National Defence Committee on March 27th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you, and the time has expired.

Ms. Gallant, please, for seven minutes.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

It's been reported that the Chinese military uses its cyber assets to steal information from corporate North America. This is a type of asymmetric warfare in that they manipulate our economies, and that manipulation is being used to weaken our countries financially. When economies lag, defence spending decreases, thereby allowing for vulnerabilities which may not exist were spending restraints not in place.

When incursions into the Republic of Georgia were made by Russia, their communication system was down, under cyberattack. Estonia also suffered a cyberattack, which they believe was perpetrated by a historic local aggressor. Given that state actors, not to mention non-state actors, are progressive in using cyberactivities as weaponry, in addition to the counterattack measures that we're already putting in place, does it make sense for us to start utilizing cybercapabilities for offensive use as well when we come under attack?

[MGen Christian Rousseau]

Thank you very much for the question. It's a very important one in terms of how the history of warfare develops. It's exactly there.

In agrarian days when we were soldiers or farmers and the aim of war was to actually capture land, it was because that's how you made money. Land was how you made money. Now that the economy has moved, how you make money is through dealing with information and exchanging information. Having the capability to affect that is the new domain of warfare. Most militaries have recognized this, that to be able to prosecute war or defend against any war or attack, there needs to be a cyberdomain.

As you mentioned, some countries have that specific doctrine. For Russia and China, it's actually written in their doctrine; there's no secret about it. They've worked very hard to invest a significant amount of resources to do it, so we need to do the same thing in terms of being able to defend against that. The component of what becomes offensive, what is counterattack, and all of this, is still an evolving part of a warfare domain doctrine. That argument still happens in western countries. In terms of developing our doctrine into this, not just Canada, but the rest of the west is not as far advanced as Russia or China would be.

[Jill Sinclair]

Mr. Chairman, perhaps I could add a brief comment. Thanks again for that question.

I'd just like to broaden the context a tad, and Artur may want to add to this.

We tend to talk a little bit more about cyberincidents than attacks. Again, I work at the Department of National Defence, and I don't want to sound like I'm not concerned about defence. I am. But not every incident is an attack and not every attack requires a military response.

The thing about cyber, of course, is that it's so complex. Where does it come from? What's its intent? Is it simply a modern variation on a theme of spying? That doesn't make it any better, but there are a couple of old professions in the world, and spying is one of them. The question is, how do you best deal with that? How do you make your systems robust? How do you take preventive action? How do you mitigate that if indeed you do believe you're under any sort of attack? As you say, it can come from a non-state actor or from a state actor. It can come from a company too. There's a lot of diffusion in cyberspace.

I don't know, Artur, if you'd like to add to that.

[Artur Wilczynski]

I've just a couple of things to add. Part of my responsibility is to also look from a threat perspective, in terms of threats to our missions abroad, and cyber threats to our missions abroad are one of the things that we have.

I completely echo what Jill just said about not always being able to see who that actor is. The importance here quite frankly is to make sure that you have the policies, practices, and capabilities in place to defend and protect your information against those kinds of attacks. Part of that means working in partnership with close partners and allies on that. For us, a key element of that is our relationship within the Five Eyes community, to work very closely, to share capabilities, to share information about intent, and to make sure we can protect our systems and protect our information from the actors that you've identified.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you.

What capabilities do our sovereign forces have in place to detect, and if necessary, deter submarines that are beneath our Arctic ice?

[MGen Christian Rousseau]

The way we track submarines starts well before they are anywhere close to Canada. We try to keep an eye through imagery and other means if they are in port, and that's usually even something like Google Earth. You can probably find something like that. Once they move, then we try to track where they go. In terms of our situational awareness of where the submarines are, we have a fair idea of where that goes. Of course, the right to innocent passage for submarines, for any vessels that are on the surface, is not the issue at play here. I think what you actually mean are submarines that would be submerged to do that.

With our allies, there are capabilities to track some trigger points in the oceans where submarines cross. In terms of being able to say where those are and how the technology works, it would be a bit difficult to do here.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Do we defend this through our allies? Is it not sovereign assets that we have to meet the full requirements of this?

[MGen Christian Rousseau]

The best way to do this is to actually see when they leave the port and as they go in specific constraining areas in the ocean. you know that they were there. It is a system of systems that we participate in.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

You're out of time, Mrs. Gallant.

Ms. Murray, please.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you for being here and giving us information. I find this very fascinating and educational.

The two key threat areas are around the Arctic and cyber. That's what we were told at a previous committee. We're hearing here that the threats to the Arctic are not military in nature currently or for the foreseeable future. Can I extrapolate from that to assume this is not seen to be a concern in terms of the defence of Canada and North America, military threats whether they be in the Arctic or elsewhere?

[MGen Christian Rousseau]

If I may answer that question, Madam, we do not see a threat to the Arctic that would be different from a threat to the rest of Canada. There is nothing except for its pristine nature and all of this, but there is no reason that a foreign actor on the military side would attack the Arctic or the rest of Canada.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Okay, you were talking about the threats are other things, and you mentioned illegal immigration—

[Artur Wilczynski]

Transnational crime.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Could you tell me what are the top five?

[Artur Wilczynski]

From our perspective when we're looking at threats to Canada, there is a wide range whether it's things such as terrorism, illicit trafficking of drugs, whether it's human smuggling, weapons smuggling. There are a number of threats to Canada that don't necessarily fall specifically in the military domain. They are broad threats to the security of Canada. The way we work on that is again that whole-of-government approach.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I just wanted to know what the top five were, and you mentioned a number of them.

In terms of maritime security and defence, is the policy that our maritime capability should be directed towards those other kinds of threats and military threats are not as...? I live on the Pacific coast and of course I'm interested in what we do there, what capacity we have, what needs to be improved, and what the impact is of having a supply ship that is probably kaput and may not be replaced for 10 years or so.

Anybody can speak to those.

[MGen Christian Rousseau]

If you don't mind, I'll start with your question.

Military capabilities are developed to respond to the worst-case threats, so attacks on North America, attacks on Canada. I said that there are no such threats today, but as I mentioned before, sometimes intent changes very quickly. There are countries that have capabilities that have no intent of threatening North America but one day could and in the past have. That's why we develop those military capabilities. You can't just invent them overnight.

Having those capabilities in a whole-of-government approach, sometimes those capabilities can be used in support of other government departments that have other mandates. This is how this actually works out. This is why the MSOCs, the marine security operations centres, allow us to have visibility of what goes on around North America for—

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Are those adequate for our needs, or what needs to be improved?

[Jill Sinclair]

If I might, Mr. Chairman, thank you.

Back to the broader issue of what the threats to North America are and how you defend, it becomes this amalgam of all the government departments. Some of the threats would be environmental. Some of them are going to be illegal migration, and all of those things.

In terms of what we have and what needs to be improved, maritime domains are increasingly important and maritime domain awareness is increasingly important. NORAD, for example, which started off as an aerospace warning, actually encompassed the maritime domain awareness. NORAD now looks out also in terms of the maritime domain awareness to be able to track what's coming into North America, the issues you'll know being on the coast, container ships and those sorts of things. What it really requires is this close partnership with the lead civilian agencies, because so many of these things have to do with coast guard surveillance, or they have to do with your transport department.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I have another area of questioning I'm interested in, so thank you for that. It's a big topic, and very concise answers.

We keep hearing about all of the departments collaborating. I was on the health committee when there was the H1N1 virus. We learned there were 12 departments, or there were a lot of departments with different responsibilities all collaborating. It turned out that it was pretty chaotic and that there was no one in charge, so it was not clear what everyone's role was. It was a whole lot of expenditure of time and effort to try to cooperate without a clear structure. One of the challenges with that, of course, is budget, because it takes more money and time to set those things up.

With the budget cutting that's happening now, which is, according to one defence analyst, a $30-billion downfall from where we would be today under the defence strategy, is that impacting the ability to optimize cooperation? Can you speak a little bit about whether it's optimal now, perhaps? I doubt it, knowing organizations. What are the key things that are needed to have that collaboration be more effective?

[Jill Sinclair]

Thanks for the question. We're always trying to optimize cooperation. That is absolutely the right terminology.

One of the things that might be a little different than, say, the health domain is that the organizations here and agencies, whether it's Canada Border Services Agency, Transport Canada, Defence, Foreign Affairs, there is a little bit more of a history of exercising. One of the key things that you have to do is not just wait for the crisis, but to practise well in advance. I think we have advanced a lot in terms of learning lessons on how we respond to certain crises, and that is how we work in response and in support of civilian agencies. That's one of the things we do with our exercises up north. It's all about the inter-agency process. It isn't just theoretical, waiting for the crisis. We actually exercise that. We have terms of reference. We have established procedures that we use. We are always exercising and improving, so we always have to optimize because we're always preparing for the last crisis.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you, Ms. Sinclair. Time has expired.

That completes the opening round of questioning. We'll now go to the second round with five-minute segments.

We'll begin with Mr. Williamson, please.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you to the witnesses for being here today. Your testimony has been very interesting, and very informative as well. In fact, you've covered a number of my questions.

I have a brief question for the Department of National Defence. I wonder if perhaps you're downplaying a little bit the rising importance of the north and the challenge this country is going to face given not only the fact that the shipping lanes are going to open up and more ships will be in the north—I'm not just talking about sailing between Canada and Russia—and potentially coming through what we perceive and we claim rightly to be our territory. Coming through Canadian territory, other nations will declare the right of innocent passage. My first question is about the ability to police and monitor that.

In addition, we see, for example, growing interest from militaries around the world. The Chinese are building Arctic icebreakers, for example, and the threat that's going to play, and how are we going to be there on the ground?

Ms. Sinclair, in your testimony you listed a number of areas where we've beefed up our capability, but I am concerned about the ability to have ships in the water to enforce our sovereignty, not just claim it from a faraway capital, Ottawa, but to be there on the ground to intercept ships, to be able to monitor them and intercept them if necessary.

[Jill Sinclair]

Thanks for the question.

On the importance of the north, thank you for giving me the chance to clarify, because I didn't want in any way to downplay it. In fact, I think we're all cognizant of the rising importance of the north. With climate change, conditions are changing and there's going to be more activity. What we need to do as we look at that is to ask what the nature of that activity will be.

I think what you've heard from all of us is that at the moment, we don't see the principal nature of that being of a military threat. There will be a lot more human activity, which means the chances for oil spills, environmental challenges, search and rescue, even disease and pandemics. All of that will become a new dynamic. The work the whole-of-government teams are doing all the time is designed to make sure that we're kind of ready for that in terms of civil security issues, if I might call them that, rather than military security issues. Having said that, deterrence is an extremely important part of maintaining sovereignty, so there's being able to project out, having the awareness, the ability to do the surveillance. As I said, I think that we have upped our game considerably.

There's been a lot said about the United States announcing its new Arctic strategy. They are kind of late to that game and there's no investment line in that, whereas Canada has actually been investing, because we recognize that the Arctic is us.

In terms of the challenges that you talked about, Chinese Arctic icebreakers and other things, we are investing in new capability, whether it's satellite or the Arctic offshore patrol vessels, the investment in the Canadian coast guard capability, too. It's important. In terms of ships transiting Canadian waters, we have said that as long as they ask us for permission to go through our waters and they can comply with the right environmental standards and all of that, then they will perhaps get permission and be welcome.

It's all about being aware, being able to be clear about what we expect of people, and people recognizing that the Arctic is not an ungoverned territory. There are sovereign countries that have responsibility for that sovereignty. We exercise it every single day, so not to downplay it at all....