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.
12:05 p.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
It's not fixed yet.
In November, the next meeting of the Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas will occur in Peru. Canada has played an extremely valuable role in the CDMA discussions, and it is going to be absolutely vital for Canada to continue to provide this kind of leadership going forward.
12:05 p.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Is there a standard, Mr. Stockton, for military response to disasters? Is there an expectation that the military will be ready in a matter of so many hours—48 hours, or 24 hours? In the United States, for example, what we saw with hurricane Katrina obviously was not acceptable—and was not acceptable to the American people. Do you have one now?
12:05 p.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
The Department of Defense is building much more detailed plans for catastrophes than it has had in the past.
One of the lessons from Sandy is that planning for specific scenarios, catastrophic natural or man-made hazards, hasn't been adequate in the past. We were good in Sandy, but we need to scale that kind of planning up, always with the Department of Defense being in support of civil authorities.
That's part of the challenge, isn't it? To build this national approach to disaster preparedness, to bring in the private sector, to bring in non-governmental organizations like the Red Cross in this planning, that is a challenge that we're working on now, where a partnership with Canada could provide such enormous benefits.
12:05 p.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Can you tell us a little bit about the role of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in either prevention and/or response? I know in our province we had a hurricane, and the army actually put bridges up in the short-term, temporary relief, and things like that.
Tell us a little about the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in that.
12:05 p.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
The Army Corps of Engineers is especially valuable for supporting civil authorities for emergency construction operations, but especially in our system in providing those backup power generators that proved so important, and in dewatering tunnels—a whole range of challenging operations that we saw in hurricane Sandy. The Army Corps of Engineers played a vital vote. Determining how best to use those resources and how much should be invested in building that capability, those are part of the puzzle in times of extraordinary budgetary pressures on the Department of Defense.
12:05 p.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
I go back to the other question about response time. Is there a standard in terms of days, hours? What was the expectation?
12:05 p.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
The expectation now is that every U.S. defence installation commander has immediate response authority. That is the ability to immediately deploy forces at the request of civilian authorities right out of the gate to immediately save lives.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
May 6th, 2014 / 12:05 p.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake, MB
Thank you, Dr. Stockton, for sharing your expertise with us today and your experiences and really providing us some context, especially on the energy security standpoint.
I want to move the conversation a little bit, because in your role as assistant secretary, you also had a very close working relationship and oversight on both northern command and southern command within the U.S. As you know, the general responsible for U.S. NORTHCOM is also the general for NORAD—he's double-hatted—General Jacoby.
NORAD's looking at NORAD Next. Where does this go in the future? What role is Canada and the United States expected to play as we continue on with this great relationship that has been around for over 60 years?
12:10 p.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
To me a NORAD after Next and the strategic review that's going to go forward needs to address what deeper collaboration is possible in the maritime realm, building on the maritime warning mission. What kind of collaboration is going to be possible to build on the foundations that now exist already in the civil assistance plan?
What kinds of opportunities exist, not only for military to military collaboration, but knowing that in many cases militaries are going to be in support of law enforcement against terrorist threats that our two nations face? How can we glue together the information flow in a way that works not only military to military but with the RCMP and law enforcement in the United States? We're making enormous progress, but that is still progress that remains to be completed.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake, MB
We noticed when we were at NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs that a lot of U.S. Coast Guard officers were walking around. Something that we don't see from a Canadian standpoint is Canadian Coast Guard. Do you see that relationship evolving, that Canadian Coast Guard plays a more aggressive role from the standpoint of homeland security?
12:10 p.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
Canadian Coast Guard can make very important contributions. There is the shiprider program, with which you may be familiar, where U.S. personnel are stationed on Canadian Coast Guard ships and Canadian Coast Guard personnel are stationed on U.S. Coast Guard ships. We can have a binational law enforcement effort on the high seas, on the maritime approaches to the United States. That's incredibly valuable.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake, MB
In your relationship with Mexico through U.S. southern command, one thing that isn't really slowly evolving is Mexico becoming more of a partner in the defence of North America, not to the same degree we have, of course, between Canada and the United States, or that type of history. But we do have an upcoming meeting of NAFTA defence ministers taking place in Mexico in a couple of weeks.
Do you see that role becoming more important? This is especially as Mexico in itself is struggling with a growing proliferation of drug lords and their own narcotic threats, which have turned into almost a paramilitary battle, as we've seen historically in Colombia.
12:10 p.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
Yes, absolutely. Defence collaboration with Mexico is already improving and needs to be sustained.
Let me be clear: the U.S. defence relationship with Canada is unique in the world and uniquely valuable to the United States. Bringing Mexico into North American security, beginning to develop a perimeter approach to North American security, is going to be a work in progress, but very much labour that's worthwhile.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake, MB
One of the witnesses we had a few weeks back, Stéphane Roussel, was critical of the relationship Canada has with the United States, that we're taking for granted our relationship with the U.S., and we're taking for granted our contribution through the Afghanistan mission.
You have had very glowing words today on the value of the relationship with Canada, but do you foresee any difficulties? And how can we overcome those difficulties, if there are any?
12:10 p.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
I'll be candid. I do believe there is a risk that we'll take for granted the extraordinary defence collaboration between the United States and Canada. I believe that we need to continue to highlight the value to both nations of this collaboration. Each nation is sovereign. Each nation is going to make its own decisions in terms of what it needs in order to secure its own nation. But the value going forward now is going to grow of this collaboration in the Arctic, in the other examples I've provided today that we've discussed. We need more collaboration, not less, and more attention to these opportunities for defence support to civil authorities going forward.
12:10 p.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake, MB
The only comment I had is you mentioned that the whole issue of cyber-security and protecting our energy supply are some of the threats from within, not from a national disaster standpoint but from probably you mean a terrorist element.
I want you to comment about how high that risk is at the current stage.
12:10 p.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
The risk is significant. Let me add that the risk of insider threats is growing.
I had the honour of co-chairing the Independent Review of the Washington Navy Yard Shooting. Both for kinetic attack and cyber-attack, there's a risk that as we build our perimeter security more effectively, as we defend our networks on the outside, adversaries are going to have stronger incentives to attack from within. The insider threat is a major challenge.
12:15 p.m.
NDP
Denis Blanchette NDP Louis-Hébert, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the witness for being here.
I found your perspective and your presentation very interesting. What you are basically talking about is resupplying from within. In other words, defence capabilities still rest on the ability to supply the forces at the front. You are talking here about what North America does, but basically we are talking about resupply. That is what you told us.
You spoke about resilience. I worked as a computer scientist and, in my head, that sounds like the word “redundance”.
I would like to know one thing. With respect to the United States, you gave the example of diesel generators that run out of fuel after two or three days and where it isn't possible to provide backup. Have the United States started to look at using various types of energy for power?
For example, when the generators break down, could solar energy be used as an alternative for a while until conventional forms of energy could be resupplied?
Have the Americans started looking at diversifying energy sources in order to react during incidents that, because of climate change, may occur more often and be more severe?
12:15 p.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
The opportunities to diversify sources of energy and do so in a way that strengthens national security are very important. The challenge, as you know, with some forms of renewable energy—solar, for example—is that it's difficult to store electricity. It's very inefficient, very expensive to do so on a large scale.
From a perspective of the Canadian Armed Forces or U.S. military facilities, renewables are likely to be an important part of the energy puzzle, but not the whole answer.
Innovative approaches to fuel cells, other kinds of generating capacity—it is imperative to pursue those opportunities.
12:15 p.m.
NDP
Denis Blanchette NDP Louis-Hébert, QC
At the same time, you spoke at length about cyber attacks, which originate internally and externally. My colleague, Jean-François, spoke about the capacity of splitting up the networks. That question has already been considered.
We know that one day, an attack will take place—it might originate internally or externally. We also know that one day, the defences will be penetrated. The true question is not whether it will happen, but rather how we will recover from that with respect to information.
Is the United States considering this capacity to recover, but especially recovering quickly? There are classic recovery plans, but if a number of incidents occur simultaneously—a natural disaster and a cyber attack, for example—we would be a clay-footed giant. We would be extremely weakened.
How is the capacity to recover from these kinds of incidents being considered on the cyber side?
12:15 p.m.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
Public Safety Canada and the Department of Homeland Security have very strong collaboration under way on this issue. Bringing in industry, understanding what kinds of requests for assistance might come from industry to government, these kinds of issues now are the focus of intense dialogue today.
The dialogue needs to be sustained, and I would suggest that the Department of National Defence and the members of this committee also need to think about how the defence establishments both are vulnerable to these kinds of cyber disruptions but also could provide part of the support needed for response and recovery.
This is a dialogue that's just under way in the United States now in the infrastructure realm and needs to be sustained going forward. It should be done in a binational fashion.
