NDVA Committee Meeting

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, May 29, 2003

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0915

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

Ms. Francine Lalonde (Mercier, BQ)

The Chair

Ms. Francine Lalonde

The Chair

Ms. Francine Lalonde

The Chair

Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Director and Chief Executive Officer, Liu Institute for Global Issues)

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0920

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0925

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0930

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0935

The Chair

Dr. John Polanyi (Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto)

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0940

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0945

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0950

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0955

The Chair

Dr. John Polanyi

The Chair

Dr. John Polanyi

The Chair

Mr. Rob Anders (Calgary West, Canadian Alliance)

À

1000

Mr. Lloyd Axworthy

À

1005

Mr. Rob Anders

Mr. Lloyd Axworthy

The Chair

Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West)

Mr. Lloyd Axworthy

Mr. John Godfrey

À

1010

Dr. John Polanyi

Mr. John Godfrey

Dr. John Polanyi

Mr. Lloyd Axworthy

The Chair

Ms. Francine Lalonde

À

1015

Mr. Lloyd Axworthy

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1020

The Chair

Mr. Lloyd Axworthy

The Chair

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1025

Mr. Lloyd Axworthy

À

1030

The Chair

Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP)

The Chair

Ms. Alexa McDonough

Dr. John Polanyi

À

1035

Mr. Lloyd Axworthy

The Chair

Mr. John Godfrey

À

1040

Dr. John Polanyi

Mr. Lloyd Axworthy

À

1045

The Chair

Mr. Rob Anders

Mr. Lloyd Axworthy

À

1050

The Chair

À

1055

Mr. Lloyd Axworthy

The Chair

Mr. Lloyd Axworthy

The Chair

Mr. Lloyd Axworthy

The Chair

Ms. Francine Lalonde

The Chair

Dr. John Polanyi

Á

1100

The Chair

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CANADA

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

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NUMBER 029

l

2nd SESSION

l

37th PARLIAMENT

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EVIDENCE

Thursday, May 29, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿  (0915)  

[English]

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

    We are very, very pleased today to have before the committee someone who is certainly no stranger to this institution of the House of Commons, the Honourable Lloyd Axworthy, director and chief executive officer of the Liu Institute for Global Issues. Accompanying him is Dr. John Polanyi from the University of Toronto. Welcome to both of you, gentlemen.

    As you know, we are in the process of studying Canada-U.S. defence relations as part of our effort to contribute to the defence policies of this country. We are looking forward very much to hearing your comments today.

    I have a point of order by Madame Lalonde.

[Translation]

    Ms. Francine Lalonde (Mercier, BQ): Mr. Chairman, although I am not a regular member of this committee, I did ask you previously what the rules were relating to the distribution of documents that are not in both official languages, and you told me that it was not allowed. It is not because I am lacking in sympathy for the content of this document but regretfully I must make this point of order because I think that an institute as prestigious as that directed by Mr. Axworthy can... He is certainly well informed about the rules of the House and knows that I have no choice in the matter.

[English]

    The Chair: Would you recommend any particular course of action at this point, Madame Lalonde?

[Translation]

    Ms. Francine Lalonde: I cannot go along with this document being distributed if it is not available in both official languages.

[English]

    The Chair: Your point is well taken. As far as the spirit—

[Translation]

    Ms. Francine Lalonde: So would you please have the copy picked up. It will be distributed to us later on. I am sorry but that is what must be done.

[English]

    The Chair: Okay. In terms of abiding by the rules, I think that is perhaps the only course of action we can employ here. I would ask one of the clerks to pick up the documents.

    Of course, the rationale behind this is that English-speaking members should not have a particular advantage over French-speaking members in questioning witnesses based on the information in front of them. I think most members would agree that is a fair way to proceed under the circumstances.

    We will endeavour very quickly to get the document translated and will then distribute it not just to committee members but also to all members in attendance at this meeting today.

    With that, Mr. Axworthy, perhaps we could proceed with your comments. On behalf of all the committee members here, I would again like to welcome you and Dr. Polanyi to the committee.

    Hon. Lloyd Axworthy (Director and Chief Executive Officer, Liu Institute for Global Issues): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I apologize for the fact that we were not able to supply the committee with the document, which runs to about 30 pages, in both languages.

    I say to my former colleague, I appreciate the designation of our institution as being distinguished, but being distinguished does not always mean that you have the money and resources complementary to that status. So I do apologize. We did table it with the committee on Monday, but clearly there wasn't enough time. I hope you'll have the opportunity to have it in both languages.

    I'm also pleased that Dr. John Polanyi has joined me today. As you all know, he has been involved in these issues for some 30 to 40 years, going back to some of the original discussions on missile defence matters. He was also co-chair of a very important task force established in the nineties dealing with rapid reaction deployment—which is part of our presentation—as an alternative way in which Canada can contribute to security issues. So I am very pleased that he has agreed to join us in this presentation this morning and to be available for questions. I will share some of my time with him, so he can provide his own commentary.

    Let me also say that I appreciate the invitation to be in front of your committee on a very crucial topic. It is also nice to be back in these august surroundings; they don't change much, but it's nice to see some familiar faces.

    I welcome the opportunity to participate in this committee's examination of an issue I've also been involved with for many years. I hope our comments can help guide this committee in its recommendations to the government, and I hope the government will wait for this committee's recommendations before any decisions are taken, because I think it is crucial that there be a very significant public examination of something that goes to the very core of a direction this country might be taking in the next several years in its foreign policy.

    If I may be indulged for a moment, let me say that I think that the terms of reference of the committee are too restrictive. By simply looking at these issues within the context of Canadian-U.S. defence relations, it doesn't really encompass the full impact, significance, and consequences. The reality is that in dealing with a decision on missile defence systems, it is not a stand-alone, one-off, singular, silo-type policy, but is part of a much broader, seamless, interconnected military doctrine being put forward by the present U.S. administration, which challenges the ways in which this country and many others have been going about trying to deal with security over the last several decades. It's not possible to deal with it just as a Canada-U.S. issue, and to do so I really think ignores the full fallout and consequences of whatever decision is taken. It has major significance for issues of international peace and security, it has implications for multilateral treaty arrangements, and it has implications for very important decisions related to tackling the causes of terrorism and civil conflict.

    So this is not something that can be designed purely within a Canada-U.S. context. It certainly is important, and because of our close relationship with the United States, it certainly is a major factor; but I would suggest that seeing it exclusively in those terms would not give the full weight or full understanding to what is really engaged in this discussion. Any decision the Government of Canada eventually makes will have a ripple effect internally, in terms of what we do as a country, but it will also have major implications for a wide variety of Canadian activities in other international relations. I also believe that because of the role we have played up to now as a major advocate and proponent of multilateral agreements, becoming part of a missile defence program would certainly influence and affect our standing, capacity, and reception as an advocate.

¿  (0920)  

     Let me simply point out that a missile defence system as presently being put forward by the U.S. administration is integrated into a much larger set of issues. You can call them counterforce issues, you can call them spectrum dominance, or you can call them pre-emptive, but they basically are a repudiation of the notion that security can be fostered and developed through a series of verifiable restraints that countries agree to on limiting the supply of weaponry in the world. That's been a basic notion we've worked on assiduously; rather than dealing with threat and risk by counterforce and counter-threat, it's important to introduce into those discussions restraint, agreements, covenants, and protocols. That is not the position of the present U.S. administration.

    Therefore, when one looks at missile defence, you have to put it in the same context as the recent decisions to seriously consider the resumption of nuclear testing and the development of mini nuclear devices. You have to look at it in the context of the substantial reduction in export controls on missile technology; and you have to look at it in the so-called pre-emptive strike capacity, coming out of national security defence, which was clearly expressed as part of the rationale for the invasion of Iraq. All of those things are tied together; they are not separate pieces, but are woven into a strand. You can't take one piece of that strand and one thread and pull it out and say that's what we belong to. If you become attached to that one piece, you get involved in or woven into the entire fabric.

    I think that's why it's important that your committee's discussion must take into account the implications this has for a whole regime of treaties and agreements that Canada is presently part of, and how participation in missile defence would entail a significant change in Canada's policy on non-proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction, and on multilateral regulations and cooperation, in favour of a counter-proliferation and a confrontational model based on pre-emption and the use of the high-tech area. It is a clear choice to take a different path; that's what it's about. There's no other way of describing it but that it's simply that kind of choice.

    I take comfort in the assurances given by the ministers of defence and foreign affairs that they would not countenance or agree to any initiative that might promote the eventual evolution of weapons in space. But we have to make that a clear condition of any involvement and go beyond rhetoric and assertions. If that is a Canadian position, we must make it very clear that in deciding to become part of a missile defence system, that's a condition or criterion. We would not become part of it unless the United States is prepared to give clear and unalterable assurances that they do not see this as a system that would lead towards potential use of space.

    I say this because up to this point in time, they will not give that assurance. In fact, if you go back to the committee hearing in the Senate just this year, General Kadish, who is the head of the Missile Defense Agency, said he had asked for appropriations specifically to undertake testing as part of a missile defence system that might be applied in orbit or be space related. So if you have the head military commander of the Missile Defense Agency asking for money to start testing the option, you know you have a problem.

¿  (0925)  

    That really does fit in, going back to the Rumsfeld commission, headed by the gentleman who is now Secretary of Defense, with the fact that the multi-tiered, multi-layered missile defence system being proposed is not the system that was originally proposed by the Clinton administration, which was a one-layered ground-to-intercept system. They are now talking multi-layer, multi-track, moving from mid-course interception to boost-phase interception. The calculation emerging out of this is that they will need new and different kinds of technologies to deal with it.

    That's part of the problem, I think, in signing on to any agreement right now--they have not spelled out exactly what it is they intend to do. While the first phase is already underway, the second and third layers are already under consideration, with appropriations being designated.

    I think one way of dealing with it is quite obvious: simply say we won't participate unless we get that assurance that this is not a lead-up to or a forerunner of potential application in space. I do so because, first, I think it's in our interest to do so. Our own commercial interests would be highly destabilized by any introduction into orbit of space-related weapons. It would also clearly generate a counter-reaction, and that really is the second part: whatever one may say about a defence system, it is subject to the same law of physics that every action has a reaction, and every defence creates an offence. Therefore, those who are being challenged by this issue will find ways of responding to it. It won't be an arms race similar to what we had in the Cold War, but it will certainly be a reaction. Already, as we know, the Soviets have developed plans to overcome it, and so have the Chinese.

    So if part of your ambition is to limit the spread of weapons and the development of new technologies, then we're already creating, in a sense, a certain spiral even as we speak. There is this question of a potential escalation of an arms race, which again I suggest is not in the interests of Canada because it would increase our insecurity, not our security.

    The other issue I think it is important to raise, among several, is one that bears examination. I don't know if your committee, Mr. Chair, has had the opportunity, but if you look at the technology that's presently discussed, they shoot to kill, which is about as far as they can go, unless--and I want to put this in parenthesis--one of the potentials would be to use nuclear-tipped interceptors, which could mean that any mid-course interception could have very serious implications for Canadian territory. If it's not a total kill or a total exhaustion of any kind of incoming missile, then in fact, debris fallout would affect Canadian territory. Has that been examined? I don't know. I'm not in government anymore; I don't have the same resources. But it is a serious question being raised by defence analysts, whether it's been examined or not.

    If you go back to the declaration in 2002 at NATO, where they said the territorial integrity of all NATO countries would be a matter of prime concern under any so-called missile defence, has that criterion been met? That's a question we certainly should have fully examined before we get into any further discussion or examination.

    There's also a third element, which I would call the deflection argument. If you go back to the Americans' own estimates--the CIA estimates that have recently been tabled and the reports that have just been completed by the Carnegie centre--missile defence is so far down the list of potential threats and risks that one has to ask why they are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on it.

    If you're really concerned about terrorism, there are far better ways of delivering an intervention into North America than through a ballistic missile. In fact, as Joseph Cirincione from Carnegie points out in the study--and when you get a chance to look, we've included a map from his study--the actual threat of missiles has declined over the last several years, not increased. So ballistic missiles are not the weapon of choice of terrorists. They're not the weapon of choice of failed states. They're not the weapon of choice of the axis of evil.

¿  (0930)  

    If you really want to do damage, there are an awful lot more efficient, covert, and effective ways of delivering it than going into a major ballistic missile system. In fact, as anybody will tell you, right now, with a boost-phase ballistic missile, the infrastructure can be taken out in a surgical strike within a matter of hours or days. You don't need to amass a huge, effective technology in order to do it.

    So one of the problems is that if we deflect ourselves away from what the real security issues are, the real threats, and get ourselves involved in this huge superstructure, then all of a sudden not only are you dissipating resources, but I think you are giving people a false sense of security. You're beginning to reduce your understanding of what the other kinds of threats might be. In fact, all you would be doing is simply encouraging those who might have aggressive intentions, whoever they may be, to find alternate means.

    I don't know whether this commitment would take us into any kind of participation...if not in a land-based interception, certainly in a sea-based or an orbit-based interception. It would also mean we would be subject to pre-emptive strikes by whoever might be threatened.

    We are into this kind of strange game these days where one person's security is another person's insecurity. You only have to look at North Korea to see how being singled out as a “rogue state and member of the axis of evil” was a precipitating cause for them to accelerate their own nuclear program. I suppose if you're into counterforce strategy, which is the declared doctrine of the present UN administration, then you are going to have to deal with somebody else's counterforce at the same time.

    So I would suggest to you that not only is there a reduced threat of ballistic missiles, but the threat of insecurity comes from many other kinds of causes. Let me point to one in particular, because I think it's a top-of-mind issue. Recent studies that have been done by the World Bank in its report on civil conflict and by the International Peace Academy in New York point out that if one is really concerned about terrorists, one should look particularly at the fact that civil conflict is the seedbed out of which most terrorist financing activity comes.

    I think of my own personal experience--and Mr. Pratt would know this--in Sierra Leone. One of the major results of the diamond trading in Sierra Leone and the civil war was that money went to terrorist organizations. They were major recipients of funding out of that small civil war because not only did it create disruption, but there was no control, there was no ability to monitor, and as a result, there was a transfer of funds into al-Qaeda out of Sierra Leone. The same kind of application is taking place in other places.

    Therefore--and this is the last point I'll make, because I would like Dr. Polanyi to respond--I think as Canadians what we should ask is, where do we do value-added? Where do we make our most effective contribution? How do we provide the most useful countervail to the kinds of new risks we face in the security field?

    I would suggest to you one of the areas that would be most appropriate--and I know this committee has considered it in the past--is to look at our ability to provide resources for logistics, transportation, intelligence gathering, and develop rapid reaction to do something significant with the SHIRBRIG. We chair SHIRBRIG, which is the special brigade for rapid reaction. Canada is the chair this year. What an enormous contribution we could make if we actually said we were going to substantially reinforce its capacity, set up new rules for its engagement, develop a new strategy for dealing with civil conflict, and therefore, provide a real protection against those issues in a preventive way, which we don't have.

    Let me just give you a little footnote in history. I think it's very sad. We're all, I think, deeply troubled by what we see going on in the Congo. I hope you realize that Canada led a multilateral force into the Congo in 1997. We took the initiative in 1997 to provide a UN presence. We had to withdraw because our two major allies, Great Britain and the United States, refused to back it up. We didn't have the capacity to continue. We had to withdraw.

    I simply ask members of this committee what would have happened if we had stayed? Would there now be a major holocaust going on in the Congo if a Canadian-led UN mission had been able to retain its place inside what was then eastern Zaire? My suggestion is that UN presence at that time, if we'd had the proper capacity, would have provided a deterrent against the kind of mass slaughtering and killing going on there today, and so rather than having to do an emergency call, we would have been there. It would have been a classic case of prevention. But we didn't have the resources or capacity or ability to do it at the time, and we therefore withdrew within three or four months.

¿  (0935)  

    On reflection, and because I was in government at the time, I say it was a mistake. It was a mistake based upon the lack of our own preparedness and capacity to meet the kind of responsibility we had in that particular period.

    The final point I would address is that I've heard it said, I think by Defence Minister McCallum, that if we don't participate, we won't have NORAD. Frankly, I think that's a smokescreen. I do not believe the United States is going to disband an agreement that is vital to their security in ensuring there is proper surveillance of any penetration of Canadian territory or sovereignty.

    But rather than raising those kinds of concerns, what I would suggest is much more important for us is to raise the concern, what is the future of NORAD as a security agency for North America in the years ahead? We shouldn't simply be taking the assumption of what the United States says is a threat, but we should be doing our own risk or threat assessments, and designing and proposing how NORAD should be adapted, changed and altered to meet those kinds of risks we think are important. So rather than again making a Chicken Little argument, we should really be asking ourselves, what do we, as Canadians, think constitutes the real threat, and how do we respond and make sure that NORAD continues to be an effective instrument in those cases?

    With that, Mr. Chairman, I'll ask Dr. Polanyi to comment.

    The Chair: Dr. Polanyi, you have the floor.

    Dr. John Polanyi (Professor, Department of Chemistry, University of Toronto): Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for letting me be an interloper at this important committee meeting.

    I have listened to my distinguished colleague Dr. Axworthy give a fantastic tour d'horizon on this subject—and for me, an inspiring one. I would say that the most important thing he said to us, Mr. Chairman, is how central this issue is that your committee is addressing. There are people in the country whose voices are heard, and deserve to be heard, who are treating this as a minor issue and who are saying this is something we can afford to bargain away. I don't think it is, but I agree with Dr. Axworthy that it goes to the heart of our existence as a nation. Our existence as a nation depends on the fact that we stand for certain ideas; once we abandon them, we cease to exist.

    I came to this country as an immigrant who was attracted here by things I find hard to describe—a certain caution, which appealed to me. The roots of that caution I saw as being a desire to defend some civilized principles. It was a principled caution. I saw that at work when all of us struggled with what was the right thing do in relation to the danger and horror of Iraq. You could see our leaders struggling with that question.

    We held back from what was, in my estimation, a rush to war in Iraq. Through our representative at the UN, we requested that a regulated process be instituted to bring in international consultation. Unfortunately, we failed, but we have no apologies to make, in my view. Even recent history confirms that our caution and our principle—multilateral action and due process—are the things most likely to produce a peaceful world. Those things were clearly the right things to keep in the forefront. So we need not apologize, but should recognize that we acted on principle, and acted well.

    If in your estimation, as it certainly is in mine, it would be hasty at this point in history for us to subscribe to what used to be called U.S. national missile defence, you might bracket that in your mind with our principled caution in respect to the incursion in Iraq.

    At present, I would say we are in danger of rushing to missile defence. Can I substantiate that? First of all, let me substantiate it by saying that the United States is our greatest ally. I am a scientist, and the best science in the world is done by my colleagues in the United States, who are my closest collaborators and friends. It is the source of the civilization that I plug into. The United States, however, is rushing into missile defence. I would say it is rushing into missile defence for the same reason it rushed into Iraq, the over-reliance on might rather than due process, to achieve peace, therefore supplanting law, which offers the hope of peace, by war, which clearly does not.

¿  (0940)  

    As in the case of Iraq, once again the United States has taken a logical pre-eminence. If I can be allowed to boast, nobody knows it better than I. I still have a laboratory of a dozen people and am in constant touch with the United States, and I know that nobody has better science and technology than they. They are rightly proud of it. In their pride in their country, they want to use it, but they should be advised to be cautious.

    Is this a rush that the United States is instituting, or is this system actually ready to be deployed next year, which is what we are being asked to endorse? It certainly is not ready to be deployed next year. The two central elements, the ground-based missile defence and the lesser element, the sea-based missile defence, are not ready, let alone tested—because they would have to be ready to be tested.

    Thomas Christie, the Pentagon's own chief assessor of weapons, said three months ago that anti-missile defence was yet to demonstrate significant capability. Is this the moment we want to give it a vote of confidence? I think it is premature, and I am going to add that I think it's unwise. In its statements, the Pentagon itself admits that the system is not ready; they say that it will evolve. The President of the United States has also said that it will evolve.

    However, you don't do that with high technology. I ask you to believe that I have some experience with that. Evolution does exist, and it's a marvellous discovery of Charles Darwin, but it takes geological time or millennia. If somebody had suggested that the Apollo moon landing, which was in fact planned carefully and tested at every point, should evolve, it would have been a scandal in terms of expenditure and lives lost. It would have been unthinkable. We should insist on the same thing here. The fact of the matter is that we are being asked to be a part, not of research and development, which has been going on for years and is a sensible activity, but of deployment.

    If you will indulge me further, let me step back for a moment and ask whether, in my view as a technocrat, this technology is even promising. Is it more promising than the technology I first heard of in this field 40 years ago, Nike Zeus, which was the white hope but was thrown on the junk heap? Is it more promising than Sentinel of 30 years ago? Sentinel was the white hope and was thrown on the junk heap. Is it more promising than Safeguard, which followed Sentinel? Is was seemingly full of hope, yet was junked. Is it more promising than the strategic defence initiative?

    This covers 40 years of hope, followed by abandonment of these anti-missile technologies. I see no reason to suppose this will be any better. The reason that some of us think it has more hope is that the word is going around in this town, for example, that it's much less ambitious than President Reagan's Star Wars. Well, we should watch that; it's actually more ambitious in its technology than President Reagan ever dreamt of. President Reagan's plan was for mid-course interception, largely using a device coming out of my laboratory, a chemical laser placed in space—which I say with rather modified pride. However, it was a mid-course interception.

    As the Pentagon says and President Bush has said, now we are dealing with the deployment of every available technology in a layered system, starting with the boost phase, then the mid-course and terminal phases. This is a far more ambitious system than Star Wars was. It is only less in terms of the claims being made for it, which are more realistic--namely, that it will only be partially successful even with all these hundreds of billions dollars spent, and therefore should be regarded as what? That's the next question, as what?

¿  (0945)  

    For domestic audiences in the United States, it is stated that it is to give the President of the United States options. I had the pleasure of discussing this with Senator Joe Biden when he was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and his comment--which he didn't ask me to quote, but I don't see any harm in that--was, how nice that the President has options; once this system is in place, he has the option of instituting a policy that will only lose him San Francisco and Chicago. Of course, the irony was heavy, genuine, and truthful.

    For foreign consumption, the statement is different--not that the President of the United States should have options; that's not what Canada exists to provide, though the President of the United States deserves to have options. We are told it will be a deterrent. Do we believe it? Faced with an attrition rate of 50%--even, in an ambitious case, 75%--do we believe a rogue state, a state of concern, will say it's not worth trying? What they will do is double or triple their weapons. From three they will get six, and the status quo ante will have been restored.

    Do we believe in the threats that I've just been saying are not really being counted? Do the threats exist? Dr. Axworthy has commented on that. We all know that the threats come tangentially from a different source. They come from weapons hidden in ships, trucks, and suitcases. But there is the possibility that North Korea, for example, might ultimately get intercontinental ballistic missiles that have the range to reach Hawaii or Alaska. They don't have it at the moment. Is this something that this complex of dubious technology should be used to counter?

    It's a matter of opinion, but I don't believe so, because the notion that a nation, however reckless, would deliberately embark on an act of suicide--because of course, that would be suicide for North Korea--and that the nation can be deterred, if it is in the hands of lunatics, from committing suicide....

    We recently had an example--as if we need another one--in Saudi Arabia of how well you can defend against people who are determined to die in the act of mounting an attack. You can't protect yourself against them.

    I should be winding down these remarks.

    I have been involved in public debate of this matter, so I have a sense of what informed people are saying. They are not saying this is a marvellous system; they are saying this is inevitable; the United States has made a commitment from which it will not turn away, so let us grant them this particular, somewhat dubious, and hugely costly adventure.

    I come back to my reason for being Canadian. I find that an appalling argument. It's not an assertion of our sovereignty, as people say; it's a surrender of our sovereignty. It's a surrender of the very principles that give meaning to the existence of this country if we say, well, we don't see much sense in this, but we're going to say yes to it.

¿  (0950)  

    Let me moralize for a moment longer and say, those who say yes when they really mean no live to regret it, if they're lucky.

    We did that when I arrived on the scene in Canada 44 years ago, with the Bomarc missile. There was a feeling in the country, which I as a young assistant professor did everything I could to support, that it wasn't a good thing to spread nuclear weapons around. We would be more responsible, though we had the technology, not to get nuclear weapons. That, in the end, defined Canada: a country that could easily have nuclear weapons and refuses to have them.

    We said yes to Bomarc. Bomarc, for those who are too young to remember, was an anti-aircraft missile that needed a nuclear warhead. We said yes, but we meant no, and political chaos followed. In ensuing years we stored up misery for governments that followed that of Mr. Diefenbaker and that of Mr. Pearson to grapple with this mess. Let's not do it again.

    What about the argument I keep hearing that, by saying yes, we get a place at the table to influence something that we perhaps need to influence? I don't believe that, because again, I use my experience as a technologist. Though I don't think this is an effective system, the technological constraints are huge. If you say, well, yes, admittedly the radars are in Greenland and in Fylingdales, Yorkshire, and the trajectory that we will detect will be detected here and aimed at these particular U.S. cities, but please don't intercept here, intercept somewhere else, because it will be more in the interest of Canada that you do so.... The constraints are so huge that I don't believe our vote will make a difference, added to which, we all know around this table that our vote will be a very feeble one because our subscription to the plan will be a very feeble one in terms of cash and in terms of conviction.

    Why so feeble in terms of conviction? Let me allude briefly to something that Lloyd Axworthy has already dealt with. It will be feeble in terms of conviction because we will know that we have stepped on the conveyor belt that leads to arms in space. That's not scaremongering; it's part of the stated plan for layered missile defence, repeatedly endorsed and promoted by the present U.S. administration.

    We will have signed on saying, well, actually we're only signing on for the first bit. That is going to diminish our vote because we are people who say yes, meaning in large part, no.

¿  (0955)  

    The Chair: Dr. Polanyi, could I ask you to wind up your comments?

    Dr. John Polanyi: I will.

    The Chair: I know we have a lot of questioners who are anxious to get some questions in.

    Dr. John Polanyi: I would just end, then, with a very general statement, a plea that we step back and realize, as many of you or all of you, as people involved in the political process, know better than I, as a rather narrow technologist, that it is gestures that matter. What is the symbolism of this missile defence that we may now be about to subscribe to? The symbolism for me is that we are going to attempt to establish a gated community. We are going to use our wealth and technological know-how to protect whom? The rich. Protect them against whom--rogue states, states of concern? Against the poor. Is this the way to achieve lasting peace?

    I would only ask that you think of others who have attempted to wall themselves off as rich people from the poor. Ask Louis XVI--it's a bit late. Ask the Czar of Russia. You cannot make an enclave for the rich. That is not the direction in which our country should go.

    Thank you for your patience.

    The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Polanyi, and thank you again, Mr. Axworthy.

    Mr. Anders, you have the floor for seven minutes.

    Mr. Rob Anders (Calgary West, Canadian Alliance): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

    Since our guests today have talked about gestures, I'd also like to talk a little bit about gestures. Chinese experts have drawn attention to the U.S. dependence on a sanctuary in space for military reconnaissance and targeting and communication assets. They have discussed several alternative systems for the destruction or neutralization of U.S. military space assets.

    Furthermore, Captain Shen Zhongchang is quoted in articles on 21st century naval warfare in China Military Science in both 1995 and 1996 by Michael Pillsbury, who said:

disabling a more powerful navy by attacking its space-based communications and surveillance systems and even attacking naval units...from space. Shen writes, “The mastery of outer space will be a prerequisite for naval victory, with outer space becoming the new commanding heights for naval combat.” Ships at sea will carry out antireconnaissance strikes against space satellites and other space systems. “The side with electromagnetic combat superiority will make full use of that invisible killer mace to win naval victory.”

    That program has been carried on. I'll first go into the history of it, and then I'll talk about recent developments. There's research on missile defences in China dating back to the 1960s under the 640 Program. Their space and missile industry's second academy, traditionally responsible for surface-to-air missile development, set out to fuel the missile defence system, consisting of a kinetic kill vehicle, high-powered laser, and space early warning and target discrimination system components. In the 1980s, they carried that out further through their 863 Program.

    I just want to make sure I get all of this on the record.

    Captain Shen also went on to talk about all sorts of specific aspects of the system, including attacking radar and radio stations with smart weapons; jamming enemy communications facilities with electronic warfare; attacking communications centres, facilities, and command ships; destroying electronic systems with electromagnetic pulse weapons; destroying computer software with computer viruses; and developing directed-energy weapons and electromagnetic pulse weapons.

    I'm going to wrap this up, but finally with regard to gestures, which our guests have talked about today, General Fu Quanyou, chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, wrote:

In order for The Inferior to Defeat the Superior, first, we need to rely on high quality people; second, we need to rely on the smart combat doctrines; third, we need to rely on the high quality Assassin’s Mace weapons.

This is what they're referring to when they refer to “assassin's mace weapons”.

    The last gesture is that China's president, Jiang Zemin, called for accelerated development of the assassin's mace weapons in a speech in August 1999. He went on to talk about it further in an article in the February 13, 2001, Liberation Army Daily.

    Gesture-wise, it seems pretty clear to me there are other people actively working towards developing these types of systems. I don't think it makes any sense for Canada to sit by the sidelines, or for people who I imagine would have been part of a pacifist element in the west over decades, and who I'm sure would have said in decades past that we should disarm and get rid of nuclear weapons....Today we have other powers that are looking quite actively at pursuing these very types of weapons. I think I've adequately quoted sources and people who are obviously very close to the top, and indeed the president himself.

    Today, in your presentations, I've heard most of your attacks go against our largest neighbour and ally, the United States, for considering going ahead with a kinetic-based system to stop incoming missiles. These other powers are actively talking about space-based missile systems and everything else to try to win superiority on the battlefield. It boggles my mind that you would want our largest ally and neighbour not to be able to defend itself.

À  (1000)  

    Mr. Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Anders, one thing you've missed in your recitation is that the Chinese government is officially and actively promoting a treaty prohibiting the placement of weapons in space. In the Geneva Conference and in various other fora they're probably one of the most active proponents now.

    I'm not gainsaying that some of their military people, like most military people asked to look at different options and risk assessments, would be promoting it. That's the nature of the military mind. It's up to governments to make those decisions. The difference is that the Chinese government is actively on the record for a treaty that would limit and restrict any placement of offensive weapons in space, whereas the United States is not. In fact, the United States takes the counter position, that they do not want any restraints of that kind. They will not limit themselves and therefore oppose--

À  (1005)  

    Mr. Rob Anders: Mr. Axworthy--

    Mr. Lloyd Axworthy: I'm sorry. Perhaps I may be allowed to finish.

    What has happened, in fact, is that at the discussions in Geneva, where there have been efforts to bring weapons in space as part of a treaty negotiation, it is the United States that has been the primary opponent of even getting into that kind of discussion.

    So I don't question that there aren't a lot of theoretical papers being promoted. I also suggest to you that one reason you might go back and look at those documents is that it's in reaction to what they see as a threat, because the largest military power in the world, the one that has the largest reach and is closest to the technology--which the Chinese aren't even close to getting--is brandishing it and suggesting that they would not limit themselves.

    Military strategic thinkers in other countries, as I said in my presentation, are going to react. Then you're into a new kind of arms race for space. The real issue is how do you provide a break? How do you provide a deterrent to that kind of escalation?

    What we're saying is that by lending Canada's reputation and good standing as a country that has been an author and a promoter of restraints, treaties, covenants, and agreements to limit the supply of weapons...to suddenly shift dramatically its position to one of endorsing a major expansion of a new weapons system would only serve to promote that escalation.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Axworthy.

    Actually, I have to go to Mr. Godfrey now because Mr. Anders' time has expired.

    Mr. Godfrey.

    Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West): Thank you, and thank you for your courtesy, Chair, in extending me the right to speak.

    I want to pursue with our guests what I think Dr. Polanyi referred to as the conveyor belt we may find ourselves on. I guess what I'm trying to understand as we approach negotiations with the United States and we seem to set a line in the sand on the issue of weaponization of space is whether we're being a bit naive in choosing not to read the documents that are so evidently available to us.

    I notice that in President Bush's release of May 20, 2003, on national policy on ballistic missile defence, as Dr. Polanyi has said, he refers to “an evolutionary approach to the development and deployment of missile defenses to improve our defenses over time. The United States will not have a final, fixed missile defense architecture”. In other words, whatever we're signing onto is a dynamic rather than a fixed state. It's a staged process rather than one that comes to some kind of end.

    Unless I'm misreading, the President then goes on to say “these capabilities may be improved through additional measures”, and then he goes to “Deployment of additional ground- and sea-based interceptors, and Patriot (PAC-3) units” and so on, and ends with “Enhanced sensor capabilities; and Development and testing of space-based defenses”.

    I guess my first question is: are “space-based defenses” actually, in other words, the weaponization of space?

    Mr. Lloyd Axworthy: Mr. Godfrey, I don't think you were in the room when I also pointed out that the U.S. government has gone in front of Congress for appropriations to actually undertake testing space-based technology and the way they apply to missile defence systems.

    There's a very simple, easy way to deal with this. If this committee were to recommend to the government that a prime condition of any Canadian involvement would be a clear declaration by the United States government that they would not use the missile defence system to extend any weaponry into orbit or space atmospheres, then you can quickly get a clarification. If they say yes, we will agree to that stricture, problem over. And Mr. Graham is right, there'll be no problem. If, however, they don't, then you know you shouldn't get into missile defence, because it's an open-ended case.

    To me, I think that is one of the primary issues. What conditions and criteria do we set for any discussions about participation?

    Mr. John Godfrey: But do you think that might be difficult for the United States to agree to, given the fact that appearing before the Senate armed services committee in the United States on March 18, General Kadish, the director of the Missile Defense Agency, in conversation with Senator Nelson...? Senator Nelson says, “...your budget documents show that you are going down parallel paths to acquire the ground-based boost phase and a space-based phase.” And General Kadish doesn't disagree with that. Then Senator Nelson says, “Well, let me ask a policy question to the secretary over there. That would be the first time that we would be weaponizing space, and there has been a policy up to this point that we are not going to weaponize space. Tell me about your thinking with regard to the change of that policy.”

    Based on that and the fact that General Kadish also indicates that the next phase, which deals with the space-based phase, would begin in the years 2008 to 2012--which he refers to as “Block 8 to 12” in military lingo--does it seem that it would be very likely that the United States, having set itself out on this evolutionary course, would be able to halt what it's doing?

À  (1010)  

    Dr. John Polanyi: I'm sorry, I didn't know to whom your question was directed.

    Mr. John Godfrey: It is to either of you.

    Dr. John Polanyi: All right.

    I think Mr. Anders has done us a service by reading into the record this huge catalogue of temptations to use the high ground of space. The temptation is very real. The intention is very clear, because at the highest level the missile defence program has been described as a multi-tiered defence, and one important tier is to exploit the sort of technology that Mr. Anders was talking about. So, yes, it would be very hard to stop.

    To your other question, would space-based weapons that protect assets, such as satellites that attack other satellites, that attack missiles from space, represent weaponization of space? Most assuredly they would. Are they proposed in this huge scheme? They definitely and explicitly are. Can we still hold back from the weaponization of space? And here I differ from Mr. Anders. Yes, we can still hold back. Does it make sense to legislate in that respect? Only if you can inspect and enforce. Can you inspect and enforce in space? Yes, better than anywhere, because it's very visible.

    Mr. Lloyd Axworthy: May I supplement the question? I think there has been a cascade of evidence coming from different administration spokespersons about their intention. You've already cited General Kadish's testimony. It's also germane to look at what Undersecretary Wolfowitz, who was the author of the Iraq pre-emptive position, said in October 2002:

...while we have demonstrated that hit-to-kill works, as we look ahead we need to think about areas that would provide higher leverage. Nowhere is that more true than in space. Space offers attractive options not only for missile defense but for a broad range of...civil and military missions. It truly is the ultimate high ground. We are exploring concepts and technologies for space-based intercepts.

    Again, you have the second highest official in the defence department saying that's what we intend to do. We have our own government saying they will not in any way accept any initiative that would endanger the movement toward putting a treaty in place. All right, so call it. Put your cards on the table and say, all right, we will only participate in the missile defence system if it's clearly understood that there is a declaration against the use of this system to apply a space platform of any kind. Then if the Americans say, sorry, this is our policy, then we know we should go off and pursue another one.

    The Chair: Mr. Axworthy, I'm going to have to cut you off here.

    Mr. Godfrey, thank you for your questions.

    Madame Lalonde.

[Translation]

    Ms. Francine Lalonde: I'd like to thank both of you for your two brilliant speeches that I certainly intend to quote in the future. I am anxious to read your document, Mr. Axworthy.

    Is not the condition that you set for Canada's participation insufficient? Let me explain what I mean. Is not the basis of the problem the fact that we have returned to the period preceding the recognized balance of terror and confirmed in the 1972 treaty between Russia and the United States? The arms race has already started up again, and this, together with the fact that the United States has an anti-missile defence system aimed at protecting itself against any attack, means that we can expect others to develop their own weapons at a time when our dominance is a result of our technological superiority. Doesn't this lead us once again to a situation where the only way out is a war, something I don't like to think about? Otherwise, it would require another multilateral strategy in order to return, as the result of all the pressure that we can bring to bear, to arms reduction and the end of the arms race.

    The billions of dollars being used for defence are necessary for economic development. You quoted the World Bank study on the prevention of civil wars, but there is also poverty and famine.

    Is that not the heart of the matter? We have to put a stop to this new arms race. Do you have a counterstrategy that Canada could advance? The people who refuse must have a counterstrategy.

À  (1015)  

[English]

    Mr. Lloyd Axworthy: I certainly think, in the time we're in, there really is a need for a third way between the way of the fanatics who are threatening us and the way of the warriors who think they can stop the fanatics by force of arms. I think there needs to be a third way, an alternative to that.

    One thing we've ignored a great deal is that up to the last 10 years or so, the international system has been working pretty well. There's a study that's just come out from the University of Maryland that points out that over the last 10 years the number of dictatorships has fallen by about 50%. The number of democracies has increased by 50%. The number of conflicts around the world has been reduced substantially--all by negotiation, diplomacy, and humanitarian intervention. We didn't have to go to war to actually achieve progress. So one of the things, rather than inventing a new wheel, is to improve what already is a well-founded tool kit for developing ways of dealing with risk and security in a way that doesn't require a massive military presence.

    At the same time--and this is the classic Canadian dilemma--on the one hand, we understand that much of our own security is tied into improving multilateral international cooperation and agreements, but we are also living next door to the United States. It's a very powerful country on which so much of our economics depend, and we are becoming day by day more integrated. There are very substantial constituencies in this country these days who basically are saying sacrifice the question of Canadian security or freedom of choice in order to ensure our economic well-being.

    I've been involved in politics--until recently--for close to 40 years in this country, and I go back to the same debates that took place in 1960 about foreign ownership, and then free trade. It's the classic debate that goes on in Canada. It's a question of where you get the balance, and we've always been pretty careful in making sure there was a balance between maintaining good relations--cooperation when we had to, signing these agreements--and at the same time ensuring we had some political space of our own to work on international initiatives. I'm afraid the balance is now tipping the other way. I think, because of the sort of pressure we're under post-September 11, we're beginning to go the other way.

    So the practical question, Madame Lalonde, is--and let's be political about this in the small “p” sense of the word--if the government is proceeding to have discussions, which it seems to be, let's make sure those discussions are real ones and aren't simply there because somebody says--as John Polanyi said--this is a way to buy some peace with the Bush administration.

    I'm saying let's use a discussion to set out some real tough questions to the United States. Are you proceeding with weapons in space? Will you put a halt to new nuclear testing so that nuclear intercepts and other kinds of technologies won't be used? Will you put a restraint on missile technology exports? In other words, use that discussion to put in some real strictures, put in some parameters.

    I'll just give you this--and I know the chairman's getting uneasy. I was lecturing at UCLA two weeks ago, and I had an interesting lunch with one of the top strategic thinkers in the United States, Richard Rosecrance, who writes in this area. He said the best contribution Canada could make would be to help those in the United States who are trying to provide a counterpoint to the doctrine the Bush administration is putting forward, so there's a serious debate in the United States. He said if Canada gives in and succumbs to that doctrine, then those in the United States who are at least trying to get a balance back into their affairs will be without support.

    And that's why I think it's absolutely crucial, at least in this country, that we approach this in a way that isn't simply saying “I'll jump, and you tell me how high”.

À  (1020)  

    The Chair: Thank you, Madame Lalonde.

    I would like to take an opportunity to get a few questions on the record as well.

    On behalf of the committee, I would also like to respond, Mr. Axworthy, to your comments in connection with our terms of reference being too restrictive. Certainly the understanding of the members of this committee is that we could touch on any issue as it relates to Canada-U.S. defence relations and the broader picture, which includes our participation in the world generally, our freedom of action that way, the impact on NATO, and the impact on Canada's multilateral approach to things in general. So I do think we have a fairly wide scope of inquiry in connection with our work.

    I should say as well that the foreign affairs committee has undertaken fairly recently a major study and produced a report that we have certainly had the benefit of looking at and we will continue to study as events unfold. But sometimes we take a little bit of a different perspective than the foreign affairs committee on these issues.

    Mr. Lloyd Axworthy: I've noticed that in the past.

    The Chair: Yes. We like to think of ourselves as free thinkers around here.

    The point you made about the need for verifiable weapons agreements being a way to go is certainly an important one. The restraint that those agreements provide, protocols where inspections can be conducted, are all very well and good, and where it works it's a major improvement in terms of the mechanisms that are out there for international peace and security. But what we have witnessed over the course of the last little while, certainly the last few years--and I'm thinking here largely of North Korea--is a situation where there was an agreed framework in 1994 that spelled out certain responsibilities for the North Koreans and certain responsibilities for the Americans. One could argue that both sides failed to live up to all of the spirit of that particular agreement, with some very destabilizing effects.

    In connection with North Korea, the weapons program that they appear to have undertaken certainly didn't crop up yesterday. It's very, very likely that even before they were named as being part of the axis of evil, they were engaging in activities that were very counter to what they had signed on the dotted line for, going back to 1994. The example that is set by North Korea as a rogue regime probably could exist in the future with other regimes as well that are probably very willing to sign treaties and then pay absolutely no heed to the responsibilities that those treaties entail.

    We've seen the whole business in Iraq, of course, the removal of the weapons inspectors. That's likely to repeat itself in the future.

    It may very well repeat itself in the future, and one of the things about defence theory, the security theory, is that you really don't know necessarily where the next threat might be coming from. I think we saw that in spades in terms of September 11. We had no idea that al-Qaeda was contemplating the level of destruction that we saw on September 11. So it becomes very difficult to predict the future, but prudentially it's also extremely important to try to put in place defensive systems that will protect your population--clearly.

    So when you have the possibility of rogue regimes, regimes that pay absolutely no heed to treaties and agreements that are signed, how do you reconcile the safety? You're standing behind agreements and hoping they will provide you with the level of safety that you need.

À  (1025)  

    By the way, that's not just in connection with attacks, intercontinental ballistic missile attacks or even shorter-range missile attacks from cargo ships or wherever. It also consists of the type of blackmail that we have seen to a certain extent with North Korea, where they have used their capabilities, their weapon systems, to try to blackmail the United States and other major powers.

    I'd like to get your thoughts on that.

    Mr. Lloyd Axworthy: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It's a very broad, encompassing question, and I'm glad to hear that the committee also interprets its own remit to look at the broader implications for Canada.

    I think you've touched on a very important point. I'm not here to say the status quo is acceptable. I think there has to be a substantial strengthening of the multilateral system. I think Canada is in a place to play that role, to help strengthen it, to incorporate into these agreements their non-state actors, potential terrorists, people who are transferring technologies. We've not done nearly enough to do the monitoring, surveillance, and verification that we have.

    But you know as well as I do, Mr. Chairman, that part of the problem is that a number of the treaties that have been negotiated have been thwarted. On the biological weapons treaty, the United States refused to agree to a verification regime for it. There was a very major threat that we all faced, and here is a country that has the largest biological system, and they won't agree to a verification system. If they had, it would have then put the precedent in place that everybody had to....

    This powerful country does carry a lot of sway, and if they agree, it opens the door for a lot of other agreements. If they refuse, then it gives a lot of other bad actors the right to say, me too.

    So I think one of the real challenges we face is to use our understanding--and I make this case to you. I think our defence establishment in Canada is very good in being able to develop a means of monitoring, surveillance, and verification. I think of the kind of lab we have in Winnipeg, the new biological lab. It could be a major source of testing for ways of verifying biological threats. We're not applying those kinds of things because we're kind of taken in by an interpretation of risk that comes from the present U.S. administration and others. We should be designing what we think is our own risk.

    So by all means, let's get together. But what we're saying here--I think both Dr. Polanyi and I--is that if we get into this system, our ability to become an active, effective promoter of a stronger multilateral system is diminished and reduced.

    Let me just give one point. Without going into the full history of Korea, under the KEDO program, of which Canada was a member, there was progress made. The Koreans, after KEDO had come into effect, had sort of stood down much of their nuclear program, in return for which they were going to get energy supplies, which they never got. Furthermore, the opening that the South Korean government took to begin negotiations again was a chance to put some fresh air into the system, and again it was frustrated.

    I would say our own country was remiss in this case. We opened up a diplomatic mission in Pyongyang in order to provide a window into Korea to provide reports back as to what was going on, and we never carried it through. After September 11, we basically never fulfilled the mission or mandate, which was to provide a listening post, an observation post, in North Korea to help support the kinds of initiatives the South Koreans were doing.

    So we bear some of that responsibility, that we simply haven't put our full efforts since September 11 into the internationalization of security. We've been focusing on North American security, and rightly so in many cases, but we haven't broadened our orbit to get back into the business, which I think we were pretty good at, of establishing a much stronger multilateral system.

À  (1030)  

    The Chair: Thank you.

    Actually, I'm going to have to cut myself off in terms of that question, because we do have some other questioners here to whom I want to give a chance.

    Ms. McDonough.

    Ms. Alexa McDonough (Halifax, NDP): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

    The really superb, substantive presentation that has been made this morning is much appreciated.

    I don't know if this is more a comment to the committee, but I personally regret what I think is profoundly disrespectful, for us to have had some of the best minds, the best analysts, the best advocates of genuine peace and security policies, prepare a substantive document with, I'm sure, a great deal of input to present to this committee, and for the committee not to have had it translated. I understand the committee has had it since Monday. I think that's very regrettable.

    However, perhaps it's to our advantage that everybody listened with rapt attention to every word, and we will have a chance to read the background document after the fact.

    The Chair: Ms. McDonough, perhaps I could just interrupt you here, which is not to take away from your time.

    The committee staff got the document for the first time yesterday morning; there was simply no time to translate it. The document will be translated and be shared with committee members. We look forward to any further discussion. The document will be considered as grist for the mill in the study we're doing.

    Ms. Alexa McDonough: Okay. I don't mean to derail what I think is an important opportunity to raise questions.

    I do want to say that the assurances that the foreign affairs committee has conducted a comprehensive foreign policy review are simply not accurate. In fact, despite the urging of some opposition members, two of whom are here at the table, the call for a comprehensive review of NMD was strenuously resisted. In fact, they weren't even prepared to reinforce the status quo by saying we should take extreme caution with respect to Canada entering into some kind of participation in NMD.

    This really brings me back to this sense—which I think we all have and which was certainly expressed by witnesses this morning—that we seem to be barrelling ahead with this with a sense of inevitability. At the foreign affairs committee, we've heard government members say both formally and informally, we don't agree with it and we don't think it makes any sense, but you know what, I think we have to do it to repair relations with the United States, for having had the audacity to chart our own independent course with respect to the war in Iraq—and besides, it won't cost Canada anything.

    This brings me to my question. I guess I'd like to ask both of our witnesses if they could comment on the issue of what it can cost Canada to go down this road uncritically and, in particular, in relation to Canada's chairing of the SHIRBRIG committee dealing with rapid force deployment. If we're going to be sucked into the Bush ballistic missile program, where is the need for the kinds of resources that would allow us to play that sort of effective preventive role?

    Dr. John Polanyi: I will give a most inexpert answer, because it's not my field.

    I think, though, that if Dean Swift were alive, he would be taking delight in this peculiar situation in which this country has got itself into—the position of saying that national missile defence is certainly not a Canadian initiative. It doesn't fit with Canada's thinking about how to build peace, but the United States is so insistent on it, it is said that we should say yes, and that in some strange sense we will thereby be asserting our sovereignty. That paradox baffles me.

    I think you asked whether this can be reconciled with the Canadian stress on peacekeeping—to put it loosely. I think we should be offering our most important allies to increase our defence expenditure, and to use that increased defence to make a reality out of SHIRBRIG, which I think you referred to. SHIRBRIG is very largely a Canadian idea. It has been embraced by an international community at the UN, is very largely existent, and is desperately needed. One can even say where it is needed at the moment, namely, in the Congo. That could be a very real contribution. I don't see how to combine it either philosophically or financially, or in terms of the manpower and womanpower of our think-tanks, with a commitment to missile defence.

À  (1035)  

    Mr. Lloyd Axworthy: I'll make three points in answer to Ms. McDonough.

    To pick up on John's point, I'd first recommend that this committee may want to look more seriously at how the rampant development of civil conflict in failed states is in itself a source of major insecurity in a variety of ways, including terrorism. There's now pretty good evidence emerging of the connections between these breakdowns and the emergence of terrorism. Afghanistan is a classic case; if you ever want to see where a terrorist organization got its start, take a look at what happened in Afghanistan, because of what took place there. This is an area where I think we have some vocation to respond, but we don't have the capacity to.

    Point two is that I think we need to improve our surveillance issues around North America—not with ballistic missiles; I think there's a lot of penetration by drug traffickers and other forms of predators who use our space. It gives definition to NORAD and other areas that need to be looked at it.

    I'm not the expert on this, but I know enough from my past time in government and from the work we're now doing at the institute that it's very important, particularly in the north, where we are now opening up waterways. The security questions in the circumpolar area are becoming very substantial now, but nobody is looking at them. The Europeans are actually ahead of us right now in looking at circumpolar security issues. It's an area that as Canadians we should really be substantially committed to. Again, we are deflected away from the real source of our security concerns by something that is being done for reasons of appeasement, or to “Let's get along”, or whatever theory has been coming out of the CD Howe Institute recently. I find it objectionable that those who like to beat their breasts and say, “We're the real security mavens”, are not; they are in fact really deluding Canadians away from what their real security concern should be.

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Axworthy and Dr. Polanyi.

    Mr. Godfrey.

    Mr. John Godfrey: I want to ask you about the two quite different risk scenarios put forward by Mr. Anders and the chair.

    The first risk scenario concerned China. You might say China is a traditional power, not a rogue state or not one to which we ascribe irrationality. Yet the suggestion is made that somehow different rules should apply to China than applied to Russia in its previous regime, that somehow China would not respond to the threat of a counter nuclear attack, as Russia might have in a previous era. So that's a rational state scenario that somehow in a new world is altered by national missile defence. I'd like some comments on that.

    Mr. Pratt's point was about another kind of scenario, the North Korean scenario, which President Bush also commented on in his statement on May 20, 2003, describing states as “more risk prone”. I think that means they're more prone or inclined to take risks and that they view weapons of mass destruction as weapons of choice, and that they will not be dissuaded in the first instance by the threat of total nuclear annihilation by return-to-sender missiles from us. So there's an irrationality in these states. On the other hand, these states would somehow, in the words of the President, be dissuaded from pursuing ballistic missiles if we had national missile defence.

    So there is an irrationality. Somehow they won't be dissuaded by the threat of being blown off the face of the planet, but they will be dissuaded by.... I'm just trying to understand this in traditional risk terms.

    Dr. Polanyi, I know you've had such a long interest in the field of dealing with concepts like mutual assured destruction, so can you help me with this?

À  (1040)  

    Dr. John Polanyi: I can only say that you've pointed to a paradox, to put it politely--or a folly, to put it more brazenly--namely, to argue, when it suits your purpose, that deterrence doesn't work and that nations will commit suicide, and then to argue that nations confronted by a defensive system will just give up on the possibility of launching an attack.

    If I may enlarge on the second scenario, I think that nations faced by a partial protective screen, which is all that is envisaged, will simply turn to other modes of attack, if attack they feel they must. We have heard rather little around this table today about the terrorist scenario, but that is the direction in which they would move, towards asymmetric attack. That they would give up just doesn't make sense. It is a humiliation, if you would accept that term, to be confronted by some sort of global empire of the rich that claims to be invulnerable. That's not going to be accepted by the others, who are in large part the poor.

    Mr. Lloyd Axworthy: If I could, I'd like to read into the record some information, and it's not my own; it comes from the CIA, which is not my normal source of examination.

    In their national intelligence assessments in 2002, they noted that Iran, Iraq, and North Korea view these weapons, ballistic missiles, more as strategic tools of deterrence, not as operational weapons of war. So what the CIA is saying in terms of advising their own government is that these are not aggressive offensive weapons; these are in reaction to other states of mind.

    Let me make a second point. To come back to China again, the Chinese now have maybe, at best, about two dozen plus missiles they're developing as a refinement of that, to improve it substantially. The kinds of abstracts that Mr. Anders was referring to are in the Chinese literature, but they haven't been applied in the actual application.

    One reason is that the Chinese don't have the money, and also, as a country that is just emerging out of development, they are facing enormous pressures economically, to say nothing of what they're now facing in public health. They're afraid of an arms race, they don't want one. They realize they can't achieve their objectives by trying to compete with the Americans in this area. That's why they want a treaty. That's why they're desperate. It's not altruism; they want a treaty to protect themselves, like everybody else.

    The third point, which is something I think is worth considering--and it's partly an answer to you as well as to Mr. Pratt--is that President Bush did us all a favour, in one very significant way, by going to the UN on Iraq and asking for inspectors to go into Iraq to check for weapons of mass destruction. First, he opened up the real serious option that increasingly the UN should be a much more robust intervener on behalf of disarmament, that it doesn't have to simply be a passive recipient of ideas. What was being developed there.... In fact, Mr. Bush could have, in my view, pulled off a great diplomatic success if he said, I forced the Security Council to take it seriously, I got them to put the inspectors in, the inspectors were working, they were showing it wasn't going to happen because the weapons weren't there, and therefore we were able to apply an international tool of inspection, verification, and disarmament.

    The point I want to make to this committee is that there is a venue, or an option, that should be explored in terms of how we make the UN a much more effective tool of disarmament, based upon that Iraq precedent.

À  (1045)  

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Godfrey.

    Mr. Anders.

    Mr. Rob Anders: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

    With regard to the number of missiles vis-à-vis China, Beijing is now believed to be deploying some 75 new missiles annually on its eastern seaboard opposite Taiwan. The number of Chinese missiles arrayed against that republic is expected to reach 600 by the year 2007.

    So I don't think we're just dealing with a number of 12 or so; we're dealing with a fairly substantive number. Also, Mr. Axworthy previously, in response to my previous statements, said that these things were theoretical.

    I think that when you have somebody like General Fu Quanyou, chief of the general staff of the People's Liberation Army, and as well President Jiang Zemin, both talking about developing high-quality assassin's mace weapons, one of those being space-based weapons system, I don't think these things are theoretical. I think we have it from the very highest levels of the Chinese military and political structures that they are indeed embarking on that program, and I have lots of quotes to corroborate that.

    Mr. Axworthy went on to say that the Chinese, for example, want to have a treaty. To paraphrase Mr. Godfrey, he said, I think the Chinese want a treaty for a very rational reason. I think the Chinese want a treaty so that they can go ahead and stymie the U.S. advancements in this field, and by doing that they believe they are going to somehow stall the United States in terms of the deployment of an anti-ballistic missile system, and as a result, it's going to allow them time to go ahead and abrogate that treaty and secretly go ahead and advance their own systems.

    The reason I say that is because when we come to the aspect of the rule of law in China with regard to treaties, you certainly have all sorts of examples of forced abortions, persecution of Falun Gong without fair trial, gunboat diplomacy and threats to Taiwan, even in the midst of their free elections, restrictions on the Hong Kong press, occupation of Tibet, and basically a totalitarian one-party state without elections. Why we would accept that this nation would enter into a treaty with regard to ballistic missile defence and stymie our own either sanctioning or involvement with the United States on their programs, while China does these things behind closed doors, as they certainly do on a whole number of these other issues?

    They're not known for being human rights beacons in the world. They're not known for being top-notch in terms of their own trade law. It's very difficult, for example, to be able to get a fair deal when it comes to companies operating inside China in terms of trade policies, in terms of contract law, all the rest of these things. If you have a regime that doesn't respect the rights of its own citizens in its courts, that doesn't respect the rights of foreign corporations with regard to trade law within China, why should we expect that their wanting to enter into a treaty on ballistic missile defence is going to be honoured internally in China, and we're going to go ahead and allow it to hamstring us?

    Why would we expect that a treaty that China wants to enter into on ballistic missile defence, when they have so many other examples of violations--whether it's domestic, international, etc.--is not simply an attempt to hamstring us and to handcuff the United States and us as an ally of the United States, and to allow them to go ahead and develop their systems to be able to catch up or surpass the United States with regard to ballistic missile defence?

    Mr. Lloyd Axworthy: Again, it's a very large question dealing with China. Let me first say that you partly answered your own question. Why would they do it? Because it's in their interest to do it, to try to prevent what is already a massive technological lead the Americans have so that they would not proceed to do it.

    Of course, that's the same interest we would have to do it. We don't want to see weapons in space either. Our commercial interests, in which we have very substantial investments, would be totally destabilized by any sort of disruption/turbulence that got in if we started using space as a weapons platform. The Chinese are not alone. Virtually every other country in the world except our neighbours are really wanting a treaty to put limits, parameters, verification and control. As to the development itself, I think it has yet to be proven that those developments are actually going ahead.

    Thirdly, you say why would we trust them? We agreed that they should join the WTO. We thought they were trustworthy enough to become members of the World Trade Organization subject to sanctions, subject to arbitration, which they have accepted, because over time people think that authoritarian regimes, as I said, can be altered. You can have regime change without going to war. You can have regime changes because of internal developments, accented by external pressures and influences.

    That has been part of the Canadian policy, to engage the Chinese on human rights, engage the Chinese on trade relations, engage the Chinese on technology transfers and on education. It may not come as quickly as you would like, Mr. Anders, but the fact of the matter is it's probably a more effective strategy than isolation, containment, and treating them as if they are somehow a pariah or a rogue among the community of nations. There is a different perspective.

    I don't mean to say that you are naive about it. That's why I do say, as I said in answer to Mr. Pratt, that I think we have to be much more active in developing more effective forms of control, disarmament, monitoring, surveillance, and verification. That should be the Canadian argument. Let's get tough with weapons. Let's pre-empt the pre-emptors.

À  (1050)  

    The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Anders. Your time has expired.

    I would like to get a couple more questions on the record myself, if I could.

    The first relates to a witness we had before the committee earlier this week, Mr. Jim Fergusson. Not to put any words in his mouth, but what he did say, or at least my impression of what he said, was that we have to look at this whole business of weaponization of space and we have to reconsider some of our previous notions, going back to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, because the strategic environment has changed dramatically, obviously, since 1967.

    One of the thoughts he planted, again according to my impression, was that in terms of the major powers, the Russians, the Chinese, North America as a whole, the international economy relies very significantly on space-based satellites for the daily flow of information, the daily flow of communications, financial transactions, literally billions of transactions per day, and it's clearly in the interest of countries like Russia, the United States, China, all of Europe, and Canada to maintain the integrity of those systems and protect those systems, because they are so vital to the functioning of the international economy.

    Again, when you go back to the possibility of rogue states, and it's within grasp very clearly, developing a low earth orbit type of capability to get a nuclear weapon into space, which could cause havoc in terms of the satellites that are up there now, how do you defend against that? I want to get that question out to you.

    Getting off the national missile defence issue, Mr. Axworthy, the other issue I wanted to raise with you was the business of your earlier comments with respect to the Congo and the lack of a Canadian capability to protect civilian populations in the Congo a number of years back. I think you made an allusion to this as well, Dr. Polanyi, in terms of the need for us to beef up our conventional capabilities to be able to play a role in the world that is more significant, shall we say, than the role we currently play.

    Not to encourage any family feud here, Mr. Axworthy, but I do read some of the things your brother puts out from time to time, and he has made some very, in my view, compelling arguments in terms of the three Ds--defence, diplomacy, and development--in terms of the fact that we have to do more in those areas to really put meat on the bones of Canadian foreign and defence policies so that we can have an impact in places like the Congo.

    I would appreciate getting your comments on those two issues.

À  (1055)  

    Mr. Lloyd Axworthy: Sure. I'll let John answer, but I'll comment on the first point. I didn't read Mr. Fergusson's presentation, but his premise that space is becoming much more vital economically is absolutely right, but his conclusion is dead wrong. The best way to protect active space development is through rules, through laws, through agreements, which protect against intervention and incursion. If some rogue state, which, by the way, I think, whatever his estimate is, has a capability of moving in...I think that's pretty far-fetched.

    Let's be blunt about it. The United States presently spends 50% of all the money spent in the world in defence. They spend half of everything that's spent. Their lead is so far ahead of everybody else that to talk about North Korea or Iran even being in the same ballpark is really talking about putting the San Francisco 49ers in the same football league with a high school team. It's simply not comparable. I mean, these guys are blowing ghosts.

    The reality is, let's do something about space. If it does mean tougher verification on it, sure. But the problem right now is that there is one powerful country that says it will not countenance any discussion about new treaties or agreements in space, and that's our neighbour. That's why I said let's get to this discussion.

    Point number two, I don't know again what my brother has been saying recently, but I can say this. When I was in government, Mr. Pratt, I also promoted the need for a more effective capability for Canada to do preventive peacekeeping. It's not a new idea, frankly. What I would say is this, that we as a country--

    The Chair: We're looking for support in this committee, wherever we can get it.

    Mr. Lloyd Axworthy: I agree with you, but the point is, is that too much...? I'm not going to get into your business of the whole defence policy. I don't think we specialize enough. I don't think we put nearly enough into our reserves system to make real citizen soldiers. I don't think we've really developed the capacity to have a quick, fast reaction to places like the Congo.

    Let me put this forward. I would urge this committee to take on the report that we tabled in 2001 on responsibility to protect, which says very directly that where individuals are being threatened because their government can't protect them, won't protect them, or is the predator itself, then we have a responsibility as part of the international community to intervene.

    Except, as I pointed out, when we tried to intervene in Zaire we didn't have the intelligence, we didn't have the logistics, we didn't have the lift capacity to get there. As a result, we couldn't deliver the goods. As a result, the decision was to withdraw. We withdrew. I think that if we had stayed we might have made a huge difference.

    Now, that's history, but it does mean to say that we have a real role to play. That's why I feel strongly about this other issue, that I think it would take away from what could be a very clear Canadian vocation to be an effective preventive peacekeeper.

    The Chair: Okay. To that I can only say “Amen”.

    Madame Lalonde.

    Mr. Lloyd Axworthy: Could Mr. Polanyi just have a word very quickly?

    The Chair: We have very limited time left and I did want to allow Madame Lalonde to--

[Translation]

    Ms. Francine Lalonde: No, let Mr. Polanyi have my time.

[English]

    The Chair: Okay. Dr. Polanyi, please proceed. Madame Lalonde has given you her time.

    Dr. John Polanyi: That's very generous, but I don't know if it's wise.

    I wanted to reinforce what has just been said in a particular way. There is an assumption here that we are going to be so solicitous of the national sovereignty of an out-of-control country such as North Korea that we will sit there while they develop intercontinental ballistic missiles and then we will spend a few hundred billion dollars trying to knock those missiles down in flight.

    It's an absurdity. The present President Bush was right in saying that we have to take robust action long before that. Dr. Axworthy has stressed that we went along that path and we should do it again. Similarly, when it is suggested--and I've never heard it suggested before--that North Korea might loft nuclear weapons into space in order to destroy satellites, it would be of course a lunatic act on their part to make themselves outlaws in that fashion. But they are capable of lunatic acts on occasion.

    But the notion that, again, we would be so solicitous of their national sovereignty that we would sit there while they develop those weapons and deploy those weapons, and would do nothing...we have diplomacy and we have force, such as forced inspection and forced intervention, and we should act in advance.

    The second point, of course, was the point that our chairman raised, with which I'm very much in sympathy. I think, namely, that this country can develop an expertise and should develop the will to go to the aid of people who are threatened and go to the aid of countries that are collapsing, is a real contribution to peace. I think this committee has heard General Romeo Dallaire talk about what he might have achieved in Rwanda with 5,000 troops, which is the size of the SHIRBRIG brigade. He was talking about 5,000 troops untrained. The SHIRBRIG brigade is trained and ready.

    The point I wish to make is that the deaths of those 800,000 people who were hacked to pieces, not with nuclear weapons but with machetes, while we watched and did nothing represents a defining moment in contemporary history to which we should respond, and respond in the fashion that our chairman has suggested.

Á  (1100)  

    The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Polanyi.

    Thank you, Mr. Axworthy, for your comments today. I think that if we'd had the time, we probably could have continued this discussion for at least another several hours, but unfortunately we're limited to two hours.

    On behalf of the committee, thank you for being here today. Thank you for sharing your views with us.

    And to those members sitting around the table who aren't normally seen at the defence committee, I would like to extend a warm invitation to you folks to come to hear some of our other witnesses on this and other issues.

    So with that, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to adjourn the committee for this morning.