Foreign Affairs Committee on Sept. 19th, 2018

[MGen William Seymour]

My understanding, sir, is that it's not year-round. During high winter when it's fully closed in, it's only open a portion of the year. During the high winter season I understand that the local community, rangers and others, will be watching over it and maintaining its security, but it won't be open year-round.

[Mario Pelletier]

That is correct. Aside from Nanisivik the nearest community is Arctic Bay, which is about 40 kilometres away. The intent is to resupply that early as the season opens up, and the last ship that would leave would then make sure it's secured, and it would be looking at local communities to look after it.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

Switching back from infrastructure to assets, you raised Denmark, General, so I may as well start there. In terms of air superiority and air presence in the Arctic, the U.S. has designated the F-35 as its only over-the-pole aircraft option. Denmark will be using the F-35 with respect to Greenland and its Arctic role. If we do not acquire the F-35.... The Liberals are buying the used F-18. That came up today, and I don't need you to comment on that, General, but if we are not an F-35 country in the north, will we be able to operate in our own jurisdiction with our allies?

[MGen William Seymour]

Simply stated, as a force employer, we will force-employ whatever aircraft we're provided with and we'll make it work.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Would you like to employ an F-35?

[MGen William Seymour]

I will employ any new aircraft that the government gives us.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

A wise general who wrote a transformation report, and who was here briefly a few minutes ago, said that the key to the forces' future was to be, in his words, smart, fast, adaptive and collaborative, which he termed “agile”. Because of the paucity of resources in the Arctic, is it not a requirement for us to really collaborate with our allies? I'm talking about the United States, Denmark, and our first nations friends. Is that joint capability from a communications and asset standpoint not an absolute requirement in the Arctic?

[MGen William Seymour]

I would argue, based on what I've told you here today in terms of search and rescue and even some of the more fundamental defence response in the Arctic, that collaboration is essential, from intelligence to actually operating up in the north. We practise that each and every day.

Our relationship with NORTHCOM is a fundamental part of what we do. We exercise in the north. We exercise in command post exercises. In the exercises that we run, we invite all of our partners from NATO and elsewhere. We've certainly had observers from Denmark, the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, and other countries.

When I co-chaired the Arctic Security Forces Roundtable, which we've participated in since its inception in 2011, among the key things that we talked about was greater co-operation in sharing and exercises. We talked a lot about information sharing and intelligence sharing, so we're aware of what's going on in the Arctic spaces. That's fundamental to operating up there.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

If we have, say, the Super Hornet, would we have to make structural changes to make sure we have an interoperability with a fifth-generation aircraft? Would an off-the-shelf Super Hornet be able to have the same communications ability, the same link, with the nations using the F-35, from your knowledge, General?

[MGen William Seymour]

You're asking me questions that are outside of my bailiwick. Although I wear the uniform, I'm a force employer at CJOC. I think the statement requirements for the follow-on aircraft for the CF-18 are suitably robust, so that we'll connect to whatever it is we're doing up there and be fully interoperable.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you, General.

In my experience, I find navigators are the most capable overall of being force-employed, so....

[MGen William Seymour]

Thank you for the compliment, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

That's your time. Thank you.

Next is Mr. Wrzesnewskyj, please.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I'd like to follow up on some of the questions that you answered previously, Major-General.

I noted this concern about Russian subs potentially being in the Arctic, hiding in our Arctic north. You said it's “technologically out of date”. Could you explain what you meant by that?

[MGen William Seymour]

The reason I said that is what we've seen in terms of advancing capabilities, be it Russian bombers who fly to the edge of our Canadian air defence identification zone more as a posturing activity rather than as something of necessity in terms of an attack on the North American landmass. They can take off from their bases in Russia and launch their missiles well outside the range of our CADIZ and our fighters, so from an operational perspective, actually approaching the old Cold War days when the bombers were going to penetrate the north and head down to do their bomb runs...that's what I mean by “technologically out of date”. They don't need to do that. They can launch their weapons from outside the Canadian air defence identification zone.

Similarly, sir, with the weapons on those submarines, the range is such that they have a much broader area from which they can operate to hit their targets.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

It appears that you're saying we have a policy to assume that this is not something we should be concerned about. That's what I read into what you said. Is that correct or incorrect?

[MGen William Seymour]

I'd say it's incorrect in the sense that I'm not the policy guy. I'm an operations guy. I'm telling you that based on our understanding of the capabilities of potential adversaries. In this case, you asked about the Russians and their capabilities. You saw Mr. Putin on TV extolling the virtues of all of these super-weapons that they've developed. Their capabilities are such that we're not worried about the Russians wanting to park themselves in the Arctic landmass in order to shoot their weapons to the south.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I'm just curious. The Norwegians, who are our allies, seem to have taken a very different tack. They've decided to buy four submarines in 2019, and very specifically their Lieutenant-General Lunde stated that Norway is arming itself to deflect difficult-to-detect Russian subs, invisible Russian submarines that lurk in the Arctic waters. We have the Norwegians saying that the Russians are engaged in these sorts of activities, and it seems we're not concerned about this. They're concerned to the point that they're buying four additional submarines from the Germans to address this issue in their Arctic region. In fact, just a month ago it was reported that the U.K. and Norway have agreed that their sub-hunters will work together to counter the Russian naval submarine threat.

Can I have your thoughts on that? It seems that both our British allies and our Scandinavian allies are concerned about this, and it seems that we're not particularly concerned.

[MGen William Seymour]

Our course the U.K. and Norway were part of the Arctic Security Forces Roundtable discussions, and that was certainly amongst the things that we talked about. My observation, from having attended a couple of those, was that how you see things depends on where you sit and your vantage point. If you're looking at the threat from the Canadian landmass up over to the Arctic and seeing what the Russians are doing, your perception, I would suggest, is different from what it will be if you are living in Norway where you abut Russia and the maritime forces located in their northern sea fleet are just adjacent to your country. Frankly, none of that surprises me. Of course the Norwegians would take an approach whereby they'd buy capability to protect themselves, because the Russians are operating in their Arctic.

[Borys Wrzesnewskyj, Liberal, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Maybe it's not a nuclear threat, but is it not a challenge to sovereignty? The Russians have done something that many people laughed at. They went so far as to build a special submersible to plant a Russian flag on the Arctic sea bed to further a false claim of Russian sovereignty on that territory.

Could they be building up a capability looking forward? You said that we need to look forward 10, 20 or 30 years from now. Could we be caught in a situation 10, 20 or 30 years from now? We've seen it with China and the South China Sea where they've built up military capabilities and then countries are faced with a de facto result. Could it well be that they're preparing?

They're building their military bases. They're adding to their nuclear fleet, their northern fleet. They've just launched this special Sibir icebreaker with capabilities that no one else has and they're planning to launch more of those. Could we be caught in a situation 10 or 20 years from now that, as much as we diplomatically try to reinstate Canadian territory and Canadian sovereignty over these sea beds, de facto, we won't be able to do much about it?

[MGen William Seymour]

Sir, I think you're asking a speculative question that is based in part on a showboating event conducted by the Russians. I think previous testimony highlighted that some of the kit they used to do that was probably Canadian.

The interesting piece, when you look at the Russian buildup in their north and their Arctic, as I think a number of commentators out there have suggested and I share this view, is that it is due to a number of things. One, from a national psyche perspective, is that they need to build up the north because they have more than 2.5 million people living in the north. It's fundamental to who the Russians are. It's their near abroad. Of course they would pay attention to this and build up security, especially when that security had lapsed over the eighties. The state of their defensive posture in the north right now is less than it was at the height of the Cold War, so it's certainly not the kind of concern, perhaps, that some had suggested.

The second piece is that this buildup is related to their desire that the northern sea route be the preferred route for shipping to go from China to Europe or perhaps to North America. That economic priority or economic sense that the north is key to the future of Russia's economy is integral, I think, to what the buildup is.

The third piece is that the Russian northern fleet is located in the north, so the buildup is intended in part to make sure that they're able to protect that capability in the north. Inferring then that 20 or 30 years hence the Russians might then be interested in or seek to do things in North America, I think, is speculative and not necessarily borne out by what we're seeing.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bob Nault]

Thank you.

I'll go to Mr. O'Toole, please.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

While I share my friend Mr. Wrzesnewskyj's concern about Russian aggression in the Arctic, he asked a number of rounds of questions on subsurface capability. I'd remind my colleague that the Upholder class, the Victoria class, was “acquired”, I'd like to say, for our navy. It was actually bartered from the British. It was acquired in 1998 but didn't see service until 2005. It didn't sail in the Arctic until 2007.

We have a limited capacity now. Are our current subsurface assets, the Victoria class, capable of regularly deploying to the Arctic? How do they fit into the asset mix?

[MGen William Seymour]

Perhaps my maritime colleagues might be able to shed a bit more light on that. I'm not a submariner by background.

As a force employer, I can tell you this. As you've seen over the past number of years, the submarines operate during the open season in the approaches to the north. They're a conventional diesel submarine. They don't have the capability to operate under ice, as other platforms would, but they are certainly very capable up to and including that point.

I hope that answers the question, sir.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Does the Coast Guard have any regular interaction with subsurface RCN assets in arctic waters?