Foreign Affairs Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2025

[P. Whitney Lackenbauer]

Thank you. I think that's an excellent question.

First of all, to be clear, our desired end state is for some of the craziness in Washington to calm down, so we can get back to our core relationship with the United States, which serves both of our national interests. What is going on and the signals that we have been receiving from Washington make no sense from an interest-based approach to the world.

My first suggestion is that we need to demonstrate strategic patience. It's hard, but in the short term, we need to put our well-warranted emotional frustrations aside and recognize that what we actually desire is building forward so that we get back to stability, more certainty and respect. I believe that will come, but belief can be a dangerous thing in a world of interests and some of the actors we're dealing with.

The key thing is that it's essential that we look at and articulate what we bring to the table in the continental defence equation, so that we start to speak with more confidence about what we contribute to NORAD. We are not simply a passive recipient of American security guarantees. The commitments that we've made with Arctic over-the-horizon radar, polar over-the-horizon radar and different sensor systems that we're deploying are going to be integral to North American defence. If we cover off what's often described as “10 to 2”, it allows the Americans to focus on the Atlantic and Pacific directions or vectors of attack to North America.

Still, when sober minds prevail in all of this, I think everything points toward our being good, reliable allies working together. We want to make sure that we're preserving NORAD as a binational command, but we also need to realize that some issues of trust have arisen. We also need to be quietly, in safe spaces, considering and contemplating scenarios that we probably wouldn't have talked about in polite company a couple of years ago. Namely, how are we prepared to defend ourselves if our key guarantor is interested in protecting itself but maybe not us?

[Christian Leuprecht]

Look, I have a slightly different take on this.

We have not been very good at following 100 years of precedent of making sure we counterbalance against the vagaries of U.S. unilateralism that come and go. This is why the question by Monsieur Simard is so important. Canada needs to add value to Europe to ensure that Europe remains a key partner for Canada going into the future.

A more autarkic Europe means Canada has no choice but to draw closer to the United States, and in light of what we're observing, it needs to be an urgent reminder that doing things that might be interesting ideologically, or in term of the ideas of some electoral groups in the country, ultimately does not serve the national interest. Governing by polls means we are not actually governing by the national need of this country.

The national need of this country is to make sure that we have in Europe a reliable partner with whom we can govern the Arctic and with whom we can counterbalance on the North American continent, precisely because the phenomena Dr. Lackenbauer talks about come and go and we were not ready. We had it. We saw it coming. My colleague, Kim Nossal, wrote an entire book about it, which was published in 2023. It laid out line by line what the Trump administration was going to do, yet we decided in this country that we were instead going to be caught with our pants down.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Do you believe that the current policy reflects the United States position or the United States strategy?

[Christian Leuprecht]

Can you repeat the question? I'm sorry.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

The question is, do you believe that the current policy of Canada from December 2024 reflects the strategic position of the United States and what we've seen from the administration there?

[Christian Leuprecht]

I would have lobbied for a much more aggressive policy when it comes to the Arctic. I think we're still in a moment where we think we have five or 10 years to build out greater Canadian sovereignty. We need a much more rapid accelerant, especially when it comes to the Arctic.

[P. Whitney Lackenbauer]

I think it largely gets it right. I think we need to be instilled with a sense of urgency rather than one of crisis, which can lead us to override democratic processes and things that are core to our values as Canadians.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ahmed Hussen]

Thank you very much. We will next go to MP Vandenbeld.

You have five minutes.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for this really important testimony that you've both given today.

I'd like to start my questions with Professor Lackenbauer.

I noted that in your opening remarks, when you were talking about the whole of government, you had just started to talk about the Coast Guard and bringing the Coast Guard into the defence team. I wonder if you could say what you were planning to say about that. I'm quite curious.

[P. Whitney Lackenbauer]

Sure. I'll keep this nice and succinct.

I think this is welcome. I think it allows us to signal outward that this is part of our broader security equities as a country. I think we sometimes forget that we do have a highly capable Coast Guard, which, in a global context, is not on par with the Russians because we're not asking our Coast Guard to do things comparable to what the Russians ask their Coast Guard to do.

Having it assume more of a constabulary role, which is a shift in culture and will take adjustments in the Coast Guard, is something that fits with the tenor of the times. I think we'll need to have sensitivity as a country to make sure that as that agency is adjusting, it's able to retain the culture that's made it so effective in the past, but that in moving forward we now bundle that together, and our mental way of conceptualizing security will also include that in all this suite of different platforms and sensors we have out there. The Coast Guard are also our eyes and ears within Canadian territory, just as our Canadian Rangers are.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

That leads perfectly to my next question.

I know that you are quite the expert when it comes to the Canadian Rangers. Are we using them to the maximum potential that we could be? Is there anything more we should be doing with the Canadian Rangers in this current environment?

[P. Whitney Lackenbauer]

Thanks.

Yes. I think it was laid out in “Strong, Secure, Engaged” in 2017, in the defence policy that said we should be investing resources in improving the training and effectiveness of the rangers.

That means—and this isn't very exciting on a strategic level—making sure there are the right pay clerks in place at their different headquarters to make sure they're paid on time, and making sure they have training opportunities and abilities to get out on the land. It does not require a fundamental retooling of the Canadian Rangers. They serve as really key force enablers and force multipliers if we need to send kinetic forces—combat forces—up to the north but enable them to be those eyes and ears and those voices of the north, in the military and of the military in the north.

[Anita Vandenbeld, Liberal, Ottawa West—Nepean, ON]

You also spent a lot of time talking about different kinds of hybrid threats. We know what those threats are to all of Canada, but what is peculiar and special about the threats that particularly impact the north and the Arctic?

[P. Whitney Lackenbauer]

Christian, I will go quickly on this one and hand it over to you.

I think it is that there are so many single points of failure. Without a lot of redundancy in terms of infrastructure, it means that whether it is a deliberate act of espionage or interference or a natural disaster, disruptions down south can happen in ways such that we would have alternate routes or alternate mechanisms for mitigating the associated risks.

We also need to think about extremes of weather and the winter and how, if an electric generator goes down, as it did in Puvirnituq and Pangnirtung a little more than a decade ago, that represents a very acute human security crisis. It is different; we have had ice storms in southern Canada, so I will not dismiss that either, but when you're dealing with -40°C and -50°C conditions, this takes on a whole different imperative, so I think that's partly it.

It's also thinking about what vulnerabilities exist in terms of polarization. What are the friction points within our democratic systems that adversaries may want to exploit? We want to make sure Canadians are protected so we can have those difficult democratic discussions among ourselves and know that they are not being influenced or manipulated by outsiders.

[Christian Leuprecht]

What I take away from Dr. Lackenbauer is that hybrid threats are a means to an end, and the end for our adversaries is to impose strategic dilemmas on us. What we are seeing from Russia is the ability to impose multiple strategic dilemmas in multiple domains at the same time: land, air, maritime, subsurface, cyber, space and aerospace. Are we prepared? Are we posturing ourselves in a way to be able to be resilient, to detect, to deter and, if necessary, to defend against these multiple strategic dilemmas? That is more how I would be thinking about that hybrid environment and our ability to contain it.

With regard to the Coast Guard, there is one minor amendment. The opportunity space here, of course, is that if we are going to change the mandate and the posture of the Coast Guard, we also effectively need to retrain much of the senior leadership core. Bringing it into National Defence provides an opportunity for professional development, because it is nice to have some equipment that can do some of the constabulary job, but if you don't have people who understand what the constabulary mission is and how to execute it, we are not going to be able to achieve the effects that the government is looking for.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ahmed Hussen]

Thank you, Professor.

Next we will go to MP Simard.

Mr. Simard, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Gentlemen, your comments are quite compelling, but also concerning. You just spoke about multi-faceted strategic dilemmas involving Russia, China and the United States, which have far greater resources than Canada.

With the advent of artificial intelligence, how can Canada take concrete action, within the means at its disposal, to partially address these different strategic dilemmas? I know that this may be a difficult question, but I would appreciate a brief answer.

[Christian Leuprecht]

Canada will continue to have limited capabilities, hence the need for partnerships with European Union member countries and other European countries. We should also consider the Indo‑Pacific region and close partners such as Australia, Japan and Korea. These countries are often overlooked in our overall understanding of the situation. Each country already has capabilities. We spoke earlier about Finland. This small country has a tremendous capacity to deal with hybrid attacks and threats. The key is collaboration.

What the United States understood 20 years ago is that Russia and China were developing very sophisticated escalation ladders, and what much of the rest of NATO missed is the ability to respond to those escalation ladders, so now that we need to build out these capabilities, we can do it only together with our partners.

[P. Whitney Lackenbauer]

I'll be very quick here—not too quick for the interpreters, but just with short, succinct statements.

First of all, I think we need to realize that preparing populations for the world we face, not the world we wish we faced, requires investments in building up societal resilience. Here's where we can learn from our Nordic partners, and I very much echo Dr. Leuprecht's spirit of reaching out to like-minded nations in Europe and leveraging more of those relationships.

Second, we need to get ahead of our adversaries, stop talking about every deficit and shortcoming that we have in Canada, and project a message of strength as well.

Believe it or not, we do a lot of things very well in Canada. We have industry that is very capable and contributes to high-tech supply chains. I think we need to do a job of realizing that the world has shifted. We Canadians love to beat ourselves up and downplay ourselves, and we do it in the Arctic space to try to embarrass the sitting government into spending more resources in the north. I think the time has come for us to go through a bit of a culture shift and realize that what we need to do now is up our game for strategic messaging and operate from a position of strength.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ahmed Hussen]

Thank you very much, Professor.

We will go next to MP Helena Konanz.

You have five minutes.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you.

I know we don't have a lot of time left, but I have a question about technology and the use of, for example, drones in the Arctic. Are they being used now? Is that something that we need to invest in more or at all?

[P. Whitney Lackenbauer]

Yes and yes. That's the short answer. It is definitely being trialled. I think there's still a lot of experimentation going on. Obviously, a big challenge in the north relates to power generation, cold temperatures and batteries deteriorating in terms of power. Some of that affects the distances that drones can operate over. There are other anomalies associated with the electromagnetic spectrum in very high latitudes. I think this is an area in which Canada is well positioned with drones that are both in the air and under water. We really have been world leaders for quite a long time in underwater autonomous vehicles.

I think as well that we need to look at opportunities that Canadian space and Canadian geography afford as an area for experimentation, testing and trialling of some of some of these new technologies.

Some of our European allies, by virtue of geography, are very proximate to key competitors and adversaries. I think we can also sell ourselves as a place where the world should want to come to test out some of their emerging technologies in our very diversified northern and Arctic environments, to see what those capabilities look like.

[Christian Leuprecht]

It reminds us that an investment in defence is an investment in innovation in research and technology in the 21st century. I do not have a dog in this race, but look at a company in Europe called Helsing, for instance, that has understood that it's not just about the drones; it's about the algorithms behind those drones.

For Canada to invest in algorithms for democracy and how we harness our high-tech skills, we have universities that produce fantastically cutting-edge work, but we've done a very poor job at integrating them with our national security and defence enterprise.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

That's all. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ahmed Hussen]

Thank you so much.

Thank you to the witnesses for your testimony and for appearing for this study.

That concludes this meeting.

Is it the will of the committee to adjourn the meeting?