National Defence Committee on Feb. 28th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Chisu, you have the floor.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to the panel for these very good presentations.

I just want to state a couple of facts. We have the second-largest country in the world, after Russia. Only 2% of Canadians ever cross the polar circle, and 90% of the population lives 100 miles from the border.

Dr. Bercuson, you are an authority on history. You outlined the role of the military engineers in building Canada during the years of this country's formation. Today we have, besides the three elements of sea, air, and land, the added fourth dimension of threats, which is cyberspace. This is a new element that is completely distinguished from the situation of the Cold War. Then, the preoccupation was to secure airspace, to secure land, to secure sea, and so on. Cyberspace is now the new threat.

How do you see these new elements influencing our force's readiness, and what would be your advice for us, especially from the point of view of lessons learned from history? It is very important, when we have seen that one of the main preoccupations of our Fathers of Confederation was to connect the west coast with the east coast. Now we have the huge Arctic with a lot of potential, economic potential. Usually economic potential attracts a lot of interest from other people who can influence, let's say, our sovereignty and our security in some way.

Can you elaborate on this new, or virtually new, threat, and on how we should be ready to deal with this new issue? It's completely different now from during the Cold War.

[Prof. David Bercuson]

Obviously the technologies that began to develop in the seventies and eighties have reached a point now where there is a new element. My Beta VCR flashes 12, so I really don't understand any of this stuff. But what I do understand is the capability, because we're seeing stories in the news all the time about the capabilities, and the capabilities are clearly not only to conduct espionage via the Internet but also to shut down operational capabilities and to very definitely influence the way militaries conduct operations.

I have two concerns. One is that there are too many.... I'm not an expert in this. I was once on the Advisory Council on National Security in Canada, and I remember at the time being very worried about the degree to which we were prepared for cyber-attack. I thought there were too many silos in this city. I still believe that. I don't know what's going on inside the closed doors of CSIS, CSE, and whatnot, but I know that bureaucracies tend to create silos, and intelligence bureaucracies no less than anybody else. The major issues in intelligence are really never in the gathering; they're in the analysis and the comparing of information. So I worry about that.

I also worry about our ability to stay current with our Five Eyes allies and I am told—this may be untrue, it may be a rumour—that they are less and less inclined to work with us because we eschew any desire to develop offensive cyber-capability, which they are all doing. The Brits are doing it, the Americans are doing it, and the Australians are doing it. The idea is that deterrence works. If you want these people to stop attacking your systems, they need to know you're going to attack theirs, and apparently, our country has decided this is not something Canadians do.

Now I don't know if it's true, but if it is true, that worries me as well. So in terms of the cyber, those are really the only two things I have to say about it.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Okay, thank you very much for your explanation. I will return to the Arctic for a little bit.

The Arctic is a great area where we don't have a big presence, because our population is very small in comparison with other countries like Russia or something. What do you suggest we do in the Arctic? It is not enough that you are sitting at the table, when you don't have capabilities. Germany used to have the former Chancellor Schröder who became the vice-president of Gazprom to supply the gas for Germany.

What are we doing? What should we do? What is your opinion on being ready, on defending our sovereignty, defending our security, and assuring we are in complete control of our Arctic, as a nation?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Chisu, your time has expired.

I ask that you make a very quick response.

[Prof. Stéphane Roussel]

It's a complex question.

First let me say that I don't see our sovereignty really at risk in terms of territory. No one has tried to steal Canadian territory, so the question is not there. It's much more, first, a question of symbols, and symbols are much cheaper than actual real defence. If we can just send ships and patrol from time to time, it certainly helps.

The real challenge is that the Canadian government must perform governmental activities in this region. The more people we have there, the more you need to enforce the law to make sure people are safe, and to make sure you are in control of what's happening there. So to keep the capability we have, we have to develop the infrastructure, because it's empty. These four million square kilometres are empty, in terms of infrastructure. We have to continue the pace.

What I don't want to see is what we did in the seventies, eighties, and nineties, when we completely neglected that region, and now we have to recreate an expertise in that region. So my advice is to at least keep what we have, and that's why in my presentation I asked you as a committee to make sure the government will keep its promise on the Arctic.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you,

Mr. Kellway, you have the floor.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Through you, to our witnesses, thank you very much for coming today. Everything that you've had to say so far today has been of great interest. We've been at this readiness study for some time. Increasingly, I'm concerned that we embarked on a study that is going to turn out to be, frankly, a monumental waste of our time.

That concern is heightened today when we have an expert panel before us, and Professor Bercuson started off by saying that you're not even sure what the term means, and Professor Roussel suggested that it doesn't have a translation into the French language.

I recently came across something that I found interesting and helpful in, of all places, the Australian Journal of International Affairs. A couple of academics have put together a methodology for getting to this issue of readiness. I think they defined it as capabilities, and what we are engaged in here is a kind of capability assessment.

In the study—I'm simplifying this probably unfairly to them—what they identify is that before you can even get to the question of capability assessment, you have to deal with the issue of identification. I guess it's threat or, in their terms, they prefer to look at it as vulnerabilities. From that assessment, one goes into a risk assessment. Then you can start talking about readiness.

All of this seems to suggest to me that we've leapt a couple of steps ahead in this study, and we need to go back and think more carefully about the threats or vulnerabilities, and the risks that those pose. It's a quantification or even a qualification of those risks.

My question for you, after that long preamble, is really one of methodology. I'm not asking you about the risks themselves, but in light of your comments—especially yours, Professor Bercuson, and your iron law of history—how would you recommend that we go about getting at this policy issue? I think it's the policy issue that's looming large here. How do we go back and start this again to get to that capability assessment?

Is there a method, Professor Bercuson and also Professor Roussel, that we should be looking at or that the government should be employing to get us to a point where we can have a sensible discussion about capabilities?

[Prof. David Bercuson]

There are limits to what you can do with policy, because all governments react to public opinion. They react to the spur of the moment, and so on and so forth. Also, I think academics tend to overplay policies, because academics think they can have a role in making policy, so obviously policy then becomes important to them.

I'm not sure that what we're looking for is policy. I think what we're looking for is a set of principles, for example. I mean, one of the sets of principles that I still think holds great value for Canadians was laid down by Louis St. Laurent in 1946. When he talked about what role Canada should be playing in the world, he talked about the importance of national unity as one the main goals of Canadian foreign policy; he wasn't talking about defence policy.

I think we can revise those principles that St. Laurent laid down so long ago, and we would probably find today that we're not going to arrive at principles that are very different from what he did at the time. For example, how important is it for us to intervene in a situation such as Libya? And if we're intervening in Libya, why aren't we intervening in Syria? Well, half of it has to do with capability, and half of it has to do with what other nations are doing, but how important is it for us? Why is the Caribbean an important place for Canada while the Mediterranean, let's say, is not so important for Canada?

I think these are things we can do. I think these are things we should be doing. I think the government should be taking the lead on it but also listening to Canadian people and Canadian business to see if there is a general consensus on certain issues. You won't find complete consensus, obviously, but I think it's important that Canadians have to basically agree on something in order to support any kind of an endeavour—either short- or long-range endeavours.

I think part of the lesson that we need to learn from Afghanistan is that people went off in all different directions for all kinds of reasons—some of which Jack Granatstein and I studied in a publication that we issued last fall—so we didn't get national unity on the question of Afghanistan. We didn't even get significant consensus on the question of Afghanistan over a period of time, so policy tended to go off the rails.

I think what we need to try to do is identify those things that most Canadians would agree on and say, “This is in our national interest, this meets our values, and it's part of who are to do this.” Then, when we have a set of principles together, I think we need to try to measure whenever international crises arise, whether or not we're prepared to follow through.

If you call that a policy, okay. I just call it basically a shopping list, more than anything else, but I think it needs to be there, because I think that right now there isn't anything out there that's very clear.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Your time has expired.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Can I get a quick response from Professor Roussel?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Only if you can respond very quickly, Professor, because the time has expired. You have 30 seconds or less.

[Prof. Stéphane Roussel]

The first point is that, yes, there is a science called risk management. I mean, we define it by your vulnerability, the cost to recover, and the likelihood of events. You can make some very weird calculations, but I'm not good at it.

Second, if you want to predict the future for Canada in terms of risk and in terms of budget—we've mentioned the defence budget before—there is one single variable you can use. It is the United States. The Canadian budget always moves in the same direction as the U.S. defence budget. It's magic. It's the same thing. The U.S. is calling the shots when it's about threat, so it's depressing for you and it's depressing for us. I prefer to put it aside.

Third, I'm going the same way as David in saying that in Canadian society there are some elements of consensus and basic values that we want to keep. It's not necessarily economy, or prosperity, or a tangible thing, but there are also some basic principles that we want to follow.

It is part of your job to identify what we want to protect, not only in terms of prosperity and material protection but also in terms of the values that society wants to protect. This is part of your job.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. We're well over the time. Even though Mr. Kellway feels that he might be wasting his time, I can tell you that your input today has been very valuable so far.

Mr. Norlock, you have the floor.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being here.

I'm a very practical person. I like what the professor just said. Mr. Garnett comes from an area of Canada that I came from, where you do what you're told. I was a policeman and he was in the armed forces, so we do what we're told and we manage the budgets we're given.

I truly believe that you either use it or you lose it. We have something very precious in this country called the Arctic, and as you rightly pointed out, Mr. Roussel, if we're not there doing something, while other countries may not claim part of Canada as their country, they will say we don't have any business telling them whether or not they can put their ships or whatever through, or whether they can drill for resources. You begin to lose your control if you don't use it.

Using it, we're not going to be able to move massive parts of our population there, but the tiny example I use for high school students is the fact that 20 years ago Canada produced zero diamonds or just about, and today we're one of the world's largest producers of gem and industrial-quality diamonds, most of which come from the north. We know the north is probably very rich in natural resources.

Wouldn't you say that it is in our national interest and public opinion would be positive towards it, and one of the ways is to begin to seriously look at the use of our God-given resources in the north and use our Canadian military with their experience in operating in a harsh atmosphere? Perhaps we could start with a few comments on that from Mr. Bercuson and Mr. Garnett, and then have Mr. Roussel finish off. Use it or lose it. Should we be speeding up our exploitation of natural resources?

[Prof. David Bercuson]

I think we should be strengthening the civil institutions in the north as much as anything else. We have to have a military presence in the north because the military is a signpost to everybody else that they're approaching our borders, and once they get to our Canadian borders there are Canadian laws, Canadian rules, and so on, so I agree with that.

I also agree with Stéphane that the chances of military action or a military force being used in the north are extremely remote. Certainly over the next 20 years we won't see it. I think what we need to focus on more than anything else is building infrastructure there and helping the local population develop and that's it. I think we have a limited military role in the north at the moment.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you.

Would you agree?

[VAdm Gary Garnett]

Yes. Presence is part of sovereignty. Presence means transportation, communication, and infrastructure. I think we can encourage industry to do more there, but within a very careful set of guidelines—that they employ local people and that they build infrastructure for the common good. A set of guidelines needs to play in this game, and you can't make rules without being able to understand when people break them, so therefore, we need to have a capability to know what's going on in the Arctic and then a capability to do something about it. We want to use rangers and as many local people as we can as part of that.

[Prof. Stéphane Roussel]

I suggest maybe we should avoid that expression, use it or lose it, because there's a problem with it.

The Canadian position regarding the Arctic says this is ours because we have been using it for thousands of years. If you say use it or lose it, you imply we're not using it enough to support our own claims.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Maybe we should say use it more.

[Prof. Stéphane Roussel]

Okay. Put it like that.

Second, somebody will use it for a private company, people do sports and things, so yes, some people will use it, and the Canadian government has to be there to manage all these activities, as I've already said.

The problem with the question you raised, and it's a debate that we don't yet have in this society, is how we want to use it. There are different perspectives on it. We could be asking whether we want to put the environment or economic viability first. How do we want to address all these issues? I can predict a lot of harsh debate on this. Everybody could agree that, yes, we have to be there, but how we want to be there is a totally different question.

Even aboriginal groups debate this. There are differences in the regions of Canada. Quebec differs on this question from other parts of Canada, so this question won't be solved very easily. I have just started to work on this. Give me a couple of years to answer the question.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

That's the part you've mentioned—risk management. Do we want to keep people in the north and have them rely totally upon government, or do we want them to rely, like the rest of Canada, on a combination of services and private enterprise as a way to grow the economy?

I mentioned diamond mines on purpose, because they actually employ local people. They grow the economic base of the community, rather than having government dictate. Everybody works for the government in one way or the other, because they're the only people who are doing anything about the economy in the north. That's not a very good way to run a country, and that's why you have to have an economic base, an economic reality.

There's only so much ecotourism and those other things, and development need not be counter to the environment. You can use the best practices known to human beings to develop the resources that are there, create the employment, the economic viability, and then we won't have to talk about Arctic sovereignty—it would just be there. Would you not agree?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Norlock, your time has expired.

If you want to do a quick rebuttal, go ahead.

[Prof. Stéphane Roussel]

In the short term, in the mid-term, I strongly suggest that we have a strong governmental presence there, just to establish the patterns, then we'll see about the future. But for now we definitely need a lot of governmental assets in that region. We can't escape that responsibility.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Mr. Brahmi, you have the floor.