National Defence committee  Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, I'm pleased to have the opportunity to participate in your review of the defence of North America. I'll keep my initial comments brief. Previous witnesses have provided you with input on a wide range of issues related to the subject at

National Defence committee  I don't think there's much doubt that the Russians' increased activity is a concern to us all. From a NORAD perspective, this isn't something that just developed since the Crimean crisis, or the Ukraine issue. It's more focused on capabilities that Russia has been working on for

National Defence committee  Even though we have perhaps some diplomatic differences about boundaries in the Arctic, I don't think there are any differences about the need to protect the Arctic as part of NORAD's area of responsibility. Indeed there is excellent cross-cooperation between the Alaska NORAD reg

National Defence committee  No, I agree.

National Defence committee  I don't think the missile threat has accelerated, if you will, but it has been gradually evolving over the past several years. North Korea clearly now has the ability to launch a missile to North America. Whether they can effectively mate a weapon with that missile and deliver it

National Defence committee  In my opinion, BMD is the obvious natural NORAD mission that we could perform with the United States. I think it's something we've missed out on. I used the words “abrogated our responsibility” in my presentation. I believe it's something in which we morally have an obligation to

National Defence committee  I don't know. Yes, it's possible. The only company I'm aware of that has been actively involved in the last decade or so with ballistic missile defence was Raytheon, which proposed the installation of an x-band radar at Goose Bay as a Canadian contribution, if you will, toward ba

National Defence committee  Joe Jockel, an academic who has written quite a bit about NORAD, said once that Canada needs NORAD more than NORAD needs Canada. Indeed, in my time in the United States, I found there were many senior American military officers who were unfamiliar with NORAD, and every time we'd

National Defence committee  Potentially.

National Defence committee  I guess in this context I remain a pragmatist. Dr. Bow has given you some pretty good ideas about what could be done differently, and I would have argued, when NORTHCOM was set up in the States that NORAD could have piggybacked onto that opportunity to make more than NORAD, and t

National Defence committee  I would agree with that. I think that obviously, the airspace control mission in the north is something that NORAD does. Maritime warning applies to the Northwest Passage as well. That's an evolving mission that has occurred and has engendered cooperation between the two countrie

National Defence committee  There are army exercises and the deployment of maritime patrol aircraft and space surveillance.

National Defence committee  I don't have any direct personal first-hand understanding of this, but my understanding is that the evolution of it was fairly slow to start. After about four years of initiation they started to develop real information. Now they gather information from all the stakeholders who a

National Defence committee  I won't take issue with the complexity of one mission versus another, but the reality is that the kind of maritime warning that's done is kind of the core competency of NORAD: to collect information, fuse it, disseminate it, assess it, take action. It's a natural, in some respect

National Defence committee  We have always accorded the defence of Canada and the defence of North America as the primary mission. In the end, the direct investment in NORAD is not that great beyond the personnel involved and the sustainment of fighter forces and so on that are involved. There's no doubt,