National Defence Committee on May 13th, 2014

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

What is the vision for the military role? Is it coordination? Do you rely on civilian equipment for any kind of disaster, challenge...?

[BGen G.D. Loos]

To be clear I don't envision any specific role for the military in that other than the more general role we have as a force of last resort. When it comes down to another department running out of capacity or capability to respond to a specific event, they will normally ask us if we've got something to offer. The biggest challenges in the north, which we touched on earlier, are infrastructure, geography, and climate. The fact that we regularly practise getting places and operating there is a great enabler for other government departments when it comes time to do something anywhere across the north. We are relied upon to do that in many different situations.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

That's very good.

General Beare, is there similar planning or thinking on the east and west coasts? If so, what, and if not, is it necessary?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

If I could, I want to amplify what Greg commented on. Typically people see the capability of the Canadian Forces through the ships, the troops, or the planes that are being operated. But there's an under-appreciation of everything that's behind that: the command and control, surveillance, logistics, transportation and the like, the back office functions. Those are the things that are typically in high demand in a complex emergency response. While we may not provide thousands of soldiers or dozens of ships and planes, we're really good at providing the ability to communicate, providing headquarters locations, surveillance of all types, and enabling through logistics, getting to places that are hard to get to and sustaining them. We can see that as a very valuable contribution of the Canadian Forces to mission partners who are in the lead.

On our coasts, the problems our coastal joint task force commanders rehearse with our agency partners are typically led by what those inter-agency partners see as their biggest challenge. On the east coast, maritime security and the challenges of threats coming ashore are the focus areas. On the west coast it's being prepared to deal with natural disasters.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Thank you very much, General.

For the next five minutes, we'll have Misters Harris and Harris, starting with Jack.

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

I'm going to share my time with Mr. Dan Harris, my colleague on the left, but I have one or two questions first.

We had a representative, a once-active U.S. military leader here the other day talking about cooperation on disaster relief. One of the questions I asked him was about the situation in Haiti, where we were trying to get our assets there and the airport was full. He said that something was being worked on. I wonder if you could give us your view as to whether that's been resolved or not.

The secondary and related question to that concerns our of cooperation with the U.S. When we spoke about that and the disaster relief, the only trouble that he seemed to come up with was the problem of getting our linesmen, who were going to assist in Hurricane Sandy, across the border. It seemed to be an American problem. Are there any issues that need to be sorted out there?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

I'm not an authority on it. I can't speak to the civil agency-to-civil agency support measures, although beyond the border is the framework within which our public safety and security organizations work cross-border with each other. I know that those provisions exist, but I can't speak in detail to any perceived challenges on either part.

In terms of working internationally in disaster response, I have to say, what we do through the vehicles of things like the disaster assistance response team is world-class in time, quality, and capability contribution to humanitarian assistance overseas. And it's seen that way by our international partners.

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

And by us. I just wondered what the response time was for standing up that facility.

[LGen Stuart Beare]

For the DART, are you referring to...?

In the Philippines, for example, when it was clear that we would be deploying there—some 13 time zones way—we were amongst the first to arrive and to be effective on the ground, including partners within the region, who were almost within the same time zone. It was a very fast, very effective, very significant contribution.

I would say that our partnership is not limited to what we put on the ground. It's how we use the strategic lines of communication, in our jargon, for air and sea and other means of transportation, and what method we use to cooperate with our partners in that. I have to tell you, the Canadian-U.S. partnership, in moving ourselves around the world by military and civilian means, is fantastic. And it's regularly exercised, and it's so normal that people don't know that we're doing it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Mr. Dan Harris.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Thank you.

I'm going to go on to RADARSAT actually, because when the RADARSAT program was being funded and created there were some operational changes made to the program by DND and also some delays caused when, unfortunately, the last bit of funding wasn't put into the 2012 budget, which actually pushed back the RCM's mission launch date beyond the expected operational end date of RADARSAT-2, which is what is up there now. There is a significant possibility of a mission gap between those two.

What would that actually do to domain awareness, should that come to pass? What steps are being taken to mitigate that risk?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

Thank you for the question.

I'm not aware of the potential risk of that capability gap. From my perspective, we're tracking to be able to sustain the capability, and that RCM will deliver a much enhanced capability in the future. That said, I won't speculate on whether or not there will be a gap out there in the future because I'm certainly not anticipating it.

The capability today is being leveraged routinely in our maritime domain awareness and in our surveillance and our arctic spaces, to the tune of hundreds of demand signals every year for that imagery, for our application. That doesn't include other partners, the coast guard and others who are using it routinely as well.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

It has been used around the world, in Hurricane Katrina and the gulf oil spill—

[LGen Stuart Beare]

And fisheries patrols and....

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

The Americans have made use of it. And also the tsunami in Japan....

The operational expected end date is now before the anticipated launch date of RCM. If RADARSAT-2 actually goes down when it's supposed to end life then we'll have nothing up there until RCM gets launched, correct?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

I'd rather speak about whether or not a date that's been declared as an end date really is, and/or when things are going to start, and offer that the space team underneath the vice-chief can speak to that. As an operational commander, we love what we get out of that capability.

[Dan Harris, NDP, Scarborough Southwest, ON]

Absolutely. I fought tooth and nail when the funding was missed in the budget that year, about that issue.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

You're going to have to fight tooth and nail for another question, because we're going to Mr. Chisu for five minutes.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

General, I have two questions.

First, can you say how the Canadian Joint Operations Command is using the reserve forces? What is the role of the reserve forces in your operations and how are you pursuing the use of them?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

Thank you. That's a great question.

The Canadian Armed Forces isn't two forces. It's one, with a regular component and a reserve component, each of which provides a complementary effect to operations as well as everything we do to train and prepare for operations. I'd like to make that point right up front.

For the forces we employ—as we were speaking about earlier, Mr. Harris—and that are assigned to me by the services, by virtue of Chief of Defence direction, the services decide how they're going to package regular reserve forces to be part of that contribution. Let me describe to you where we see them being employed in our operations today.

In the maritime domain, we see a routine employment of reserve component sailors in our domestic and continental operations. The majority of the maritime coastal defence vessels we employed in JIATF South—Joint Interagency Task Force South—in the multilateral counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean and on the Pacific coast were manned by reserve sailors. They did superb work.

In the home game, when we respond to crises and contingencies at home, the quick responders are naturally your full-time component, and behind them are reserve component potential responders when required, and the army would provide them, to include reserve component responders that are optimized for the north. I believe you've heard of the Arctic Response Company Group, coming out of the army. The air component is the same. At home or at an away game, the services will decide how those two are integrated.

But I don't see nor do I command operational activity that distinguishes between a regular or reserve member in operations. Their soldiers and sailors are men and women provided by the services, and they deliver every time we ask them to.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you very much for the clarification.

Again, I would like to thank you for your long service in the Canadian Armed Forces, General.

I do have a question about the situation in the Pacific. Actually, we are looking at the Atlantic. We are surrounded in the North Atlantic by NATO countries, where we don't have any perceived threat. However, in the Pacific, we have nations who are building up their armies very strongly, with exceptional emphasis on the submarines.

As I know, the Chinese army is rebuilding their blue-water fleet. They are giving a lot of subsidies to the armed forces for doing up the armed forces blue-water fleet. Obviously, we have seen that the Americans have done the pivot to the Pacific, the gap between Alaska and the United States.

How are you assessing the threat, if there is any threat? As we know, the Chinese are flexing their muscles in the Scarborough Shoals of the Philippines, in Japan, and so on, and of course North Korea is becoming more aggressive. As for the Russians, they are not even friendly.

What is the perceived activity there? Should we call it a standoff?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

I think we talked about the approaches to the homeland or east and west coasts. It doesn't matter in distinguishing between either of them: illegal immigration, transnational criminal organizations....

But we're not blind in the Pacific, because we are fully partnered in the Pacific as well. I have an exchange officer, a liaison officer in the Pacific Command, quartered in Hawaii. We have a general officer as a J-3, an operations staff, inside Pacific Command. I have liaison and exchange officers in Australia in Joint Operations Command. Like they leverage us for understanding our neighbourhood, we leverage them for understanding their neighbourhood.

The challenges we're seeing in the Pacific are real. But certainly in the Pacific, like elsewhere, there's no “same as last year”. Everything seems to be changing, and “the same as last year” is a term we used in the Cold War. We don't use it anymore, because next year is different from this, and this year is different from last. We're not blind to what's changing, nor are we blind to the risk of threats that exist in the Pacific.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Thank you very much, General.

Ms. Murray for five minutes.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you.

I want to go back to the discussion about the capacity and the Pacific coast.

Given the absence of a supply ship, never mind funding cuts for training and inability to train on a ship when there isn't one available, I'm wondering if the replacement joint supply ship is delayed by several years--and that looks likely--how would this affect the ability of the Canadian Armed Forces to accomplish the objectives of the Canada First defence strategy itself?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

Again, what I can assure you of is that with the capabilities we have, we know what's available and not available today and/or into the future. I'm confident we're not going to compromise at all on the requirement to deliver our mission at home and to deliver within capability our contribution to missions overseas.

I can assure you that while people—