Canada-China Relations Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Dr. Lu, I think we'll have to pause your commentary now. If you have more reflections, you can certainly work them into the answers that you give to the questions that are coming your way, including from Ms. Dancho.

Ms. Dancho, go ahead for six minutes or less, please.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses for being with us today.

My questions are for Professor Huebert. It's wonderful to see you again, Professor, and thank you again for being a witness for us at the public safety and national security committee when you attended back in the early spring to give us testimony about Canada's security posture in response to Russian aggression and the invasion of Ukraine. It's wonderful to hear your insights here today.

I want to sort of repeat back to you some of what you've shared with us and then give you the floor to elaborate. You mentioned that when we're thinking about China and the Canadian Arctic, we should be thinking about four areas. You mentioned science and how they have been doing scientific exploration in the Arctic since the eighties. You mentioned resources and how they have an interest in gold and strategic minerals up there. You mentioned fishing. You also touched on governance in terms of the Arctic Council being suspended and what that means for the governance structure we have had with that council, and how since then they seem to have been cozying up to Russia. That's what I understand from what you shared. You ended by talking about the strategic implications, and you highlighted even further that China and Russia now seem to be working very closely together. From what you said, it sounds as though they've done joint missions now into the Arctic with various marine vessels.

Taking all of that into consideration, can you give us your expert opinion with respect to what China wants to achieve in the Arctic, particularly in what we would consider to be our Arctic territory? What are they looking to achieve? Could you kind of sum that up in simple terms for us?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

The summation is that they are looking very much forward. They are seeking to become a hegemon. In political science terms, that basically means they want to be the most dominant player in the international system, and that means that they have to have the ability to go to any region and to take advantage of having that ability to go into any region. The Arctic is part of that.

Unlike the Russians, the Chinese are not interested in the Arctic because it is a central strategic location for them. It is the central strategic location for Russia and the United States. If the Chinese are dealing with any of these other issues, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong or any of the issues that are of direct interest to the Chinese state, they want to be able to keep their enemies off guard. So what we see in the long term is that China wants to ensure that, first of all, it is a player in terms of the governance side of what is happening. It wants to ensure that it has the advantage of all the economic opportunities that are there, but, most critically, it wants to ensure that in the long term—and we always have to think long-term when we talk about China—it does not allow the Arctic to be a safe zone for the Americans and the Russians.

I want to stress that the relationship that the Chinese have with the Russians right now is a relationship of convenience, and in many ways in the longer term Russia actually has as much to fear from China as China becomes the great power in the region as, say, the Americans have to fear. Right now, because of the events of the war with Ukraine, starting, as you well know, in 2014, we see China taking advantage of that, but in the longer term, they want to have that dominant ability to ensure that they are the hegemon, and that includes being in the region of the Arctic.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you very much.

The Minister of Defence has recently made a few announcements regarding surveillance and upgrading NORAD. Recently she was interviewed on CTV's Question Period. She said that we are investing in our military bases. Do the announcements made by the current government and Minister of Defence give you hope that the current government is taking this issue seriously? Do you think that is enough? What should be done in addition? Perhaps you can just outline that for the committee.

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

I think the government is taking it seriously in terms of what we need to be doing. I'm still waiting to see whether or not in fact we see this follow-through, because if we see any of the statements that have been coming forward in terms of what we need to do for the modernization of NORAD, the entire focus on the Canadian side is on the Russian threat. That's appropriate, given the fact that that's where all the attention is.

What we're not seeing is really what that means in the much longer term for China, particularly on the maritime side. When we look at what has been promised in terms of NORAD modernization, recognize also that the $4.9 billion is being drawn out of the $8.1 billion in the budget. In other words, as I think Mercedes Stephenson and Murray Brewster were able to bring out so brilliantly in their reporting, that's not new money that was announced in June. That is what we'll be doing with what is coming out of the defence budget.

The big money, the $36.8 billion, of course, is going to begin in six years, and as somebody who has watched politics over a fairly significant, long time, I can assure you that we have very little record of any government ever continuing a very large policy from the government before. The one exception, of course—and I'll give credit to both the Liberals and the Conservatives on this—is the decision to make it bipartisan to build the Arctic offshore patrol vessel. There is an instance where funding has gone across on a bipartisan basis, but that doesn't happen. So I am always concerned whenever I hear of any government, Conservative or Liberal, that says the bulk of what we're going to be doing is in the next term, because history tells us that that doesn't really happen.

In the longer term, the real problem we'll be facing with the Chinese is going to be their maritime capability. Most people will not be aware that the Chinese have the largest navy in the world. The American navy is still stronger and better. It has a better carrier capability, but in numbers, the Chinese navy overtook the American navy in 2014 or 2015. They are going to have that capability. They will focus on underwater capabilities. They are reinvigorating their entire submarine force, and what we can see from outside scientific literature is that they're examining what it means for their submarines to go under the ice, which means into the Arctic region. And—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Dr. Huebert, we'll have to call it for time there for Ms. Dancho's time to ask questions.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you very much, Professor Huebert.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

We'll now go to Mr. Oliphant for six minutes or less.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to follow up on Ms. Dancho's really fine questions. I think they were really good. I want to drill down a little bit more on the Arctic, so I'm going to stay with Dr. Huebert for the time.

China refers to itself as an Arctic-adjacent country. I live in a part of Toronto that real estate agents call “Lawrence Park-adjacent”. We're nowhere near Lawrence Park. They do it to up the value of houses they're trying to sell or something.

I've been following China's rhetoric around the Arctic and have read some of what you've written. I want to drill down a little bit about where you think Russia's and China's interests are aligned and—you've already gone into this a bit—where they are quite different, one of them being really an Arctic country and the other being so-called Arctic-adjacent. They have very different proximity. Where are their interests lying? Is it a marriage of convenience or is it a convergence of interests?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

It's a little bit of both. That's an excellent question, by the way.

This is something that is not properly appreciated. We have a tendency right now to simply assume that because both of them are authoritative states, they will be allies in the same sense as, say, the United States and Great Britain, in that there's a sharing of overall interests. This is not the case. It's specifically not the case when we talk about the relationship that's developing in the Arctic.

Right now, what Russia gets from China is that it gets backing. Remember, it is isolated by the western states in terms of the sanctions that we have brought forward. It is isolated in the context of the fact that we are providing so much military assistance to Ukraine in its fight against the Russians. China provides this background. That's what Russia gets out of it.

What China is getting from Russia is really cheap energy. The Chinese have never released what the deal was that they cut with the Russians following the imposition of sanctions when the invasion began in 2014. You will recall that even Canada was involved at that point in time in terms of trying to punish the Russian state. There was a series of sanctions. The Chinese moved in and said, “Yes, we'll take your oil, Russia, so you can keep it flowing, but we want a deal on that.” We don't know what it is, but we know that it is good.

I would like to touch on something related to a point that Dr. Lu raised in his testimony when he talked about the “century of humiliation”. A component of the “century of humiliation”, which is the central piece that is driving long-term Chinese policy, is that some of the unfair treaties involve Russia. If we look once again in the history, just as our attention is on Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Chinese have never forgotten that they have also lost significant territory to the Russians during that period. Once again, as we've heard from today's testimony and other witnesses, the Chinese are very serious about remedying that when then feel they are ready to do so. I think the Russians recognize this.

The third element that we have to take into consideration here is what happens if the Russian state actually implodes and there is a vacuum. That is increasingly looking as if it may be a probability. China will not allow a vacuum on its border. So the question is.... If we have a very violent implosion of Russia or, even worse, if Russia was to make a military move on, say, the supply lines on Poland or any of the NATO, resulting in a much larger regional war, China will move to take advantage of that. As a result, we know the Russians are aware that they have the partnerships with the Chinese right now, but if they have a misstep, the Chinese will in fact be very capable of moving into that region, which they now see, of course, as theirs, not as Russian.

[Rob Oliphant, Liberal, Don Valley West, ON]

In my last two minutes, I just want to ask about indigenous peoples.

The Arctic Council is made up of eight countries, with seven participating now, Russia having been essentially frozen out. Six permanent indigenous groups are also part of it, including a Russian indigenous group. This may be outside your expertise, but do you have any insights into the peoples of the Arctic, including the indigenous people and their thoughts around conflict or their thoughts around China? Are they targets of China, as well?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

The big problem there.... I'm so glad you raised this question, but it's something that we have not been addressing. The Russian group is called the Russian Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North, RAIPON. About 2014, right when the Russians were moving into Ukraine at the start of the war, and when Putin was of course centralizing, he also engineered the takeover of RAIPON.

RAIPON is no longer, as understood, the voice for Russian indigenous peoples. Rather, what has happened is that this board has been basically made up of Russian government supporters or Russian government people. In fact, if you look at RAIPON's statement about the second phase of the Ukrainian war, back in February 2022, you will see that RAIPON issued a statement in full support of the Russian state intervention into Ukraine, accusing Ukraine of the Russian propaganda, Ukraine being a fascist state and all of the other justifications that the Russians have, of course, given.

Have we seen anything in terms of China trying to take advantage of that? To my knowledge, there's no evidence whatsoever of it. It would be difficult, but probably not impossible in this context. Once again, given the control that the Russian state now has of any NGOs, never mind just those on the indigenous side, it would be something of a challenge. It's something, of course, that we in the west have tended to overlook when we are talking about what has happened in the Arctic. RAIPON no longer speaks for the indigenous northern Russian people, in my assessment. They speak for the Russian state.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Dr. Huebert, thank you.

See if you can adjust your microphone and speak up a little bit. Our interpreters are noticing the sound levels going down for some strange reason, but that's the Internet for you.

We will now go to Mr. Bergeron for six minutes or less.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would also like to thank our witnesses. It is late for everyone, so I thank you for being with us to give us your insight.

Mr. Huebert, I have to tell you that I find your presentation on the Arctic absolutely fascinating.

Some of your writing can be found in a text entitled “Debating Arctic Security, Selected Writings, 2010-2021”, written by yourself and P. Whitney Lackenbauer. The authors' thesis seems to be that the People's Republic of China will assign greater weight to regions located closest and sees the world as a series of concentric circles where closeness diminishes as you move away.

As a result, the authors argue, the People's Republic of China may initiate provocative actions closer to itself, but refrain from doing so in regions farther away, such as the Arctic. However, listening to you, we might think that China not only takes a close interest in what happens in the Arctic, but is in the process of developing the operational capacity to interject itself in that region.

How do you reconcile that vision of concentric circles, as cited by Mr. Dean and Mr. Lackenbauer in the text that contains some of your writings, with the vision you presented to us, which seems instead to point to the threat that China represents for a region like the Arctic?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

Thank you for the excellent question.

I want to give a shout-out to my two co-authors, who are former students. Dr. Lackenbauer in particular and I have a disagreement in terms of how to understand the direction of the Chinese threat. Whitney is much more focused on the understanding that the Chinese will be focusing most of their geopolitical effort onto issues that are geographically central to them—that's Taiwan and the South China Sea—and that this, in fact, means that the interest in the Arctic, particularly from a strategic perspective, probably will not be nearly as dangerous as what I have highlighted.

I see the Chinese in the longer term being very interested in being able to interject themselves into the Arctic because that is then going to allow them to challenge the Americans, and it's going to allow them to challenge the Russians in the even longer term. Where we have a disagreement is trying to determine what we can interpret in terms of future force development that will either accentuate his argumentation, which would mean that their aerospace and maritime force composition is going to be strictly blue-water, or my argumentation that we have to be looking at more white-water capability. That means basically the submarine capabilities.

The reality is that we don't know at this point, but it is a very vigorous debate that we and other members of the community have been trying to address. My position, I will be very frank, is that in the long term we can expect the Chinese to be a major strategic player within the context of the Arctic.

[Stéphane Bergeron, Bloc, Montarville, QC]

Thank you.

From that perspective, we get the feeling that Canada has neglected the Arctic and its Arctic neighbour allies, including Greenland and Denmark, Iceland, and the United States and Alaska, for a very long time.

From the perspective you have presented to us, how should we see things going when it comes to collaboration with the Arctic neighbour nations?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

This moves slightly off China, but the reality is that if we look at what all of our Nordic partners are doing in NATO, then we have to accept that the Turks, at one point, will allow the Swedes and the Finns to join NATO. It's a matter of what price they are going to exact for that. Once we have Finland and Sweden in.... All of the Nordic countries have been heavily engaged in creating what I would characterize as a Nordic NORAD. They're having a shared aerial space. They're having a shared maritime understanding. And all of them are working with the Americans.

We run the risk right now because we're not that involved with them on almost any level when it comes to the NATO side of issues. The real problem, in my estimation, when we look at the recently announced American strategic doctrine and when we look at Putin's threats about using nuclear weapons, is that we're now moving into an era when we're not just talking about nuclear deterrence in the Arctic but we're also talking about the possibility of nuclear war-fighting.

The fact that we have not heavily engaged with our Nordic countries is a problem. The fact that we are even less engaged with our friends in the Indo-Pacific region is even more problematic.

I'll give you one example of how we're, in my view, really not paying attention. In 2017, the Chinese requested consent to send their icebreaker through the Northwest Passage. You will recall that our official policy is that the Northwest Passage, under Canadian Arctic sovereignty, is ours. I don't understand why we gave them permission, because we know that, as they are going through, they are going to be doing deep seabed mapping. They're going to be looking in terms of determination for submarine passages. I don't know why, if in fact the claim is that Canada has sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, we didn't simply say, “Sorry, China, we don't think it's in our defence interest to allow it.” But we did allow them, so I don't think we think in a strategic context.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you very much for that.

We will now go to Ms. McPherson for six minutes or less.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of the witnesses. It is very late this evening, so thank you for being here and sharing your expertise with us.

Obviously, Dr. Huebert, the things we're hearing from you are not necessarily surprising, but of course they are very scary. You were just talking to my colleague, Mr. Bergeron, about our allies and how we need to work with those allies in the northern countries. You talked a little bit about the nuclear deterrence, the nuclear war potential that we have there, and what we should be doing with our allies.

Is it too late? Is the power that China and Russia have militarily...? Have we acted too late? Knowing the situation we find ourselves in now, what should Canada prioritize? Knowing the limitations we have, the limitations with our capacity for procurement, the limitations with what we have failed to do in terms of developing the Arctic, if you were the Canadian government, prioritize for me what your next steps would be, please.

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

It's never too late. We don't find ourselves yet in the type of conflict where there is a direct potential, and I dare say our allies have become very attuned to this, particularly after the Ukrainian war started in 2014. We see this in the Nordics. We also see that with our Indo-Pacific friends in terms of how they have been responding.

I also always remind my students that if we look at determination to act.... I point out to them that at the time of Tiananmen Square, Canada had a larger defence budget than China. Our defence budget was about $21 billion or $22 billion, in those dollars at that point. If you look at SIPRI's figures, and it's always difficult to know with any certainty, but we think that China's defence budget was about $17 billion. So we see the manner in which political determination will ultimately make all the difference. Now, of course, China has a much larger economy, and we can get into that.

What would I recommend? First and foremost, to deal with the Russian threat, we have to become much more serious at following through with what we say we're going to do. In other words, the map of modernization of NORAD and North American defence is a sound one, but the question of putting off the $38.6 billion to when the next election comes, I think, is trying to play sleight of hand in this context. We have to get serious. We have to say this is as serious as anything that we face in climate change, with the pandemic, and that means making the expenditures as soon as we can.

On the Chinese side, what we need to be doing is getting as serious as we have been in the past with our European and American allies and making our Indo-Pacific friends into allies. I think the only way we can respond to all of the types of threats that we have heard in terms of what China poses in the long term...will only able to be complete if we have a NATO variant of some form of alliance, not just friendship but alliance, with those who are like-minded in terms of being able to respond.

Politically, we need to be trying to help with that. We won't lead—no one will take us seriously on that—but we can at least be supportive of it, and we can definitely turn around and start actually getting the expenditures we need and—this is even more chilling—we need to be thinking about these worst-case geopolitical threats that we now face. They're not science fiction.

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Thank you for that. That's very interesting. Obviously, having an Indo-Pacific strategy.... One hopes that when we do get that Indo-Pacific strategy, that will help with turning those friends into alliances.

Maybe I'll ask Dr. Lu the next question that I have, with regard to diplomacy and how the diplomatic efforts can be assisted to enhance the protection around Taiwan.

In your 2014 article, “Taiwan's Viable Diplomacy in Times of Uncertainty”, you outlined the positive outcomes of Taiwan's diplomatic engagement with 22 allies. At present, Taiwan has official diplomatic relations with only 14 states. Could you talk a little bit about the outcomes of Taiwan's diplomatic engagement with its allies and what role the PRC has played in diminishing Taiwan's ability to develop those diplomatic relationships?

[Dr. Yeh-Chung Lu]

Yes, thank you for your wonderful question.

I would say that China right now is actually seeking a great-power status, not only in the Arctic but also in the Indo-Pacific, of course. If we follow this line of reasoning, we can see that in the past few years, especially from 2014 until 2022, China intervened in Taiwan's engagement with its international friends and Taiwan's participation in international organizations. I would say China is actually playing a role as a disrupter to some degree when Taiwan tries to engage actively with the international community.

In the past, in terms of bilateral relations, you can see that China tried to...I wouldn't say “bribe”, but they actually put a higher bid to win over our diplomatic allies. In international organizations, China tried very hard to exclude Taiwan's participation.

In the past few years, Taiwan adapted to this situation. We try very hard to collaborate with like-minded countries, for example through the GCTF. Right now, Canada is also part of this framework for co-operation. This is a very good development for Taiwan to be seen and also for the international community to have a better opportunity to cope with the global issues such as disaster relief and humanitarian assistance. Those are quite important issues in the Indo-Pacific area.

I would say that I totally agree with Professor Huebert because China always has a long-term perspective on those kinds of things. What kind of status is China looking for? I believe at the end of the day they want to become number one in the world.

From Taiwan's perspective, for now I would say maybe we need to work together to shape what China wants and let China know that China's decision would have consequences, and we keep our own word and we follow through with our commitment. Then we can help to shape China's intentions in the future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ken Hardie]

Thank you, Dr. Lu.

We'll now go to Mr. Chong for five minutes or less, please.

[Michael Chong, Conservative, Wellington—Halton Hills, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank both our witnesses for appearing tonight.

The first question I have concerns Russia's and China's military co-operation in respect to submarine capacity. I read with alarm when Nord Stream 1's pipeline was blown up in the Baltic Sea, blowing a 50-metre hole in that pipeline, because there were suggestions that Russia had committed this act of sabotage. It immediately brought to mind Russia's submarine capabilities.

That led me to think about what's going on in the Canadian Arctic with China and Russia, thinking about what submarine vulnerabilities we have, not just in the Arctic but on our Atlantic and Pacific coasts. I then started thinking about the myriad of Internet cables that carry the world's digital communications between North America and Europe, and between North America and the Indo-Pacific region. Many of those cables emanate from Halifax, Nova Scotia, from other parts of Nova Scotia, and from the British Columbia coast.

How important is it that Canada develop submarine capacity, to monitor not just the surface of our coastal waters, but also the submarine parts of our coastal waters, Professor Huebert?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

Thank you for the excellent question. It's of absolute importance.

Just to add to your listing of the Russian.... We think the Russians have designed a special submarine. It's basically a typical SSN, the Belgorod, but it also has the capability of carrying a deep-diving mini-sub, and that's what we suspect was doing the cut.

Not only was Nord Stream attacked, but also—and this is something that Canadians are not aware of very much—prior to the onset of the second phase of the war back in February, the Russians also cut the fibre optic cable between Svalbard Island and Norway, where a very significant amount of information of a security nature is given.

Russians have demonstrated to us that they have this capability. Within the Canadian context, we really don't have any ability to respond. We have our four submarines, which are very capable, but, as everybody knows, they are not under-ice capable. This means that entire region is left open.

The problem we face is that even in terms of what the minister promised in June, in terms of remedying many of the aerospace difficulties, I think there is nothing in terms of the modernization of our underwater listening capability, and this has been brought out so brilliantly in the very recent audit that the Auditor General released in terms of how we were able to see what we're not doing for Arctic sovereignty and security.

We're not talking about it in the context of what we do with the Americans, and we're not talking about what we may want to do. We had one scientific program called Northern Watch, but nothing really came of that, so there is nothing, sir.