the earth of 10, 100, or 1,000 kilotons, that would probably knock out a lot of electronic equipment. There is a thing called the electromagnetic pulse that is very bad for little computers and all of their tiny insides, so maybe we wouldn't have any personal computers for the whole province of Manitoba or something like that. I'm not saying that's a tragedy, but it might happen.

I think when we worry about debris there's also the question that the broken pieces may not be going in orbital velocity. The 17,000 miles an hour would keep them in orbit, but maybe one of the things is going around 14,000 and the other is going at maybe 12,000 and their debris will eventually return to earth.

I think if you compare the damage that's done to humans by a successful delivery of a nuclear ballistic missile in a city you are talking now about hundreds of thousands of people being killed. I think if the alternative is to scatter a few bits of debris in northern Canada, we can't get too upset about that. If I were an American, I would damn well fire the thing off no matter where the debris goes, if it's going to save Chicago. I think we'd do the same thing if it were Montreal or Toronto or Ottawa. I have to be careful what I say in this company.

The Chair: You talked about the electromagnetic pulse. I read an article a little while ago that talked about the Cristofilos effect in terms of the explosion of a nuclear weapon in low earth orbit, which I gather is somewhere between about 60 and 100 miles or so--

À (1025)

Dr. George Lindsey: Or a little more, yes.

The Chair: --and the effect this would have. You talked about the damage it would do to small computers, etc.

It seems to me that countries like North Korea, for instance, would probably have that capability, because they do have a nuclear weapon, or appear to have a nuclear weapon, right now. They have the missile technology to get into low earth orbit probably with their Taepo Dong 2 missile.

This deals with the whole weaponization of space issue. How do we protect those assets that are in space? It seems to me there are probably a hundred billion dollars worth of assets in space right now, and we could be held to ransom by rogue regimes that could essentially take out a huge portion of our communications system on earth, everything we rely on in terms of satellite communications, whether it's the sports channel or the transmission of banking data, or just the millions and millions, and probably billions, of transactions these days that occur on a daily basis, which we take for granted, and of which potentially a huge portion could be eliminated, if it wasn't eliminated completely, if a nuclear weapon were detonated in space.

How are we going to protect assets in space if there are countries like, for instance, North Korea, which completely repudiated the agreed framework in the 1994 agreement that they signed with the United States? How are we going to protect those assets if we have countries for whom their signature on an international treaty means absolutely nothing? How are we doing to do that?

Dr. George Lindsey: I'll say something about that and then I'll ask Bob Edmonds, because it's something he has been following for a long time.

I think what you say could happen, and it would be bad news. But one of the ways, I suppose, of countering that kind of thing is to be able to destroy a satellite when it's in orbit. There are several ways of doing that, but by far the easiest way for the United States to do it is to use one of their anti-missile interceptors and to intercept a space vehicle. That would be very easy.

A space vehicle, unlike an intercontinental ballistic missile, is traveling on a predictable path. You know exactly when it's going to be coming over. It comes over several times a day, perhaps within range. It can't take evasive action and it's very delicate. So it would be very easy to destroy it with a ground-based weapon if you had one. In a way, I suppose you could say, if we had a good system for intercepting ICBMs, then we could destroy satellites as well. However, if they put the satellite up and on its first orbit it lets off a nuclear weapon, then it's too late to intercept and we would be vulnerable to that.

I doubt that North Korea could put something like that into orbit. It's true that they fired their Taepo Dong thing and it managed to hit the Pacific Ocean, and they think that maybe the next generation of it will be able to get to the tip of Alaska or something like that, but that would probably be with no payload at all. A nuclear weapon, inevitably, has a fair payload, and making it smaller is one of the most difficult things the Americans have been working on for 50 years. Of course, they can put one in an artillery shell now, which is still several hundred pounds. It's quite heavy.

So I don't think it's a hazard that's coming awfully close awfully soon. And I would think if one of the defences is to destroy satellites in orbit, it would be far easier to do it with an ABM system if you have it.

Bob, you have been following this for a long time.

Mr. Robert Edmonds (Past Chair, National Capital Branch, Canadian Institute of International Affairs): My expertise goes back to the days when I was a political counsellor in the UN mission in New York. I was the Canadian representative on the peaceful uses of outer space committee. At that time, we had the incident of Cosmos 954, the Soviet nuclear-powered reactor that landed in the Northwest Territories and scattered radioactive elements with a half-life of 10,000 years over a good portion of the Northwest Territories.

This caused a lot of consternation in the United Nations because the idea of the peaceful use of outer space is a very widely accepted concept in the UN. We spent about six million dollars cleaning up the Northwest Territories, but we got three million dollars back from the Soviet Union, because they too attached importance to the idea of the peaceful uses of outer space.

You're asking, how do we deter a nuclear element from going to outer space? I think we have to rely upon diplomacy. North Korea, despite evidence to the contrary at the present time, I think would have to listen to the Soviet Union, or Russia as it is now. I think there is enough general agreement throughout the multilateral world on the peaceful use of outer space that there would be considerable denigration of any power that tried to do that.

And I think, as you've indicated, there is so much satellite information and so forth out there, there is a lot of economic stake in that too.

À (1030)

The Chair: Just to follow up on that question, we have seen, in terms of some of the radical Islamic regimes or groups that would be interested in setting up radical Islamic governments in some respects, that they may not be interested. They may be interested in lashing out at the west. They may be interested in doing everything but cooperating on a multilateral basis in order to protect what they see as their interest.

I think perhaps the time when we could count on diplomacy exclusively, when there was a group of nations--I'm thinking here of the 1960s and 1970s--that were very predictable in terms of their responses to international issues, may have passed. We may be into a strategic environment where international blackmail or acts of terrorism on a massive scale, acts of crime on a massive scale, are more the order of the day than countries signing their name to a piece of paper and being held accountable in a court of international public opinion for the observance of all of the details of a particular treaty.

Would you not agree the international environment has changed a bit that way and perhaps we shouldn't necessarily trust all of those international players who may talk a mean line about abiding by international agreements but who may, like North Korea, do things that are completely counter to what could be considered international peace and security?

Mr. Robert Edmonds: I think it's fair to say there has been a change of climate since 9/11. But as Dr. Lindsey has indicated, I don't think these so-called rogue states have the technology to effect an attack in outer space.

The Chair: Not right now.

Mr. Robert Edmonds: Not right now. I think the real threat is offshore, bringing things in from the sea in containers and so forth. I don't think outer space is a problem in that regard.

The Chair: Mrs. Wayne.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Earlier, Dr. Lindsey, you were referring to foreign ships that could be coming in with missiles on them, and that the coast guard should be able to board the ships and search them and what have you.

I think my biggest concern, and I've seen this back home, is we have cut the budget for the coast guard tremendously in Canada, from coast to coast. This is what worries me more than anything, because since they've taken out the port police and the coast guard's been cut back, I've seen the amount of drugs that have been coming in aboard the ships. This has happened in our port in Saint John.

So I'm wondering, if we were to join with the U.S.A. with regard to ballistic missile defence and work with them, we would have to increase our budgets. There is no question about that. I'm wondering if we are holding off because we don't have the money in the budget at the present time. As you know, we just sent our military over to Afghanistan, and we didn't give them any tools to protect themselves. We're relying on the Germans to protect our men and women in uniform. Yet as I stated earlier, we just finished last week celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic, which was in the Second World War, and the Germans were the ones we were fighting.

Do you think the budget, the lack of money for us to proceed, is holding us back from saying yes, we are going to be part and parcel of missile defence with the U.S.A.?

Dr. George Lindsey: Yes, I think it must be a concern. The trouble is we don't know what that expense would be. We're not going to find out unless they tell us a lot of things, and they are not going to tell us unless it might be worth talking to us. So I think in a way it's a dilemma.

What you say about the coast guard is very important. The U.S. Navy hasn't quite the same relations with the coast guard the Canadian Navy has with theirs. It's almost part of the U.S. Navy, and it's getting a huge increase--not for ballistic missile defence, but for terrorism--because of exactly the kind of thing you indicated.

I think there's little doubt, if we're going to hold up our end on terrorism--and there's one case where we agree with the Americans, we think it is a priority--we are going to have to do more about observing the surface of the ocean approaches to Canada. Whether we do it with the navy or the coast guard, I don't know; that would have to be worked out later. But it sounds like a coast guard function. Then it has to be linked with the inspections that occur ashore. They're going to be helped if people have looked at a ship and said “We think this one's okay, when it comes in don't waste time on it”, or “We don't like what's up in the forward container, so maybe you'd better send somebody in with an instrument to see if it's radioactive”.

When it comes to inspecting containers, I think there's only the time, equipment, and people to inspect 2% of the containers that come in. Well, that's not very good protection. Now, I guess that's for customs and immigration.

There are all sorts of departments that have things to do. That's not what our group has been studying. We were looking at what the military can do. But I think what the military can do is very much involved in observing the surface of the sea and dealing with ships, perhaps, before they get too close to Canadian or American coasts.

À (1035)

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Well, back home, as you may be aware, they automated our lighthouses and took the men out of our lighthouses, but they didn't automate them in Vancouver and they haven't done it in other parts of Canada or in Newfoundland.

I guess perhaps I should have screamed a little louder at the time, Dominic, but I thought this was something that was going to happen right across the country. It didn't.

Here we are with the highest tides in the world. You have ships coming in, and we have the largest privately owned oil refinery in the world, as I've stated, and you have the largest oil tankers in the world coming into our Irving Oil refinery, but we don't have anyone in that lighthouse. If there's ever a problem with one of those large tankers, it's going to hurt all the way down into the U.S.A., because our waters flow right down into the U.S.A. And that would be the end of the fishing, at that point in time.

So I really have major concerns. I don't want to play politics when it comes to putting the money in the budget. I think we have to get our priorities straight. I think that people in Canada would support tremendously a whole lot more money in the budget, particularly for us to work with the U.S.A. on missile defence but also to work with our military and so on. They are really hurt to see our men and women going over and not having the tools to protect themselves. As we all know, we've lost people in Afghanistan. So it's a major concern, Dr. Lindsey.

I do want to thank all of you for coming today.

I have a function to go to. I'm one of the judges for a TD scholarship function, as Dominic's father knows. He put me there. I'm having a dinner for them today, so I have to go fairly soon.

The Chair: Okay. Thank you, Mrs. Wayne.

Mr. LeBlanc.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I don't know if you, Mr. Chairman, or Cheryl have more questions on the national missile defence aspect.

Dr. Lindsey, you said your group had done some work on the issue of terrorism. In the time remaining I'd be interested if you'd begin, at least, with some comments. You gave us a teaser that you'd done some work on this issue, which I think, as you and your colleagues have said, has been less complicated in the Canada-U.S. relationship, with our shared concern of the threat of terrorism. I'd be curious to hear some of your views on that issue.

Dr. George Lindsey: Okay. Well, yes, I'd be glad to do that, because when I started putting all my words together they took more than the sacred ten minutes, so I had to leave terrorism out of it.

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: I've just given you six more.

Dr. George Lindsey: That's exactly what I mean.

Probably most Canadians are more concerned about the threat to North America from substate terrorism than they are about ICBMs from North Korea.

Now, these terrorists are probably not able to arm themselves with long-range bombers, ICBMs, or ballistic missile submarines. They may be able to acquire short-range ballistic or cruise missiles and dilapidated freighter vessels that could detonate a nuclear weapon in a seaport or be fitted with missile launchers with the means to disperse biological or chemical agents as well as high explosives.

However, rather than launching their attack from outside the continent, it would seem easier for the terrorists to infiltrate their personnel and perhaps some of their equipment into the United States or Canada, to assemble their teams and weapons, to make their preparations, and to deliver their attack from inside the continent.

There are two main areas in which Canadian and U.S. military forces should be able to play a significant part in the defence of North America against terrorism. One is the prevention of entry of terrorists or their equipment into the continent; the other is the discovery of the presence and subsequent capture or neutralization of terrorists who have managed to enter and who are prepared to make an attack.

Now, with the screening of flights arriving from outside Canada or the U.S.A., entry into North America may be made in small aircraft launched from Central America or the Caribbean and landing in lakes or small airfields with no facilities.

Another form of illegal entry is by small ships, which may dock at or moor near small coastal communities in the hope of getting passengers or equipment ashore without screening by the authorities. Or entry may be made by larger ships that transfer their passengers and equipment to small, fast craft able to land at small docks under the control of collaborators.

What is needed is effective surveillance of the air approaches and the coastal waters surrounding the continent.

While the police, supported by effective intelligence and by alert citizens, may be able to detect the presence and learn of the activities of terrorists already established inside Canadian or American cities, they will find detection and observation more difficult for terrorists located in the sparsely populated regions of the continent. What is needed is the capability for effective surveillance of the continent's surface as well as its sea approaches, and of the air above both of these.

While there is some coverage of aerial activity over the outlying parts of Canada by military radar, most of the control of air traffic depends on the cooperation of the aircraft by means of flight plans, voice communication, and the operation of an automatic transponder beacon.

Ships and low-flying aircraft above the sea can be detected by radar mounted in tethered balloons or by coastal surface wave radar. There are two of these surface wave radar stations already up in Newfoundland. I think that's a breakthrough, which hasn't been copied by the United States yet.

For overhead surveillance of the surface of the earth and the sea, modern technology has made it possible to fit several types of sensors into one satellite or aircraft and thus obtain the observation of very large areas. Canadian industry has had pioneering experience of overhead surveillance with RADARSAT, a satellite now providing information for many civilian purposes. Maritime Command of the Canadian Armed Forces has had many years of experience in surveillance of the sea approaches to North America.

So the suggested role for Canada that we offer is this. A suitable and important Canadian contribution to the defence of North America against terrorism will be to undertake overhead surveillance of the northern approaches to the continent and of the surface and the sparsely populated regions of Canada. In addition to providing protection for both Canada and the United States, this would offer invaluable services for Canadian agriculture, forestry, search and rescue, and the development of the Canadian north.

À (1040)

That was a summary of what we thought about the defence against terrorism. You'll notice it didn't include the question that was raised about having intelligence abroad. And it doesn't include the steps that cities would have to take when dealing with an attack after it succeeded. This is the intermediate state: keep them out of North America, and if they get in, discover them before they do their dirty tricks.

À (1045)

The Chair: Anything further, Mr. LeBlanc?

Mr. Dominic LeBlanc: Yes, Mr. Chairman.

I'm curious. On the fisheries committee, of which I am a member, we talk a lot about marine coastal traffic service, a coast guard function. There appear to be rather glaring holes in the radar coverage of approaches to the west coast of Canada. I hope that gets addressed. It's a function, as Mrs. Wayne said, of funding problems perhaps in the coast guard and so on.

It's the first I hear of this surface wave radar in Newfoundland. How does that work? Is that a marine traffic function, or is that a surveillance from a military or naval perspective? I'm curious about how that operates.

Dr. George Lindsey: Well, the limitation of radar is that its radiation goes in almost straight lines, so that once something goes over the horizon of the radar set it can't see it. But if what it goes over is salt water, which conducts electricity, there is a strange effect that causes the beam to bend downwards. So if you can first of all put your antenna up high, that puts the horizon up to say 35 miles, but then if you can use this surface wave radar, which is a very low frequency, it gets way over the horizon, out to about 200 miles. So something on the surface of the sea, almost any ship, can be tracked, and also low-flying aircraft.

Of course, exactly what I said applies to aircraft; they're not at nought feet, but they can be coming in fairly low.

Canada was a pioneer in thinking of these things. There are two in the tips of the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland at work now. They're not very accurate for bearing, because of the low frequency, but they're very accurate for range. So these two stations each get a fix and they can track that object, whether it's a ship or an airplane. Of course, they'll soon tell from its speed which it is. That's something that Canada has done, and it has had no recognition for it.

I don't know whether Keith has something to say about that, because he doesn't like low-flying aircraft either.

Mr. Keith Greenaway: Yes, this has been a Canadian development. Raytheon of Waterloo has been working with the navy for about a decade now, and it's operational on the east coast. There's money--I think it's about $49 million--for the upgrading to an operational capability of the east coast one, which is fairly well automated. Then the installation of the similar system on the west coast in the Juan de Fuca Straits and on the islands....

This is a real Canadian breakthrough in this. You can monitor low-flying aircraft and surface vessels. It is in this area, as George mentioned. It's out around 200 miles. So it covers the economic zone.

The Americans are aware of this. They haven't done anything about it at all, but they are interested in the results of what's happened on the east coast. I think it was about three years under testing in a semi-operational mode. It is operational now.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. LeBlanc.

Mrs. Gallant.

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: This morning on the CBC they were discussing the recent crisis over SARS, and they were talking about how, if the crisis had occurred in a province outside Ontario, there may not have been the resources to have an effective response. They're calling upon the federal government to have a nationally coordinated response.

Now we're talking about terrorism. In the case of SARS, it was an unintentionally introduced pathogen into Canada. If there were to be a deliberate introduction to North America, hitting several major cities at the same time, we'd be in quite a situation.

My question is, what sort of plan do you see for a fully integrated, interdepartmental integration of a homeland defence? Perhaps you can give us your ideas on an emergency response centre.

À (1050)

Dr. George Lindsey: That's not a subject on which our group has spent much time, but I think the problem is very linked to the use of biological weapons.

Apparently there the medical fraternity says the important thing is to identify the case very, very quickly, preferably within hours and certainly within days, because once it starts to incubate and spread, then you are dealing with a terribly difficult problem.

If we are talking about something that has to give a very quality, high-tech diagnosis in all the little scattered parts of Canada, we are asking for something that's probably an urban responsibility. It would be awfully hard to have a central thing that could rush out to the far corners of Canada, which would probably take several days if you are bringing in equipment, and get it into the right place.

I think you would have to look at what steps are being taken against the reaction to a successful attack that's given inside the continent. Of course, one solution is to have a crack team in the centre.

In the case that Bob Edmonds mentioned, where the radioactive material was displaced up in the north, the Americans had some kind of crack team, and I think it was there about the time we found out that there was anything wrong. But there was only one of those teams. It was quite remarkable what they did.

You could have several of those teams, but you couldn't have one for every city. If you were lucky, I suppose you would have as many as were needed for the number of incidents, but it's an awfully difficult thing to counter.

I can't say much more than that. I don't know whether any of my colleagues are experts in what to do in such a case. I don't think anybody is.

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: Thank you, Dr. Lindsey.

General Clayton Beattie: [Inaudible—Editor]...was very important, and some of the first people on the ground were the airborne regiment. They got on the ground and got started at it, but it was a sinister thing.

Dr. George Lindsey: Mr. Fulford.

Mr. Dwight Fulford (Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies): Really, it's not my expertise. It's my daughter who is a doctor and specializes in infectious diseases.

Of course, if it's not a foreign attack, it will be, as in the case of SARS, some new bug that arrives. We are bound to get one, perhaps more likely SARS than an attack from a foreign country, but both are possible.

I think you have to build some reserve capability into your medical system in terms of hospital beds and equipment. If you are running things just so you can take care of a city's needs when nothing goes wrong, if anything does go wrong, you are in trouble. I think the medical teams did a great job in SARS, but it would be helpful if there were more reserve capability in the system.

Since I have the floor, I might just put in a plug, a self-interested plug. You were asking about foreign intelligence. Well, of course we do have a foreign intelligence service. They are called embassies. With austerity, we have downgraded the political capability of the embassies over the past several years.

You have Canadians there who can give risk assessment, who can analyse the intentions of a government, or say what's happening in Pakistan, where you have a very large fundamentalist group and it's a country with nuclear weapons. It's helpful to get political information, and I don't think we should downgrade the embassies in terms of providing information.

Thank you.

The Chair: Do you have anything further to ask, Mrs. Gallant?

Mrs. Cheryl Gallant: No.

The Chair: Okay.

On the subject of technology and potential industrial benefits, in relation to both ballistic missile defence and surveillance of territory in regard to possible terrorist threats, Dr. Lindsey, could you enumerate specific technologies, just for the benefit of future research by the committee? I think you went through some of them early in your presentation, but maybe you could just pull them all together, maybe with the help of some of your colleagues here as well--particular technologies like surface wave radar or the particular companies that you think might be able to benefit from work on either of the two areas.

Dr. George Lindsey: Surface wave radar, as Keith mentioned, was a Raytheon project. Of course, Raytheon is an American firm, but it has a very active element in Canada.

I think perhaps the area where Canadian expertise would most likely be useful is in overhead surveillance. There you get into the sensors. A lot of good work has been done on lasers, a lot of it in universities, and a lot of it has been parcelled out to industry later.

Probably the most important firm in overhead surveillance, at least from space, is McDonald Detweiler. They have done remarkable lead work. I think they were probably involved in this space arm thing, which doesn't have to do with defence, but it's due to space technology.

RADARSAT was the first of its kind in the world. At first, I think they expected it to be for the location of icebergs and seeing whether certain passages were open for shipping, and it worked fine there. Then they started to discover all sorts of other things that no one had ever thought of. I think one of them was an oil spill somewhere in the North Sea. Some ship was supposed to be in trouble. A picture came in, and you could see oil coming out of the ship, and then you could see where the oil was going. It enabled the cleanup people to go to the right place in a hurry.

Since then it has discovered all sorts of things. They use it for seeing if there are pollutants being distributed in the north--which some of the factories do; they don't pay much attention to it. It's useful in agriculture to see which places have drought or are in trouble. It's also useful for weather forecasting, although they have other satellites to do that.

À (1055)

The Chair: But you mentioned other companies--Oerlikon, for instance--in terms of missile defence, and presumably CAE would fit in there as well, because they have already received a contract.

Dr. George Lindsey: That's right, and Oerlikon, with its ADATS, would dearly love to have something to do with expanding the capability of that. I don't know whether ADATS would get up to the ballistic missiles threat, but it would be very good against cruise missiles and aircraft, and maybe shorter-range ones. It's a going concern; it's available right now.

That would be an army project. They were able to put it to use in the G-8 meeting out west last year.

The Chair: Do any other companies or technologies come to mind?

Dr. George Lindsey: I don't know. If somebody puts his hand up, I'll point to him.

Mr. Robert Edmonds: I think one of the most important agencies in Canada in this field is the Canadian Centre for Remote Sensing. It has a world-class reputation.

If I may, I just want to make a point about the surveillance of the north. In our study group we have had briefings with National Defence and with the Department of External Affairs, and one problem we have found--and also with the remote sensing centre--is this idea of dua-purpose surveillance, which will help the Americans but will also help our development of the north, including finding some resources in Nunavut; they can get some resources for their own government.

But the point is, the military does military surveillance, and the remote sensing centre does civilian sensing. Then nobody has the funds to do overlapping.

The Chair: That's an interesting point.

Are there any other comments or suggestions by way of industrial benefit?

Dr. George Lindsey: No. We haven't paid as much attention to that as we probably should have. We thought if the idea went out, the firms would notice and would become quite noisy, but that hasn't happened yet.

The Chair: Perhaps at this point, gentlemen, we should end the discussion. We have less than a minute left.

I do want to take the opportunity to thank you once again for being here. This has been a rich meeting in the sense that we have gotten some very good ideas for further investigation here, and I think you have provided us with certainly a wealth of information, based on your not inconsiderable experience.

So again, Dr. Lindsey, on behalf of the committee, I'd like to thank you and your group for being here today.

For your information, we will be holding further hearings, and we expect to be down in the United States at some point, probably in the fall, and will be producing a report sometime after that. So we look forward to any further comments you might have. If you have any further information that you want to transmit to the committee, we would be happy to receive it, and we would certainly look forward to getting any comments you might have in connection with our final report on this subject.

Dr. George Lindsey: Thank you.

The Chair: The meeting is adjourned.