National Defence Committee on March 27th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you, Ms. Sinclair. Time has expired.

Mr. Harris, please.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I apologize for not being able to be here to listen to your presentations. I was giving a speech in the House of Commons, but I am glad to see you both here.

Thank you again, Ms. Sinclair, for coming to our committee. My first question is for you.

Canada-U.S. relations start with the Ogdensburg agreement, the so-called treaty by press release of five sentences.

You do note that the joint defence board—they tell us someone in the U.S. called it the peanut butter and jelly board, or something—the Permanent Joint Board on Defence still seems to be the major interactive group here on the, and I don't know if the official level is the right way of putting it, but certainly on the military and policy levels. You indicate there are 800 separate arrangements of one sort or another. I'm not sure we'll be able to review all them, Mr. Chair, for our defence of North America. It seems that we have a very complex relationship with the U.S.

The PJBD seems to be still operating as the prime relationship. How many members do we have? I gather MP Laurie Hawn is one member. I don't know if he's the senior member for Canada. Who else is on that board for Canada?

[Jill Sinclair]

Thank you for the question on the Permanent Joint Board on Defence. It was Bob Gates who called it the peanut butter and jelly board.

The PJBD since 1940—it just shows what a succinct press release can do—generated quite an extraordinary relationship. We are now on, I think, our 232nd meeting, which will take place in June. It is actually established by the President and the Prime Minister, so it's at that level. They designate co-chairs. On the Canadian side at the moment Mr. Hawn is the Canadian co-chair, and a gentleman by the name of Mr. Spratt is the U.S. co-chair, both politically appointed.

Beneath that I chair it in support of our co-chair with my U.S. counterpart. We have a number of participants from the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Privy Council Office. We have a very rich range of military representatives at that table. We have in the last number of years.... I was proud to say that I brought in public safety, the coast guard, to reflect this broader approach to the defence of North America that we need to look at, to make sure we didn't miss any dimension of how we looked at the security of North America.

It meets on a regular basis. The 800 arrangements you point to go from very detailed, how we buy and sell fuel for each other to much more strategic ones. I think it's very complex because our relationship is very deep and long-standing.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

I'll follow up on Mr. Norlock's point that, of course, we have a long coastline and vast territory. Do you see there being any challenges with respect to domain awareness by Canada of our half, or more than half, I guess, of North America, from a defence perspective?

[Jill Sinclair]

If I might, Mr. Chairman, I'll answer and maybe General Rousseau will want to jump in. I mentioned previously—sorry, Mr. Harris—one of the interesting things was that NORAD expanded to look at maritime domain awareness too, which is very good because that brings the combined resources of Canada and the United States to that effort.

In terms of looking out, we also have our marine security operation centres on the east and west coasts, and also in the Great Lakes area. If we look to the Arctic, for example, we have manned overflight and surveillance and stuff at the moment. We will be launching in 2018 RADARSAT Constellation, which will give us visibility four times a day on the Arctic approaches. I'm not sure that a military person would ever say you have enough domain awareness, but certainly we're investing, and I think we have a pretty good sense of what's going on.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

You mentioned the maritime surveillance. I'm going to ask a somewhat pointed question to General Rousseau. Did Sub-Lieutenant Delisle work for you? Well, whether he did or he didn't, I guess it was suggested that the events and his action didn't do any harm to our relations to our friends in the Five Eyes. I don't think I believe that. Can you tell us what has been done? What assurance can you give that this kind of thing can't happen again? It seems to me it was a rather amateurish effort on Sub-Lieutenant Delisle's part that allowed him to obtain information and share it with the Russians.

[MGen Christian Rousseau]

Thank you for your question. I think it's a very important one that goes deep into the business of intelligence.

Sub-Lieutenant Delisle, or Mr. Delisle now, did not work specifically for me, but was an intelligence officer who worked for the Royal Canadian Navy.

Intelligence is based on sharing of information that doesn't happen if there is not trust. The Delisle event did put into question the trust in the same way as some of the other allies when they had issues of insider threat causing questions about trust.

In the sharing arrangements and in the way we deal with information, there were some evolving changes we had started to do that were not completely done, which allowed Mr. Delisle to do some of the spying and passing of information that he did.

We have continued those efforts of making our systems stronger, more robust, and completely...with our allies too. Our allies have also had issues of insider...coming out. Together we're working on the best way to do that, so absolutely, we're working to make the system better.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you, General. Time has expired.

Mr. Bezan, please, for five minutes.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

I want to thank the witnesses for sharing their knowledge and expertise with us today in our study on the defence of North America.

General, when I'm looking at your testimony today, you talk about the definition of a threat, and that having the desire to harm Canada but no capabilities to do so does not represent a threat from that entity. You go on to say that you do not see a state actor that has both the capabilities and intent to harm Canada militarily.

I look at some of the things that are happening in the world right now and at special forces that are being used by some international players. I look at Iran with their Qods force and the fact that they've moved them into Syria and other areas to cause destabilization. They often carry certain capabilities with them. Definitely they can easily integrate into a civilian setting and cause a great deal of harm.

I'm just wondering if in the intelligence-gathering systems that the Canadian armed forces deploy, along with the whole-of-government approach that we have with other players both internationally and within the domestic context, if we're looking at actually military people using terrorist-type approaches when dealing with our own national security.

[MGen Christian Rousseau]

Thank you very much for the question, sir.

I specifically referred to a state posing a threat to Canada. There are terrorist entities that would like to harm Canada, whether it's by a military threat, an asymmetric threat or a threat to safety. The way we organize the definition is not relevant, because in the end, for Canadians it will have an impact.

The groups that at one point would have been part of a state or even have been supported clandestinely from a state would potentially represent espionage threats or other threats, but a military threat of invasion of Canada or of harm to Canada does not exist presently.

[Jill Sinclair]

Mr. Chairman, if I may, I would like to say a word, too.

I think what you've pointed out here is a confluence of actors and interests in the contemporary security environment that is very worrying, because non-state actors, terrorists work with states, states work with terrorists, money funds everybody, and those lines are much more fluid. In looking out at our interests and the defence of Canada, we're conscious of those flows. This consciousness relates to everything, from how we do financial tracking to how we list terrorist entities that we know are state-sponsored.

Artur.

[Artur Wilczynski]

On that, here are a couple of things.

One is that the government passed a number of years ago the Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, which identified state sponsors of terrorism or called for state sponsors of terrorism. The government identified both Iran and Syria as state sponsors of terror.

In terms of the kinds of actors who are out there and the type of action that we take, we have focused on a number of threats from that perspective. The specific organization that you mentioned, the IRGC Qods force, is actually a listed entity under Canada's Criminal Code as a terrorist organization. We approach that threat using other instruments, whether it's policing, intelligence services in Canada, or engaging with partners to address that specific threat.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

I'll follow along that line of thought. We have talked about drug trafficking. The Canadian Forces have played a major role in drug trafficking, especially in what we've seen along the eastern coast of Africa. HMCS Toronto just had a very successful mission there. She captured a number of shipments of narcotics that could actually have gone into funding terrorism.

Look at what's happening in Mexico and in the North American context. There is a lot of activity happening there and definitely there's a lot of work up and down the coastline. What are we doing, and on that basis, how do we perceive this as a potential threat to the Canadian situation?

[Jill Sinclair]

Mexico is a key partner for us. Clearly, they have a very difficult and challenging situation, which unhappily they share with some of their neighbours, too. If you look at Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, we all track it. Public Safety does it principally, but we keep our eyes on tracking the location of the funding and where the organizations are.

We're increasingly working with Mexico. Again, this is much more Public Safety's lead and the work of the RCMP. Foreign Affairs does work here too.

Canada established with the United States two years ago a trilateral defence ministers table. The next meeting of the trilateral defence ministers will take place in Mexico City next month. This is an opportunity where we sit down and look at what their security threats are and what ours are, too. Clearly, the flow of drug trafficking, the money, everything that it generates that is a negative for our society is on our agenda, even if it isn't strictly a National Defence lead.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you, Ms. Sinclair.

The time has expired.

We'll go to Mr. Harris for five minutes, please.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

General Rousseau, I'm interested in the question of cyberactivity. I just briefly looked at your opening remarks, so I don't know whether this has been dealt with before. I believe your presentation was that from the military point of view, your work is to ensure that military assets are defended against cyberattacks so that you could carry on in the event of an attempt to compromise your ability to operate as a military force.

To what extent can you assess that as being necessary? Do we have other actors who are actively pursuing the creation of offensive cyberactivities, and what is the extent of it? Are we worried about it? Do we know that there are actors who are developing that capability?

We are told that the Americans have an offensive cyber command that is exploring that sort of thing as well. I take it, first of all, that we don't at this point, but can you tell us which actors do have cyber capability or are developing them for use as a weapon in conflict?

[MGen Christian Rousseau]

Absolutely, sir. Thank you very much for the question. We did touch a bit on it before, but this will allow me to put more definition to it.

Actually, most militaries recognize cyber as an important domain to be cognizant about, to understand, to at least defend, if not use in an attack. The countries that are most advanced in this understanding of cyber as a potential area of warfare are Russia and China. They actually have doctrine that talks about how they would use cybertools to dislocate enemies or adversaries before they would attack. We've actually seen some of those in action in past conflicts. Not only have they developed potential tools, but they've developed specific doctrine on how they would use these tools to attack.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Would that include just military targets, or also disrupting civilian operations, such as finance, etc.?

[MGen Christian Rousseau]

My most immediate concern is how they would disrupt our ability to command and control, but any disruption to the power grid, or anything like that which would stop us from being able to operate in the environment that we are in would also be of interest. Certainly those tools are being explored as possibilities by those countries. They certainly talk about it as part of the doctrine of how they would use cybertools.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Can we defend against that? How good are you at defending it?

[MGen Christian Rousseau]

Certainly, in terms of defending our networks, the networks that we operate, we have quite a good understanding of what enemy capabilities are. We think we can deal with those attacks or events as they would arise.

One of the distinctions we talked about a bit earlier was, what is an attack? What is just looking, inspecting, spying? We are under constant spying, if you will, or attempts to get into our networks to try to map them. We note that and we react to that also.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Do you have a big capability in terms of manpower, or budget for that?

[MGen Christian Rousseau]

There's the capability in terms of understanding what goes on in our networks now and what we think we would need in the future. The capability to defend our systems now, I think, we're quite good at, but we do recognize that in the future we would need to look at that.

I'll pass to Ms. Sinclair in a second, but we have, in our fourth development, looked at how we would beef that up.

[Jill Sinclair]

I'll just say a quick word, Mr. Chairman, and that is to say that looking forward, one of the things the Canada First defence strategy refresh will look at, in particular, is cyber. This has obviously emerged since 2008 as much more serious. We recognize that cyber is now another instrument in the hands of states and other non-state actors who would like to take advantage of whatever element of Canadian systems or societies, whether it's military or whether it's civilian or whether it's business.

In terms of the current capacity, we have a couple of hundred people who are working on that. We work very closely in a whole-of-government context here to detect when there are threats, to look at the mitigating responses. Obviously, the CF has a particular responsibility for protecting and making sure that we are resilient against those sorts of attacks so that we are there, available as an instrument of the Government of Canada to deal with challenges as they arise.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you, Ms. Sinclair.

This is our final five-minute question segment. Mr. Bezan.