National Defence Committee on Dec. 4th, 2014

[Dr. Christopher Sands]

Yes, with one caveat. I think that as we get into these areas it's extremely important, because we are democracies, that we have the protection of oversight. That could be legislative oversight. That could be administrative oversight through judicial forums or committees.

Our public has a right to be protected, and that may require that our governments monitor communications that are sensitive, but it also has a right not to have that information abused or used in a political or personal fashion.

What we need to develop in tandem is both the capacity to look deep into the web, deep into the Internet, and the capacity to govern our searchers. The old line “Who watches the watchers?” is very important here. We have to make sure there is democratic accountability at the same time as we pursue every effort to secure and keep our people safe.

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

Dr. Doran, I saved the really tough question for you.

A number of my colleagues and I were in The Hague at a NATO parliamentary conference. Its being hosted in The Hague, we had an admiral describe procurement there. They've seized upon what they refer to as the triple helix model. It's full cooperation between government, defence, and security-related industries and research, the knowledge institutions. What they do is assess and stay ahead of the emerging threats, especially asymmetric threats, which are not bound by international law the way we are.

Do you see that sort of cooperation happening among the Canadian institutions, wherein we're all working together in sync, or are we operating in silos: educational institutions, the defence industry, and government?

[Charles Doran]

Well, it is certainly the case that silos exist, and particularly the ones you have identified. When I compare how Canada and the United States interact on these matters of procurement, and particularly relating these to what is purchased and how much interoperability there is, I think we're way ahead of anything the Europeans have, regardless of how elaborate may be the way they describe their cooperation and the coordination. With all due respect to their observations, I think that Canada and the United States, involving both the private sector and the governments, have done quite a good job in this type of coordination. For example, if you look at the intervention in Lybia, the coordination between Canada and the United States couldn't have been better. In fact, I believe we were under the command of a Canadian officer. I think there is always room for improvement, but our interoperability is indeed quite good.

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

In terms of improving, you say we've cracked the nut in terms of interoperability. What about assessing and anticipating future threats, and having the equipment to do so?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

A very short answer, please, as the time is actually up.

[Charles Doran]

Once again, both of our governments spend a lot of money on looking at that kind of an issue. I know for a fact that we do. It's very difficult to do that. It's very difficult to see the future, so the estimates are always framed in terms of probabilities and so on. Nonetheless, the effort to assess in terms of scenarios and future kinds of problems that will require the appropriate defence capability is ongoing and I think it's pretty successful.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

Thank you very much.

Next on our list is....

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Evelyn Lukyniuk]

Mr. McCallum.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

Mr. McCallum, I saw you there earlier, but it didn't register.

Welcome to our committee as a former defence minister of the Canadian government some time ago.

Mr. McCallum, on behalf of the Liberal Party, you have seven minutes.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Well, thank you very much. You have to look to your left to find the Liberal Party, but here I am.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

I'd like to return to the question of the Arctic, but on a slightly different dimension.

Mr. Chisu articulated the threat from the Russians, but there's also the issue of sovereignty over the Arctic with the Northwest Passage. As was mentioned by Professor Doran, if there's a whole lot of oil there, there will undoubtedly be more ships wanting to come in and out, so there will be potential conflict over that and certainly potential damage to the environment.

I know that Canada's sovereignty claims in the Arctic are not agreed to by the United States, or the European Union, or Russia, or just about any other country in the world except Canada. I understand that ultimately there may be some international judicial process to resolve it, but I don't know when and I don't know if other countries would even accept that.

My question is for one or both of you. How do you see this thing playing out? With Russia playing a more major role, with oil possibly on the horizon, with global warming opening up shipping faster than had been thought, the stakes may be higher sooner than we might have thought. Do you think there's some scope for a Canada-U.S. deal or compromise in terms of a joint view on the sovereignty question so that we, as you were saying, can work more closely together rather than against each other? More generally, how do you see this playing itself out?

[Dr. Christopher Sands]

Thank you very much for the question. I'll take the first hit at that.

I think we have spent a lot of time as friends—despite all of our differences in the Arctic, Canada and the U.S. are fundamentally friends—talking about this problem but not actually resolving it. It's amazing that we're still disputing the boundary in the Beaufort, not because it isn't a legitimate dispute but because we've talked, mapped, and debated this thing for a long time. You would think we could come to some sort of settlement. I think as long as the U.S. and Canada have been working at cross purposes in the Arctic, it has emboldened the Russians and it has emboldened others to try to map out a new regime in the Arctic, to our detriment.

I was at a meeting not that long ago where there was a serious discussion of the United States establishing an eastern Arctic port in Greenland simply because we couldn't come to terms with Canada about where an Arctic base might be located for ships, sort of a deepwater port. That's such a waste of effort, and inevitably a waste of money.

I think we need to resolve this in two steps. The U.S. has to start taking the Arctic more seriously. It is peripheral in many ways to U.S. conceptions of national security. That has to change. Also, I think we need to look for some progress from Canada. I think the governments of Canada over the years have hoped that the U.S. would sign the Law of the Sea treaty, providing a structure for resolution of this. The Senate still won't consider that, despite the support of President Obama and President Bush before him.

I think we may need to look for a new route out. That may take, as a forward gesture, something from Canada, but overall I think we have to find a way to come to terms with each other and then present a united front to the rest of the world.

[Charles Doran]

Let me just say that I agree with the spirit, or what I take to be the spirit, of your remarks, namely, that there needs to be perhaps some greater cooperation and coordination given the fact that we are facing a lot of movement of ships in and out of these areas.

I think something like 400 mines and well areas have been identified, so there will be a lot of movement of ships bringing equipment in and product out. It's not so much the issue of the transiting of these areas, which is good news. Usually, in the common parlance, it's described here as the Northwest Passage. Well, it's not so much that the Northwest Passage will be traversed from one side to the other very soon, but there is movement in and out of the Arctic, especially on the Russian side, and they in fact will take their security issues very seriously.

We haven't mentioned this, but it isn't just a question of our interaction with the Russians. This is an area that has to be examined in terms of what the terrorist implications might be. It's frightening to see how close Hudson Bay is to the cities, the heartland, of Canada and the United States. These areas can in fact be increasingly penetrated, not just by submarines but by surface ships. The capacity to identify what in fact these ships are carrying and so on is nascent, I would say, at this point.

But I think the spirit of your remarks is correct. We need to cooperate and coordinate.

I should say this. Canadians and Americans, being who they are, are fairly pragmatic. At this point what we've done is we've simply agreed to disagree. Then we've tried to do the best we can in terms of coordination.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Look, I think we agree that for various reasons this is becoming more important and that something should be done, but we also seem to agree that nothing much is being done. I think that's a problem in need of resolution.

On a totally different subject, in terms of interoperability, I know that the Canadian military loves to have exactly the same equipment as their American cousins.

One of the reasons, as you say, we're so way ahead in our interoperability is that we Canadians always get almost the same stuff as you Americans. That makes us interoperable, but it might also be disadvantageous in other respects.

If you look at the F-35, for example, I don't think it's necessary to have an identical plane to be interoperable. I think the French, for example, with different planes, have been quite interoperable with the U.S., as have other governments. My view is that we could have some sort of open competition for a new fighter jet. The F-35 might win and it might not. But the fact of being identical to what the U.S. has doesn't strike me as being a prerequisite, given the experience of other countries.

I guess I would ask you whether you agree or disagree with that point of view.

[Dr. Christopher Sands]

I would just say, sir, that I think you're on to something. I don't think Canada has to have identical equipment.

What we find in the field is that often Canada is there, especially outside of North America, in small enough numbers that it needs to work within a larger American or British command. We've seen that in a couple of cases, and shared equipment can make maintenance, providing spare parts, and other upgrades possible. So there are advantages to interoperability. But I agree, it's not a prerequisite that the equipment be identical or, referencing the earlier question, that they be bought in the same model year, as long as there is a mutual understanding of the technology and we're able to support one another.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

We're out of time for Mr. McCallum. Thank you very much.

We're going to the second round now, which is of five minutes duration.

Our first questioner of the witnesses is Mr. Williamson, from the Conservative Party.

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

Gentlemen, it's very interesting to hear your comments, and thank you for joining us today.

I have a quick comment just to put Mr. McCallum's comments into context. He was in fact the Canadian minister of defence when Canada entered the joint fighter program under the Paul Martin government. So it has been an ongoing political issue up here with the Liberals taking a stand and a certain track in government, and then in opposition having second thoughts about it and conveniently forgetting their role in the F-35 debate.

Professor Doran, I think it was in your remarks that you mentioned, albeit briefly, the sequestration impact. I'm curious to get your sense of what the impact actually was on the U.S. armed services. We hear all kinds of stories in Canada. Some say the reductions in U.S. government spending were great and negative in terms of spending cuts. Other corners suggest that this was a trim, a budget slowdown.

I'd like to get your comments on both the overall impact and then specifically what it means for U.S. readiness in its posture to its armed services.

[Charles Doran]

Thank you for that question, and it's not an easy question.

My observation first would be that no cut, however large or small, could be regarded as helpful in security matters. Nonetheless, insofar as this is simply a one-shot thing, there may be some benefits. What it has done, in fact, is forced us to re-evaluate how we're making our expenditures and to change some of the priorities, and therefore to probably make the funds that we are spending go further and put them in a situation where they're used more effectively.

Having said that, I think the great problem is if we continue to go in that kind of direction of declining expenditures. Looking at the way China is making its expenditures and what the percentage increase is per year, looking at the increased expenditures of the Russians, and looking at what's taking place with ISIL, for example, in the Middle East, the problems, the challenges, are growing at a time when the collective efforts of the democracies, I might say, seem to be going in the opposite direction. That is a recipe for serious problems sooner rather than later.

[Dr. Christopher Sands]

Mr. Williamson, if I could just quickly add, one of the things that I think has been lost in the debate is the way in which Congress set up the sequestration mechanism. It redefined the national defence portion of the budget, and then there was a budget that was sort of the domestic entitlement spending. It divided that in half.

Instead of defence being defined as the Pentagon only, the traditional defence, they also put the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in the same basket.

The defence department obviously did a good job of protecting soldiers in the field, salaries, and key programs. The state department didn't have a lot of money to go after so it didn't take as big a hit. But the Department of Homeland Security slowed a lot of pilot project cooperation under the beyond the border agreement. They were unable to purchase equipment and they had to slow down recruitment and training.

So in an area of vital importance to Canada, our border security and our ability to cooperate in making trade facilitation work, I think we did some damage to that process. Because of sequestration DHS was simply not in as good a position to defend its turf.

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

Getting into speculation now, I'm just curious to get your insight, given your background and your location. Where do you see this debate going in terms of spending in these areas? With the President's term coming to an end in two years, and with the Republicans now controlling Congress, do you expect it's going to be steady as she goes, maybe modest increases, or do you think an emphasis is going to be put on deficit reduction and obviously a spending reduction?

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

Could we have a short answer, please.

[Dr. Christopher Sands]

Briefly, I think there is going to be an attempt to do both. One of the things about the next couple of years is there will have to be compromises between the White House and the Republican Congress if anything is going to be done. With the power, the veto, plus the ability to divide even a united Republican caucus, there are lots of members you could peel off on spending issues, so I think it's going to be a struggle and we'll be able to move forward only by compromise. We'll probably have some deficit reduction, but we'll also have to continue to constrain defence spending and entitlement spending just to make it through the next couple of years.

[Charles Doran]

If I could just say quickly, I think it's going to be driven by what happens in the international environment. The international environment is getting more serious, and therefore I think spending will go up.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, Jack Harris]

Thank you, sir.

For the New Democratic Party, we'll have Mr. Tarik Brahmi for five minutes.