National Defence Committee on March 27th, 2014

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

I just want to follow up on the discussion on cybersecurity. Professor Sloan from the University of Ottawa was here on Tuesday. She made a suggestion that we should actually have a cyberdivision within the Canadian armed forces, along with the army, navy and air force. I want to get your feedback on that. Right now you say Public Safety is the lead. With cyberwarfare, it's not just about defending against attacks, but something you have to counterattack. That becomes very much a national defence issue and not public safety. I wanted to get your feedback on that suggestion.

[Jill Sinclair]

Thanks for the question.

Cyber is an emerging domain, and I think all countries are trying to figure out the best methodology for dealing with it. The United States is almost pretty much, I don't want to say alone, but singular among the allies in having a stand-alone cybercommand as such militarily. They structured themselves in quite a specific way. Almost all of the other countries and partners that we deal with have a variety of public safety or homeland security kinds of leads, working with their foreign ministries and working with their defence institutions.

I think the question is, how can you best posture your country to be able to defend and respond to cyberattacks?There are a lot of different ways of doing it. At the moment I think we've determined that cyberincidents...if you put a strictly military lens on everything that happens in cyber, you will be looking at a strictly military response. The fact is, at the moment most cyberincidents are designed to spy; they're designed to disrupt; they're designed to do all sorts of things. Understanding the intent behind them, and then determining the best instrument of government to respond to that is extremely important.

At the moment we feel that what we have through the Canadian Forces in terms of identifying where the threats are coming from, protecting our systems, being able to provide that expertise to the whole of government to be able to mitigate...working with close partners.... The United States is a key partner here when it comes to things like critical infrastructure in cyber, and NORAD even looks at cyber now. That's part of how we're dealing with it.

I don't think anybody has found the perfect method for it.

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

You mentioned NORAD, and I want to come back to RADARSAT. The Constellation is supposed to be up and running for 2018. Does that make the radar array we have there obsolete, or do we still have to have land-based radar systems to work in collaboration with RADARSAT?

[Jill Sinclair]

I think that from a defence military perspective you always want systems to systems and you want redundancy. Having the satellite there is going to be fabulous, but you need every other bit along the way too, so that you have that redundancy in something as sensitive and important as Arctic surveillance.

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

Under the Canada First defence strategy, we've already made some strategic investments. What further investments are we making under the current Canada First defence strategy, and then as we move forward with the reset on the Canada First defence strategy, what future investments do you foresee?

I'll put that to all of you.

[Jill Sinclair]

On the Canada First defence strategy, there are a number of investments across, whether it's with regard to our naval, our land, or our air capabilities. Those were all outlined in CFDS 2008.

As we look forward, we will be bringing particular attention to things like cyber and space, and also intelligence capability. What the reset of the CFDS will be is what have we learned since 2008. The world was very different. We have enormous amounts of experience coming out of operations.

We think immediately of Afghanistan and Libya, but we look at our humanitarian assistance efforts, whether they've been within Canada, helping the United States, or globally. What have we learned and what do we need to be robust and agile going forward?

I think things like space and cyber really commend themselves in that regard. It's how we can do our partnerships more effectively with key partners like the United States, our NATO allies, and others globally, because none of us will ever have everything we need to deal with the whole array of security threats, which are totally global in nature.

[MGen Christian Rousseau]

I don't think I would have anything else to add, sir.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thanks to all of our witnesses this morning for an enlightening and very important round of testimony.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

This agenda suggests that this meeting goes until 12:45.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

It will take at least 10 minutes to clear the room, Ms. Murray, so—

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

I have not had an opportunity to ask a second question, whereas both parties have had many opportunities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Well, we've gone through the first and second rounds of questioning as provided, and unfortunately, today there's no opportunity for a complete third round.

I'll thank our witnesses again for your attendance here today and we will go in camera for committee business.

[Proceedings continue in camera]