Thank you.
As noted by my colleague, Dr. Charron, who's a lead scholar for the “NORAD in Perpetuity?” study, this brief presentation draws directly from some of our findings. As I have no doubt that you are aware, the subject of the defence of North America is an extremely broad, deep, and complicated one, especially in terms of the range of issues involved, encompassing land, sea, air, outer space, the cyberworld, defence industrial, defence technology, and research and development, among other issues.
As the defence of North America has consistently been qualified in government documents over time by reference to the phrase “in cooperation with the United States”, one is immediately directed towards two questions or considerations as a means to understand Canada's North American defence relationship with the United States. One I loosely term as the dominant but not exclusive Canadian question, and the other is the dominant but again not exclusive American question.
The dominant Canadian question concerns the type or form of cooperation with the United States that should be undertaken in order to enhance Canadian defence and security in North America. The American question is the proportion of American defence and security in North America that should be undertaken in cooperation with Canada.
The foundation for the first question is simply the fact that Canadian military capabilities are dwarfed by the capabilities of the United States. The United States possesses the capabilities to defend all of North America. As such, under the traditional idea of “defence against help” that is produced by the reality of capabilities relative to an evolving or changing threat environment, Canada's fundamental national strategic interest continues to seek the means to ensure that U.S. plans to defend North America take into account Canadian defence requirements.
In effect, Canada seeks opportunities to influence American thinking and American planning. The means have been twofold: binationalism and bilateralism.
Binationalism, embedded in the NORAD arrangement, was initially driven by the common threat posed during the Cold War by the Soviet Union and its long-range bomber force, and functional defence requirements to ensure an effective and efficient response. This led NORAD into its two main missions: aerospace early warning—initially air breathing—and then ballistic missiles/space threats and aerospace control or defence, which remains restricted to air breathing threats.
Since its establishment, NORAD has been the institutional centrepiece of the Canada-U.S. defence relationship in North America, but NORAD or binationalism does not account for the majority of the actual defence relationship. Beyond its two missions and the addition of the maritime early warning mission in 2006, the overwhelming majority of the relationship has been bilateral in nature.
There was an expectation after 9/11, in the context of the new threat environment and the subsequent establishment of first the binational planning cell and then the successor, the binational planning group, which issued a final report in 2006, that NORAD or binationalism would expand to encompass greater cooperation. This did not occur beyond the addition of the maritime early warning mission, and this mission, in functional terms, was driven by the recognition that a maritime threat approaching the North American continent might quickly transition into an air breathing threat requiring a NORAD response. Specifically, a freighter might become the platform for the launch of a cruise missile.
Importantly, the new mission did not entail additional NORAD assets per se, but rather placed NORAD as a recipient of new maritime domain awareness information at the end of national sourcing and as an add-on to evolving bilateral arrangements between these national sources, which included both military and civilian agencies in both countries.
The dominant perception in this regard is that the United States sought a broader and deeper binational arrangement to include both sea and land, but Canada said no. I would suggest that the U.S. believed that its defence required expanded cooperation with Canada but was largely open to a range of modes of cooperation. Canada's preference was bilateralism, for a range of political reasons stemming primarily from concerns related to Canadian sovereignty.
The core issue confronting this committee is whether the current structure of the relationship concerning the defence of North America, dominated by bilateral arrangements relative to the three existing binational missions, is functionally efficient and effective for the defence and security of Canada relative to the current and future threat environments and the reality of constrained and limited defence resources on both sides of the border.
In this regard, let me add that NORAD binationalism, in practice, has not been a one-size-fits-all relationship or one dictated by the United States. There are national caveats that exist within the binational relationship, and the operational reality of NORAD's air defence mission, for example, is aptly summed up in the phrase “decentralized command and decentralized execution”.
The American recognition post-9/11 that homeland defence requirements required greater cooperation with Canada has not been replicated in the case of the thorny issue of ballistic missile defence in Canada. Importantly, the current system deployed in Alaska and California, and possibly a future interceptor site in the United States northeast, is a function of a congressional mandate in law to defend all of the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii—not Canada.
As a function of its evolution and the failed 2003-04 negotiations, which were initiated by Canada, it is clear that the United States, for now, does not perceive cooperation with Canada as required for defence of a ballistic missile attack. The only portion of the missile defence equation sought through cooperation with Canada was a link of NORAD's aerospace—the ballistic missile and space component part of it—early warning assessment into NORTHCOM, or the Northern Command missile defence system, which Canada agreed to.
Even then, dedicated forward-deployed missile defence U.S. tracking and queuing radars are not linked into NORAD. It may be the case, however, that the U.S. will identify, if or when a third site is established, that a forward-tracking radar on eastern Canadian soil is necessary. If so, this will provide a range of options relative to the specific form of cooperation or Canadian participation.
For the time being, the issue of ballistic missile defence for Canada is a national one. Does Canada need the capability to defend itself against a ballistic missile attack relative to its origin and nature? If so, the issue becomes the possibility and cost of acquiring a national capability from the United States, and such a decision would naturally alter U.S. defence thinking and planning and possibly place NORAD back into the equation. If not, then missile defence will remain, in American thinking, a U.S.-only mission.
I look forward to your questions.