:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank the honourable members of the committee for making the accommodation of letting us testify by video conference, which has certainly been much easier for us, and I'm very honoured to be able to participate in your examination of the future defence needs of the United States and Canada, and of North America.
Obviously, we are facing new threats as well as old threats. We have to defend not just the continent against traditional military attacks, but we are facing cyber-attacks, the danger to our citizens from pandemics like the Ebola virus, and homegrown terrorism, something which Ottawa knows too well. I know many of you experienced that just a couple of months ago. Our own citizens turned by a foreign ideology can become dangerous to us.
In many ways the idea of national defence has really metastasized to cross the line between what we traditionally think of as expeditionary or overseas military activity, and connected that to our traditional law enforcement and peace officer operations here at home. Everything from our border security guards and the Department of Public Safety to the RCMP are linked to the challenge of providing security and safety for our citizens and the businesses that they have and their interests both here and abroad. Particularly in the highly interdependent world that we live in, where the economy, the livelihood that we have, is linked by financial networks, linked by the movement of people, and linked by very dynamic supply chains, we really can't be indifferent to the things that are happening in all aspects of our domestic and international spheres at once.
In that regard, if there's one takeaway that I would leave with you, both the United States and Canada need to confront this by being willing to spend more on national security. I know that's never easy. There are many priorities for budgets, but both our countries have taken a kind of peace dividend without having the peace.
We've been cutting back on our security spending at a time when our security threats are mounting. That doesn't mean we have to go back to the old spending. We can spend smarter. Technology allows us in many ways to get a bigger bang for our defence dollar. I know as members you're very keen to make sure the taxpayers' money is well spent, but I do think that we are on the verge of a need to really reinvest in national security, both in the United States and in Canada. I think there's an opportunity to do so together, that is, to coordinate the improvements that we both need to make in our security, so that not only is the Canada-U.S. relationship stronger, but our ability to work jointly around the world in responding to these threats is also strengthened.
I want to talk about three particular areas, to call your attention to what I think are some of the priorities that we should have for our future Canada-U.S. defence relations, Canada-U.S. defence investments. The first is to improve our domain awareness. The second is to improve our capacity to work jointly. The third is to improve our ability to add capacity by making smarter investments and making improvements to our procurement systems. I'll talk about each of those briefly, and hopefully will be able to give back some of the time that you've generously offered me.
First, in the area of domain awareness, increasingly the war on terrorism has become an intelligence war, where it's extremely important for us to know what's happening with individuals who often do a good job of hiding their tracks. At the same time, because of the nature of cyber-threats we're often trying to operate in cyberspace to track down the fuzzy fingerprints of hackers who may be state-sponsored from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, or elsewhere.
Also, when we're talking about pandemics, they may not be weaponized attacks, weaponized viruses. They can simply be a threat like the Ebola virus, which can come through because an aid worker has come home or someone who has been travelling to visit relatives comes home infected. The challenge is to learn when they enter our countries whether they pose a risk and make sure they get the help they need, but also to make sure that the public is protected.
When we're dealing with threats like homegrown terrorism, the kind of intelligence we need will come from trusting communities that are willing to work together with our law enforcement to alert us early that a young man or a young woman has been radicalized or may be thinking of committing a violent act, to try to catch them before they can do harm to themselves or to anyone else.
In this environment it's very important that we rely not only on traditional intelligence gathering, but we also rely on our domestic police forces and develop new capabilities to operate in cyberspace and elsewhere in order to know much more about what is happening in our space and to identify the threats before they become actual dangers.
This leads to the second point I would make, that we need to improve our capacity for jointness. As some of you will remember, in 1986 the United States enacted the Goldwater-Nichols act to reorganize our defence capabilities. In that act we focused on the importance of jointness. At that time that meant the navy works with the air force, the air force works with the army, and they all work with the marines, so we could coordinate attacks, coordinate the use of resources, equipment, and ammunition to enable us to operate in a more cost-efficient manner, with all forces of the United States working in a coordinated fashion.
That mission is as important as ever, but it's now extended. It's extended in two important ways. One is the need to coordinate between our domestic and our international forces. The setting up of U.S. Northern Command after September 11 was an important step in that direction. It remains a second responder in many domestic circumstances in the United States and is there to provide support for Canada and for Mexico, when requested. Particularly in the area of logistics after a hurricane or an earthquake, this can be crucial. It's also a coordinating mechanism to reach out to local first responders to make sure they get the information and have the resources they need to respond to anything from the Vancouver Olympics to the Superbowl when it was held in Detroit, whether the attack or the threat is on either of our sides of the border.
The jointness therefore goes in two directions: the importance of our ability to work across the Canada-U.S. border, not only at a top level but throughout our security systems, and also the ability to work with domestic resources and military resources hand-in-glove. This is about getting more by working together, more bang for every dollar that we spend, rather than duplicating effort or creating deliberate redundancy. There's a lot we can do to support each other in this regard.
I think members are aware that in 2006 the United States and Canada invested in a renewal of NORAD, but also in extending NORAD's surveillance mission to include maritime. At the same time, or in subsequent years, we've developed something called Shiprider, where the RCMP working together with the U.S. Coast Guard, the Canadian Coast Guard and the Canadian navy working together with the U.S. Coast Guard, have put officers on each other's ships so that when pursuing a threat or investigating a situation and they cross an international boundary, there's always a sovereign officer with arrest authority, investigation authority, even seizure of goods authority, to be able to act. This is the kind of jointness we need to see going beyond NORAD maritime surveillance, going into this action function.
Interestingly, those two initiatives are stovepiped. One is on the military side and the other is on what we would call homeland security in the United States, public safety in Canada. The need to link these two areas is an illustration of the challenge we face in the years ahead.
That leads me to the third area I'd like to highlight, and that is the need to acquire new capabilities. One exciting thing about the time in which we live is the amazing technology that's come forward, technology like drone surveillance, satellite reconnaissance, and of course, cyber protections that we've developed really through bringing hackers in from the cold and having them work with our governments to try to protect domestic systems.
There is a huge set of new resources coming on stream that are going to require us to add capabilities to our current military. Senator John McCain, who is the incoming chairman of the Senate armed services committee—he served in that role before—said in Washington this week that one of the key priorities for the United States in the years to come will be acquisition reform.
The United States certainly spends a lot of money, but like Canada, we face a shrinking, in fact shrunken, defence industrial base. With fewer companies able to compete for contracts, those companies are often coming forward with low bids on cost-plus contracts, so that we sign an agreement for something that looks affordable but when the cost-plus kicks in, we realize that in the end we pay quite a bit for the technology we're acquiring.
We have to make smart choices. Defence dollars will not multiply indefinitely, and as you know, there are other demands on our budgets, so we have to spend those dollars wisely.
As the U.S. undertakes fundamental acquisition reform and process reform, this is an opportunity to renew the principles of the Defence Production Sharing Agreement of 1956, in which Canada and the United States agreed to coordinate procurement and dip into each other's production bases to provide the defence needs that our military has. There's a huge opportunity for us to approach acquisition reform together to make sure our systems are mutually well informed, and that as the U.S. makes gains in its reforms, Canada is able to learn the lessons from what we've been able to do, and perhaps teach us a thing or two about how to spend wisely. That's something which I think Canadians are quite good at.
With that, sir, let me thank you very much for your attention and cede whatever is left of my time.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is indeed an honour and a privilege to appear before the committee.
I will limit my comments to maybe three or four, and then we can get into the heart of this, the question and answer session.
There are three major observations that can be made about world politics today as it impinges on the United States and on Canada.
First, great power politics are back. This does not mean that the older issues, the more recent issues actually of economic considerations, environmental matters, the fight against terrorism, have been pushed aside. What we are seeing is that the great powers are beginning to grind against each other and sparks are flying. This is a quite different experience from what we've seen, really, since the end of the Cold War or perhaps, since the end of World War II.
Second, we are observing a situation in which conflict worldwide is really trifurcating. In the past there was a focus of conflict. During wartimes, such as during the Korean War, the Vietnam War, that was clear, but even in peace time it also tended to be clear.
Now we have three great conflict areas. One, of course, is along the littoral of Russia and involves Europe and indeed some Asian participation. The second area is the new and very serious challenge with ISIL in the Middle East, which is getting a great deal of attention and in some ways is a continuation of a very long conflict there. The third area is the confrontation between China and its neighbours in the South China and East China seas. This confrontation is something that none of us is directly involved in, but it affects all of us, especially in terms of transportation through those areas and in terms of our alliance relationships.
The third issue is that there is radical structural change going on in the system. In terms of our own research, we look at this in terms of the change of position states have on their cycles of relative power. For example, Japan has peaked in terms of its relative power and is entering clear decline. The Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 after the Cold War, and now Russia is attempting at the bottom of its cycle to climb up the cycle again.
The third possible major change will be when China, as it rises in its power cycle, goes through what we call a critical point of change, where the level of its power continues to increase but the rate of increase suddenly and abruptly begins to fall off. This will be a very difficult thing for China to cope with, to manage, for example, with regard to its relationship with Taiwan. Not only will China be affected by this, but the rest of us will. Canada will be affected. The United States will be affected in various ways, in terms of trying to manage the adjustments necessary to get us through these intervals.
These are big changes taking place in terms of world politics.
In terms of the bilateral relationship, there are many areas, I think, of convergence and coordination. Perhaps the largest difference that has some impact on the defence domain is in the area of oil.
In particular, of course, there's the issue of the Keystone pipeline. I think we will likely see some changes on this, because of changes in the participation of Congress after the mid-term elections. I think we're likely to see a vote that's in favour of the Keystone pipeline, but it's also possible that the President, who is very concerned about environmental matters in the long term and has just finished signing a very important agreement with China to try to stop increases in environmental pollution, particularly the impact on global warming by 2030.... The differences of view on the pipeline still exist, and the President could in fact veto what Congress decides to support.
Finally, I would conclude on the very important and I think very positive relationship regarding what is now dubbed maritime NORAD. I have been a long-term supporter of this; I argued for this before this terminology even came into place. I cannot say that I had any direct impact, but as a scholar I argued very vigorously for this, both in Canada and in the United States, and I'm delighted to see the movement in this direction.
We have, of course, a situation in which both governments are very actively involved in terms of the identification and the monitoring of movement of illicit traffic of some sort off our coastlines. This is all coordinated in I think a very effective way inside the larger framework of NORAD and NORTHCOM relations.
It is the case that the task of maritime NORAD is simply to report and to inform the governments in a timely way. The interdiction, then, is up to the individual head of government, the head of state, to act on, but in fact this is all coordinated in a way that I think is positive and essential. Indeed, there have been a number of alerts at this point.
I would simply conclude by noting that NORAD, which some thought was going to disappear as an institution of any significance, has suddenly become, once again, very much more important. How is that? Well, NORAD is oriented toward the so-called air-breathing threat. In the last year or so, Russia has sent some 400 sorties out against North American coastlines, but also against European interests and areas of defence concern. It is of course then up to us to scramble our own fighters and to respond to this. This is familiar territory for us. NORAD has the skill, the dedication, and the long-time experience in dealing with this and that is necessary to respond in a positive way.
If I could, I would just note a statement on the part of the individual who is responsible for the North American Aerospace Defense Command's maritime division, Captain Martin Beck. He put it this way: “We have the watch, and what we do is a no-fail mission.”
I don't think I could improve on that. I think we are in good hands. I now look forward to responding to questions.
:
Professors, thank you very much for your presentations.
I am very interested in the Arctic situation. The majority of our witnesses who have appeared before the committee have argued that the deterioration of relations with Russia over the ongoing crisis in Ukraine will not affect international relations in the Arctic.
As of Monday, Russia activated the new Arctic joint strategic command. Russia's new joint strategic command became operational on December 1. Northern Fleet Commander Vladimir Korolev has announced that the new command based on the northern fleet and headquartered in Severomorsk will acquire military, naval, surface and strategic nuclear sub to surface air force and aerospace defence units, assets and bases transferred from Russia's western, central and south but not eastern military districts, with which it will importantly be on par.
The creation of the new command was outlined by Russian President Vladimir Putin on November 24, one or two weeks ago.
The northern fleet will be absorbed in its entirety into the command, together with a substantial element of the first air force and air defence command. The official transfer processes will be conducted through the ministry of defence and will take several weeks. Subordinate to the new command will be freshly constructed and upgraded air bases, garrisons, and maritime docking facilities on mostly Arctic island territories, including Novaya Zemlya, the new Siberian Islands, Wrangel Island, and Cape Schmidt, which were amalgamated in the joint task force in October and with the most up-to-date coastal and air defence weapons system to protect these possessions.
The land component is comprised of two special Arctic brigades, the first to be combat ready in 2015, next year. That's very close. It is at the village of Alakurtti, 50 kilometres from the Finnish border. It was reopened in March as a large fleet with an intelligence unit with the strength of 3,000 specialist operators. The other is understood to be at a yet-to-be identified location in the northerly Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District which will become ready in 2016. Work on both of these is said to be completed on a fast, non-stop basis.
The head of the National Defence Management Centre, General Mikhail Mizintsev, indicated on November 29 that the project will include 13 new upgraded airfields, air training and target areas, radar and air navigation sites, 150 northern fleet vessels, and some 1,200 units and subunits, including remote garrisons.
Russia is also expanding the Arctic special forces presence by more than 30%, with the garrisons of the revamped 61st independent naval infantry regiment stationed in the Sputnik base Pechenga inside the Arctic Circle, 10 miles from the Norwegian border and 40 miles from the Finnish border, where it will be co-located with the 200 independent infantry brigade that was reformed in May 2011.
To what extent do you agree with the assessment that Russia is not presenting any threats to the North American continent?
:
First of all, I have to say that I am not an expert on Russia, but I'd like to support your remarks with two further observations.
The United States and Canada have both in the last year had smaller defence budgets for various reasons which are unique to each country. For example, we had sequestration here, which caused a reduction in military spending, while Russia increased its military spending by 18%. I said 18%.
The second thing I would say, which is congruent, I think, with your remarks, is that the Arctic is at a tipping point. We may not like this. I certainly don't. I worry a great deal about global warming, but global warming is happening at an enormously fast pace. The tipping point I'm talking about is that ExxonMobil and Rosneft, before they concluded their drilling operations, discovered the first major well with commercial deposits of oil estimated to be three-quarter billion barrels. This, in my way of thinking, is going to lead to an oil rush. With this oil rush will come much greater traffic in and out of the Arctic, not so much transiting the Arctic but in and out, all of which will require monitoring. The kind of deployments that you have described are deployments which Russia is taking very seriously because it has a long, open coastline in these areas. What in fact these deployments actually mean for the rest of us is something we have to take very seriously.
To conclude, I do not believe that we, that is Canada and the United States, or the Europeans, are taking the Arctic seriously in defence terms in the way that all of these developments suggest we should.
:
Well, thank you very much. You have to look to your left to find the Liberal Party, but here I am.
Voices: Oh, oh!
Hon. John McCallum: I'd like to return to the question of the Arctic, but on a slightly different dimension.
Mr. Chisu articulated the threat from the Russians, but there's also the issue of sovereignty over the Arctic with the Northwest Passage. As was mentioned by Professor Doran, if there's a whole lot of oil there, there will undoubtedly be more ships wanting to come in and out, so there will be potential conflict over that and certainly potential damage to the environment.
I know that Canada's sovereignty claims in the Arctic are not agreed to by the United States, or the European Union, or Russia, or just about any other country in the world except Canada. I understand that ultimately there may be some international judicial process to resolve it, but I don't know when and I don't know if other countries would even accept that.
My question is for one or both of you. How do you see this thing playing out? With Russia playing a more major role, with oil possibly on the horizon, with global warming opening up shipping faster than had been thought, the stakes may be higher sooner than we might have thought. Do you think there's some scope for a Canada-U.S. deal or compromise in terms of a joint view on the sovereignty question so that we, as you were saying, can work more closely together rather than against each other? More generally, how do you see this playing itself out?
:
Thank you very much for the question. I'll take the first hit at that.
I think we have spent a lot of time as friends—despite all of our differences in the Arctic, Canada and the U.S. are fundamentally friends—talking about this problem but not actually resolving it. It's amazing that we're still disputing the boundary in the Beaufort, not because it isn't a legitimate dispute but because we've talked, mapped, and debated this thing for a long time. You would think we could come to some sort of settlement. I think as long as the U.S. and Canada have been working at cross purposes in the Arctic, it has emboldened the Russians and it has emboldened others to try to map out a new regime in the Arctic, to our detriment.
I was at a meeting not that long ago where there was a serious discussion of the United States establishing an eastern Arctic port in Greenland simply because we couldn't come to terms with Canada about where an Arctic base might be located for ships, sort of a deepwater port. That's such a waste of effort, and inevitably a waste of money.
I think we need to resolve this in two steps. The U.S. has to start taking the Arctic more seriously. It is peripheral in many ways to U.S. conceptions of national security. That has to change. Also, I think we need to look for some progress from Canada. I think the governments of Canada over the years have hoped that the U.S. would sign the Law of the Sea treaty, providing a structure for resolution of this. The Senate still won't consider that, despite the support of President Obama and President Bush before him.
I think we may need to look for a new route out. That may take, as a forward gesture, something from Canada, but overall I think we have to find a way to come to terms with each other and then present a united front to the rest of the world.
:
Let me just say that I agree with the spirit, or what I take to be the spirit, of your remarks, namely, that there needs to be perhaps some greater cooperation and coordination given the fact that we are facing a lot of movement of ships in and out of these areas.
I think something like 400 mines and well areas have been identified, so there will be a lot of movement of ships bringing equipment in and product out. It's not so much the issue of the transiting of these areas, which is good news. Usually, in the common parlance, it's described here as the Northwest Passage. Well, it's not so much that the Northwest Passage will be traversed from one side to the other very soon, but there is movement in and out of the Arctic, especially on the Russian side, and they in fact will take their security issues very seriously.
We haven't mentioned this, but it isn't just a question of our interaction with the Russians. This is an area that has to be examined in terms of what the terrorist implications might be. It's frightening to see how close Hudson Bay is to the cities, the heartland, of Canada and the United States. These areas can in fact be increasingly penetrated, not just by submarines but by surface ships. The capacity to identify what in fact these ships are carrying and so on is nascent, I would say, at this point.
But I think the spirit of your remarks is correct. We need to cooperate and coordinate.
I should say this. Canadians and Americans, being who they are, are fairly pragmatic. At this point what we've done is we've simply agreed to disagree. Then we've tried to do the best we can in terms of coordination.
Professor Sands, thank you for raising a point in your opening remarks that I find rather interesting and concerns me in particular.
You listed threats to the security of North America. You mentioned home-grown terrorism. I am the MP for the riding where a member of the Canadian Forces was attacked and killed by a person in a car. I am therefore directly concerned by home-grown terrorism as a threat to North American security, which is what we are studying today.
This raises a question that many of my constituents often ask me. At what point can we label an attack against a member of the Canadian Forces as a terrorist attack?
You gave the example of the Ottawa attack, but, in the attack I am referring to, the person had a knife and was driving a Nissan 2000. That was all the equipment he had. He had no training.
You are experts in security, but not in propaganda. As experts in security, would you place the attack against the World Trade Center and individual attacks on the same level? The attack against the World Trade Center required organized international cooperation where people were sent to a country to receive pilot training. The other attack was committed by an individual who had access to terrorist rhetoric on the Internet, but was a lone wolf, isolated, and, because of mental health issues, could not have relationships with his neighbours or family members.
Can those two attacks be treated in the same way? What is your assessment of those two events?
:
Well, I think you're absolutely right that submarine warfare is something that has to be studied very, very carefully. If you look at the history of both World War I and World War II, submarine warfare was a pretty central issue, although at the end of World War II it was countered pretty effectively with the technology that was available.
I would also point out two other things that generally support what you're saying. There are various techniques used on the seabed and so on from satellites to reinforce the work of maritime NORAD in observing what in fact is happening in these waters.
Also, China, as you said, has 70 submarines. Most of them are diesel submarines, which are very quiet, and they serve the purpose very effectively in the South China Sea and East China Sea, but they're not blue-water submarines. Once they begin to develop nuclear submarines with long-distance capabilities, blue-water capabilities, then, in fact, they are going to be a serious potential threat. I have no doubt that over time this will be an objective: to develop such submarines and, in fact, deploy some of them in the Arctic.
As we know, China has at least one icebreaker, which is pretty remarkable for a state that isn't directly on the Arctic. I think this is based on some reasonable concerns they have. They want to try to shorten transport times and so on from Europe to Asia, but they are also very interested in the resources, and ultimately, they're going to be very interested in the security situation.
I think it is very appropriate for you to introduce this into the discussion.
I think one challenge is really bringing in the more civilian side of the security apparatus. That's where the intelligence may be. That's where the need for action may be. There has always been a cultural difference between military and civilian law enforcement. The attitudes are different. The closeness to the citizenry is different. I think that's going to be a difficult bridge to cross.
In the 1980s, when we began doing inter-service cooperation, there was such pride in the navy, such pride in the army, let alone the air force, that it was hard to bridge those cultural gaps. The way we did it was through a lot of joint exercises, a lot of joint training, and a lot of war-gaming. I think where we could do a lot is simply having people on both sides of the law enforcement and military divide in both countries, sort of a four-box matrix, begin working together in test exercises, getting to know each other, and developing some trust. The gear, the equipment, and all those things follow, but you need to do that.
Where governments have created the Permanent Joint Board on Defence, the Military Coordination Commission, we have structures for this. With local law enforcement, at best we've been able to do integrated border enforcement teams, so we have a much weaker infrastructure there. There's a real opportunity to perhaps bring in, through fusion centres—we have set up a number of them—some of the military and civilian forces together to get them training, talking to each other, and understanding each other's cultures.
Maybe the bridge for that is going to end up being the border people. Many of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security border hires we've made since September 11 are veterans who have come from a military background and are now doing something more in the civilian space. They are people who understand both cultures. They could be a good bridge for us in trying to link these communities together.
:
I just want to say that I certainly think Canada can work together with the U.S. militarily without losing sovereignty, because I think in the big cases of Vietnam and Iraq we didn't suffer any negative economic or other repercussions from saying no.
What I'd like to focus on is related to what you were talking about earlier, and that's the eastern front, or the Baltic states. One thing that would concern me is that the next front for Putin might be the Baltic states. The critical difference between them and Ukraine, of course, is that they're members of NATO and Ukraine isn't. That means there is the potential for article 5...and a NATO member to be attacked. I would think that if they did move in that direction, they'd do it subtly. It wouldn't be an all-out military invasion, but they could gradually assist the Russian-speaking people in parts of the Baltic states, and perhaps have some fake referendums, a little like Ukraine, and then it could fester.
I have two concerns over that. I'd like your assessment as to how important this is on two fronts. First, any potential direct military confrontation between Russia and NATO is inherently dangerous, obviously. Second, you were talking about how nimble Russia was in moving large numbers to Ukraine. I remember from 10 years ago, NATO was anything but nimble. There was talk of a big, rapid deployment force, but the ratio of tooth to tail was very low, and it was quite sclerotic. Maybe it's better now, but one of you said that NATO needs to be revitalized today.
I guess my concern is, first, the inherent risk of a confrontation with the world's other superpower, and militarily, nuclear, and second, the relative ability of NATO to act quickly versus what Russia has shown.