National Defence Committee on May 13th, 2014

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Can I ask you to clarify? Are you basically saying that your job, given what's available in equipment or not, is to define what you can deliver, so therefore logically you're going to be able to deliver because you've defined your delivery based on the availability of funding, equipment and trained troops?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

I'd say that when it comes to understanding what's going on in our air and maritime domains, we are delivering on that. To be postured to respond to military threats to the continent, to be included with our partners, we're capable of doing that. We haven't had to do it recently on the homeland, but to be able to provide a real contribution to safety and security at home and on the continent, we're capable of doing that as well.

Every capability in quantity and quality has a limitation in any organization. So with those, we're delivering on the mission we've been directed to perform, and we're welcoming—

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Obviously, you're not setting your budget, so I understand the....

In terms of delivering, I asked an order paper question on search and rescue and it turned out that because of, I guess, old equipment there were some 14 search and rescue requests that the armed forces were not able to deliver on. Is that not possibly leading to the risk of a loss of life, if the equipment is not available to respond to a search and rescue call?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

I'd say I'm not tracking...that's not responding to any missions. However, whether or not a particular aircraft on a particular base was the source of the response may be the point you're making. The search and rescue system is a network.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Search and rescue helicopters and there were not enough available to respond to some 14 requests for a response. Does that concern you?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

That's a level of detail I have to go back and confirm to what degree that meant...if a particular platform didn't respond or the system didn't respond. To my knowledge, we respond to every event from elsewhere in the system, if that's required.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Also, you were answering a question by Mr. Larose and your time ran out. His question was about the missile defence program that is under discussion.

I had a meeting with a former general from the United States who said that it would likely cost Canada a billion dollars a year to participate in that program. I think you were being asked if resources were constrained, would you see that as the highest and best use of a billion dollars of the national defence budget in terms of the obligation to defend our country.

[LGen Stuart Beare]

We all know that the choice on whether Canada would participate in it and how much it would invest in a program like that is clearly not mine, so I prefer not to comment on that particular subject other than to say we are, as we discussed earlier, delivering on the mission we have today with the resources we have. Our men and women using those resources are doing very well at it.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Okay, so you're delivering on the mission. We don't necessarily need a billion dollars for an anti-ballistic missile program partnership.

[LGen Stuart Beare]

That kind of decision is a policy choice that is not mine to make and others will make it.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

No, I understand that.

Do I still have time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

You have six seconds.

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

Use them well.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Thank you very much, Ms. Murray.

Ms. Gallant for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I just wanted to mention how rich it was to talk about search and rescue and helicopters. I think we can all recall when the Liberals fought a campaign on the cancellation of the EH 101, which had several different versions, one of which was for lift and utility, another one transporting troops, and another for search and rescue. Of course, we still haven't had the replacement for the Sea Kings, which would have been one of the variations. The beauty of that contract was that they were all basically the same helicopter and we could have interchanged parts.

Now what we see, especially for search and rescue, is that when one helicopter is missing parts we have to cannibalize others in order to maintain that one in the air, which has a large effect on whether or not we can respond when a helicopter is required. There was mention made of some general [Inaudible--Editor] to pay $1 billion for BMD. The discussion has not occurred yet in Canada, nor do we know if it will be discussed in terms of that aspect. I just wanted to clarify that.

One thing I haven't heard about yet is the JTFN operation, where they sent a technical team to Ellesmere Island to perform maintenance on the high Arctic data communication systems. What is the role of HADCS?

[BGen G.D. Loos]

You may be familiar with Canadian Forces Station Alert, based up on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island. It's a direction-finding and signals-intelligence station, as well as a weather station. It doesn't sit within any satellite footprint so we can't have satellite communications into it from the south. For it to communicate south, we have a microwave system that travels the length of Ellesmere Island down to Eureka, where Environment Canada has a weather station. At that location, the microwave system connects to a satellite system to allow communications with Alert.

Because it's a very unforgiving environment for battery systems and microwave systems, they have to be tuned and maintained. So every year we run Operation Nevus, which is basically a month-long maintenance mission. We send up soldiers, and helicopters, and maintenance folks to go and look after the batteries and to remediate anything that needs to be remediated, and to bring it back. It's an annual task.

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

Speaking of annual tasks, I'd like to go back to the exercise Nanook. In 2013, what military assets were used in that operation?

[BGen G.D. Loos]

There was quite a long list of military assets used. In terms of air force assets, we used every flavour of lift aircraft, including C-17s, Hercules, and our utility Twin Otter aircraft. We also had CP-140 support.

Our operation was across four different lines in four different areas across the north, from Whitehorse, Resolute Bay, to Gjoa Haven, to Iqaluit. We had naval ships participating as well. The Kingston-class ship was participating in the one scenario off Iqaluit, and then there was a range of the normal equipment for moving troops up to respond to crisis and disaster response.

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

Very good.

Just as an aside, when the NATO PA was in Victoria, we did see the Chicoutimi and, apparently, they had just finished their chamber dive and it had been successful. So we're really pleased to see two subs in the water working for our Pacific security.

That's all, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Jack Harris for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to talk about two issues. We talked about domain awareness as being the first step in doing the job of protecting Canada. What's our domain awareness in the subsurface? I'm saying that in regard to the huge coastline and area of ocean that we have, but also in the Arctic and in the Northwest Passage. What is our domain awareness subsurface and where does it come from?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

I believe the chief of defence intelligence had this conversation with you, as well, a few weeks back. We maintain our understanding of where subsurface capabilities are in the world. We do that with our own sensors and with partners. We benefit from contributing to, and deriving from that partnership an understanding of where subsurface capabilities may be around the world.

That's about as specific as I can be. It's a highly compartmentalized, necessarily classified, capability and activity.

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

It goes beyond where we're operating our submarines.

[LGen Stuart Beare]

Absolutely.

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

The next area has to do with operations in the Arctic.

One witness to the committee last week was Paul Stockton, who has significant defence experience in the U.S. and was responsible for coordinating the U.S. military response to the Deepwater Horizon event. He talked about significant naval assets being used in the U.S., and it being absolutely necessary to have them and to use them in the response to the oil spill of the Deepwater Horizon. He spoke of the concerns about the Arctic and has suggested that one of the most significant threats to the Arctic would be environmental, in the event of an oil spill, and perhaps the most likely....

Do we have any capabilities, at a military level, that could assist in that, or are we just looking at what might be required?