Evidence of meeting #23 for National Defence in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was defense.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Jean-François Larose NDP Repentigny, QC
Thank you to our witness for being here.
I have three questions, and I would appreciate it if you could answer quickly because I don't have much time.
There was the ice storm in Quebec.
Can you hear me?
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Jean-François Larose NDP Repentigny, QC
It's okay, I can ask it in English.
We had the ice storm in Quebec. I wonder as an outside observer—
11:50 a.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
I'm sorry. Yes, thank you.
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Jean-François Larose NDP Repentigny, QC
I was saying that there was the ice storm in Quebec.
Can you hear me?
11:50 a.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
I can hear, thank you. I apologize.
11:50 a.m.
NDP
Jean-François Larose NDP Repentigny, QC
There was the ice storm in Quebec. As an outside observer, do you have any suggestions for improving our equipment? A lot of equipment came back from Afghanistan, and it was not necessarily adapted. You said earlier that an agreement between the U.S. government and the governors had improved the response time and collaboration.
My other question has to do with the network. Has the possibility of separating the network been investigated? The Internet was originally created by the army. Has the possibility of completely physically separating the Internet network been investigated in order to increase its effectiveness and reduce threats?
I have a third question. Have civilian agencies been considered in the strategic planning, as is done in other countries? Those agencies also have worthwhile resources. What is their role in military planning?
11:55 a.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
Thank you.
I don't know enough about the ice storms in order to make a judgment of whether or not there could have been opportunities to respond more effectively. Let me say that in Halifax today that is one of the scenarios that's being addressed, the rise of severe weather hazards and what can be done to invest against them to strengthen good resilience. That's a prime focus now of regulators and industry both in Canada and in the United States.
With regard to separating the network and building firewalls more effectively, this is an extremely important opportunity for progress. Let me say again, my personal view is that even if we invest in the protections that we should be making, eventually the offence has such an advantage in the cyber realm. Eventually there will be opportunities to penetrate software using zero day exploits or other openings by the attacker so that in addition to building protections, we must invest, we must plan for restoring the grid, restoring the flow of natural gas after an effective attack occurs.
11:55 a.m.
NDP
Jean-François Larose NDP Repentigny, QC
For the civil sector, as I mentioned before, that participation in the planning, are they there? You mentioned the private sector but....
11:55 a.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
Yes, thank you. They're increasingly there. It's absolutely essential that the civil sector be brought into this dialogue.
Let me give you an example. Every utility has in its back pocket a plan for which facilities get their power restored first. Sometimes this is done on an engineering basis in your ridings—which substation to energize first and what order to go. But sometimes it's done on a basis of what's most important to public safety in your riding. Should the hospital get power first? How about nursing homes? This is a prime example for bringing civil society into this dialogue with utilities so that the public is represented, thanks to your participation.
11:55 a.m.
NDP
Jean-François Larose NDP Repentigny, QC
What exactly would be the role of national defence—of the military, physically—within that realm, in that collaboration? That question was asked earlier by my colleague. What is your take on it?
11:55 a.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
The Department of National Defence and the Department of Defense are not going to be investing in utility resilience at all.
11:55 a.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
But clearly, in the United States the Department of Defense is paying much more serious attention to what kinds of emergency power assets should be in our critical military facilities. Should we begin to develop micro-grids that allow for generation on a base in a way that makes the base still able to operate even if the surrounding power grid goes down.
This is a big focus of the new energy policy that has just been announced, and there may be opportunities for dialogue between DND and the Department of Defense on this question of energy assurance.
11:55 a.m.
NDP
Jean-François Larose NDP Repentigny, QC
Is there a difference? The mission in Afghanistan is over and there was Iraq. There was equipment that came back and it is not necessarily adequate.
Are discussions being held with the United States to buy new equipment just in the context of that planning?
11:55 a.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
I do not know and I would like to answer that for the record.
Increasingly in the United States we are providing Department of Defense equipment to law enforcement. That program is going forward very effectively. But for power restoration and infrastructure resilience, I do not know.
11:55 a.m.
Conservative
May 6th, 2014 / 11:55 a.m.
Conservative
Corneliu Chisu Conservative Pickering—Scarborough East, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Stockton, for your presentation and your expertise in cyber-attacks and so on.
First of all, thank you very much for mentioning our sacrifices in Afghanistan. We will have a day of honour on May 9, this Friday, to honour our men and women in uniform who participated in Afghanistan.
I participated in Afghanistan. You mentioned Kandahar. I was working with the U.S. forces. Also, previously I was working in Bosnia with U.S. forces. So I'm going back a bit on the military side of the issues here.
As you know, most of the casualties that we had and also that the United States had.... The 9/11 attack was low-tech; it was an airplane full of fuel that hit the World Trade Center. With roadside bombs, even though we had the electronic bubbles around the military bases against remote detonation, two wires connected created a lot of casualties in Afghanistan. So we have also this low-tech side, normal military activity that we cannot distinguish or detach from the cyber-attacks.
I will go back to the military operations and will look mostly to the Arctic. I would like you, if you can, to define who you see today as a threat to the United States and Canada, and mostly in the Arctic. It is an interest in the Arctic. What is your opinion about this? Of course, from there we will see how we can cooperate in the Arctic and in other areas.
Also, I mentioned that the United States made a change of strategy, the pivot towards the Pacific.
Noon
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
Threats in the Arctic are not primarily military. Maintaining the Arctic as a zone of peace is very important and an opportunity for collaboration between the United States and Canada. There are threats in the Arctic, but they're not military.
My personal view is that the most severe, the most imminent threat is that a ship loaded with petroleum products is going to hit an unmarked shoal off the coast of Canada or Alaska and that we are going to very quickly discover that our nations are not fully prepared to conduct the kinds of disaster response operations or conduct the environmental cleanup operations that will be absolutely essential to limit damage in such a scenario.
Our coast guards have been focusing a great deal of attention on this challenge, but you know better than I do that the problem in the Arctic is lack of infrastructure to support these kinds of disaster response operations. Where is the communications infrastructure? Where are the port facilities? Where are the landing strips necessary to clean up a devastating oil spill? That is the challenge.
I had the honour of leading the Department of Defense's response to our Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. We were able to bring in many hundreds of thousands of yards of booms, provide a great number of ships to skim the oil—all kinds of capabilities. To bring that to the Arctic would be enormously difficult.
It gets me back to my initial point, and that is to ask how the United States and Canada can collaborate from the perspective of investing in capabilities in the Arctic so that we are not duplicating capabilities but we rely on each other, so that we have a sensible approach such that both nations together can invest, in a collaborative approach that makes sense for both of our nations.
Noon
Conservative
Corneliu Chisu Conservative Pickering—Scarborough East, ON
Does the United States have a policy in the Arctic?
Noon
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rick Norlock
You can respond to that question perhaps in writing or near the end.
Mr. Harris, you have five minutes.
Noon
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Thank you very much.
We talked about collaboration and working together and not stepping on each other's toes.
Were you involved with the Department of Defense during the Haiti mission following the earthquake? Canada's experience there in trying to get our assets to ground zero caused a little bit of frustration. Nobody could land at the airports because they were filled with American planes, I'm told. I don't have the details of that.
Is there a missing piece in something like this that we could fix or work on?
12:05 p.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
There is a missing piece wherein Canadian leadership is going to be very important.
Based on the harsh lessons learned from disaster response in Haiti, the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas launched an initiative, with Canada playing a vital role, to apply the lessons learned, so that the next time a catastrophe strikes in the western hemisphere we have arrangements in place to already know which nations can provide specific kinds of capabilities; so that instead of making things up under duress, instead of all rushing to the site in an uncoordinated fashion, we can know in advance which nation can provide the most important capabilities.
12:05 p.m.
NDP