National Defence Committee on May 13th, 2014

[LGen Stuart Beare]

Clearly in an aerospace defence mission they're into a system of systems that helps detect and then inform where you want to take from a surveillance mode to a specific target mode. The CF-18 and fighters aren't the systems that provide you broader surveillance. The systems that you send into those areas where wide surveillance capabilities have told you that you need to be....

So in the maritime domain awareness mission for us, we're using the wide-band sensors to the maximum of their utility, including RADARSAT constellation and other sensors. We're using maritime patrol, who are built for the wider surveillance mission, and then we're using surface assets, who are part of a network of maritime presence, which is hugely dense.

If I were to bring you into the Maritime Security Operations Centre, or MSOC, east coast or west coast, and provide to you an illustration.... You've seen it?

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

I've been in Halifax.

As for the CF-18s that we have, we don't just have them parked. They're obviously in operation. Is part of their operation performing regular patrols of our airspace and being there looking around, showing their operational capability, and having a presence in the air throughout Canada's airspace? Is that part of their work?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

That absolutely is part of what they do in the North American aerospace defence mission routinely from Bagotville to Cold Lake.

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

I want to ask that question in terms of the suggestion that one of the ways of extending the life of the CF-18s is to reduce the number of flying hours. I'm just wondering, does that involve the reduction of the amount of patrols that the CF-18s would be doing over the next six, eight, or ten years?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

I think you had the commander of the Canadian NORAD region speak to you, General St-Amand. The answer is that he is not compromising on his NORAD missions or on his assurance of provision of fighters to the NORAD mission set, nor am I being affected adversely on any national safety or security missions by virtue of that.

Again, that's not a platform that I would want to be using for wider surveillance. It's a platform you want to use for interdicting or looking at a more focused target when that is required. We have other systems that do that from a domain awareness perspective.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Mr. Bezan, for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for being here.

General Beare, I want to congratulate you on a great career and strong leadership. I've always enjoyed our conversations and the candour that you always have when you're at committee and talking to parliamentarians.

I want to dive more into tri-command. As a committee, having been down to Colorado Springs, we can see how NORAD's there and how it has integrated operations with United States and Canadian officers working side by side. We see that USNORTHCOM is stood up right beside NORAD. Of course, General Jacoby is double-hatted; he's both USNORTHCOM and NORAD commanding officer.

How does CJOC fit into that, and have that interoperability?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

It's interesting. Perhaps I could give you a bit of a word picture. We have been practising how NORAD, NORTHCOM, and CJOC as commands, charged with similar but different defence missions, as a triad create something bigger than the sum of their parts. The NORAD mission is clear: binational aerospace defence and maritime warning. NORTHCOM is clear: defence of the American homeland. It's an American national command. It doesn't have any responsibility to us. Then there's CJOC: defend the homeland, partner on the continent, and missions overseas.

When General Jacoby, as commander of Northern Command, puts a slide on the wall and shows his area of operational responsibility, he draws a big circle around North America. Within that is Canada. So I laugh at him and I tell him, “Well, General, that's awful good of you to be defending Canada.” When he replies “No, no, Stu, that's your mission”, I tell him “I get that, but let me show you my area of responsibility.” Then I put up a map of the world and say, “General, you're in my area of responsibility, just so you know.”

Fundamentally, the missions that we perform individually and in a tri-command team have an effect in terms of defence, safety, and security on the continent, which more than the sum of its individual parts. We have selected the binational aerospace command to defend in the aerospace domain: read, I don't need to worry about that mission that's being prosecuted by NORAD. I have a defence, safety, and security mission in the homeland and around the world, which I prosecute noting that the mission is going on. Then of course General Jacoby at NORTHCOM does his U.S. home game mission.

So the tri-command provides us a way of sharing our definition of what's going on as it relates to all missions. We're not tunnel-visioned on the threats or challenges to the continent, we're looking at all threats. We're not tunnel-visioned on any one domain, we're looking at all domains. We're not limited in our approaches to an individual command's approach, we're able to leverage one command or another's approach to dealing with specific challenges.

In the combined defence plan for defence action and the civil assistance plan for assisting civil authorities, those pre-existing arrangements allow us to leverage each other's capabilities for individual or collective benefit. We don't just talk about it, we practise it. We practise it as operational commands and we practise it from time to time in the field, including search and rescue, for example, which is working day to day.

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

Taking a look at the entire continent of North America, when the U.S. has something like a 9/11 or a Hurricane Katrina, what is expected of CJOC in those situations because we work together?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

If you recall the hurricanes off the east coast last year, as they're tracking up the eastern seaboard we're maintaining a shared picture of the natural phenomena coming our way. One thing about Mother Nature and the enemy is that they don't really care about boundaries. We had the shared view of what was coming, and we were able to share our assessments of potential impact. We were able to enhance liaison where required, connected to in this case our civil authorities, because the response would have been a civilian-led response.

We dusted off our pre-existing arrangements whereby should the requirement for military forces to support the civil authority be required, our military forces would be leveraged by going across the border to help somebody else, as we did with Katrina many years back. All of the pre-existing relationship in terms of planning and collaboration was prepared to be used, should that be required. That's how we as a tri-command operate.

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

Just as a final question, we have this great relationship with the United States, but we do share Arctic territory very closely with Denmark. What type of joint operation do we have with Denmark in the defence of North America, especially in Arctic security?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

I'll let Greg speak to that because it's a pretty—

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Greg can speak to that after the next questioner.

Mr. Harris, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

I think you've answered one question I had. Your counterpart is NORTHCOM and General Loos' counterpart is Joint Task Force Alaska, I take it.

[BGen G.D. Loos]

Yes, sir.

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

So you're looking at the northern side.

On the search-and-rescue side of your responsibility, General Loos, you mentioned the Arctic. I guess there are two kinds of search and rescue. The preparation in the Arctic seems to be for potentially a maritime incident in which a ship has run aground or we need a response at that level.

We had a plane crash in the Arctic, as you know, and very fortunately, it happened at a time when Operation Nanook was there. We had assets and personnel on the ground, but aside from that kind of incident, it is generally thought that we have inadequate search-and-rescue capability that far north, in terms of individual rescues. For example, in Labrador, people are complaining about inadequate search-and-rescue capability there and inadequacy of response times, with our two-tier system of thirty minutes or two hours depending on the time of day.

It has been suggested that when we're looking to obtain fixed-wing SAR, we're leaving it to the contractor to decide where assets might be located. That seems to me to be a departure from the perspective of us as a nation trying to determine what level of service is going to be provided in particular parts of our country and how it is going to be provided.

I know you see it from the command point of it, General Beare, but it's something we as a party are certainly concerned about. Where I come from, the people are particularly concerned about it. Is there a plan to improve search and rescue in the Arctic to have a faster air response to an individual disaster, a lost person, or even a greater disaster?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

Sir, I believe you're very aware of the different responsibilities for search and rescue on the land, at sea, and in the air. On the land, provincial and territorial authorities supported by law enforcement take the lead and are responsible for land-based search and rescue. It's the coast guard in the maritime domain and then the Canadian Forces in the aerospace search and rescue domain.

The network of search and rescue partners is very alive and very practised at collaborating and cooperating and bringing different assets to support the different search and rescue leads, be they land, maritime, or air. The predominant employment of our search and rescue capability, aerospace, is typically in the maritime domain, as you're probably aware, in support of the coast guard search-and-rescue mandate.

I have three search-and-rescue regional commanders headquartered in Victoria, in Winnipeg, with its coordination centre in Trenton, and in Halifax, and they are co-located and are cooperating with the coast guard in those locations. Their aperture for the search-and-rescue system—

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

I'm familiar with the system, but I'm also familiar with the fact that several years ago it took four days to get an Inuit hunter off an ice floe in Resolute Bay, travelling from Greenwood, Nova Scotia. It was regarded as a success, because he was rescued, but it didn't seem to me to be responsive, shall we say, in terms of where our assets are located and how quickly we can get to someone in danger.

[LGen Stuart Beare]

With the five locations from which we operate our airport search-and-rescue forces, we deliver consistently with 30 minutes' and two hours' notice. Whether or not that's quick enough is not conditioned by how fast we can fly to where they are but by all the conditions that have preceded the call, the search-and-rescue event itself.

We do an annual revisit of where the search-and-rescue calls have come from, and I direct the reposturing of how we use the quick response and the normal two-hour response, or the secondary SAR capabilities to be prepared for the next season of, most likely, search-and-rescue demand signals. While it's understandable that people may perceive that we might be more responsive by having bases or operating locations in the north for search and rescue, that has not been the decisive factor in how successful we've been in our search and rescue in the north to date.

Last year, I believe the number was 56 responses by our aeronautical SAR to search-and-rescue requirements in the north. That was 56 out of 10,000 potential calls coast to coast to coast.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Thank you very much, General.

Mr. Williamson, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

If you'd like you can take a few minutes to respond to the question that my colleague James Bezan posed to you but you didn't have a chance to answer last round.

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

It was a question on Denmark and the type of cooperation on Greenland and Arctic security.

[BGen G.D. Loos]

We have an MOU for cooperation that has enabled us to reach out at a commander-to-commander level. We've had reciprocal visits and exchanges of personnel. We'll have a Danish ship participating in Operation Nanook this year. I would characterize that as an initiated and growing relationship. Beyond that, we haven't necessarily operationalized any specific plans. We're certainly looking at the Arctic SAR provisions as a starting point for seeing what we need to do next to make collaboration and working together more normal.

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

Thank you.

You mentioned earlier that you were going to look at oil spill response. Could you explain that a little? Is there a geographic area you had in mind in particular: west, east, or north?

[BGen G.D. Loos]

Let me start by framing the Arctic security working group, our team north partners that I referred to repeatedly: the federal, territorial, regional organizations; first responders; and emergency measures. We come together twice a year to look at what we have, what we don't have, what we need to do together, how we need to get better at doing it together. What we've circled as a theme for this year—not because Defence or Public Safety has the lead—from the group that gets together is the increasing maritime traffic, and the potential for drilling to come to the north. There is drilling to our west on the north slope in Alaska. We chose that the theme to look at across-the-board responsibilities, capacities, and capabilities. It also supports our wider Arctic security working group effort to try to do that kind of capability mapping more broadly, so that we know who has what in times of crisis or emergency. It really is a deeper dive into both what the risks are going to look like as we move forward, and how we're postured for a collective response, and if we have to respond, what that might look like.