National Defence Committee on April 1st, 2009

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Mr. Bagnell, just 20 seconds.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

It just seems to me, as a northerner, that it's embarrassing that we have more planes and air force in Alaska than we do in the whole three northern territories, which is a third or 40% of Canada. But I'll leave that as a comment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Okay, thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. Payne.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'd like to thank General Duval for coming here today.

It's interesting information in your notes. Being kind of an individual who's not quite familiar with the notification process, I guess my first question, General, would be this. You talked about a radio warning, “close to territory”. How is that communicated?

[MGen M. Duval]

Within the agreement, there are frequencies that we can communicate on to warn each other and to pass these warnings.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

They would be monitoring that? Okay.

When that communication goes out, would that be in Russian or in English, or would it be in French? Is it just Morse Code?

[MGen M. Duval]

I know we don't give Russian training to our pilots.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[MGen M. Duval]

No, it's transmitted in a plain language, in our language.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you.

The Russian foreign minister was here and we talked about notification in terms of flights, and it sounds as if it's fairly easy, but obviously they haven't done that. I'm guessing. What additional things would need to be done before we would get a regular notification before those flights would be coming into our airspace?

[MGen M. Duval]

Engagement and discussion. General Renuart, in his role as commander of NORAD and supported and blessed by both nations, has tried to engage with his counterparts to do just that, to increase, to take activities and actions to increase the transparency and promote transparency.

It's in the best interests of everybody, not only the two countries but anybody operating in the Arctic over the international waters. And the commercial traffic is increasing. So it's an issue to me of safety of flight, and the need is only going to increase because the traffic is increasing.

So to me it's fairly simple. If you claim to be transparent and you want to be transparent, you take the appropriate actions to be so. So we need to engage them and continue to engage them. We had some success. The commander of NORAD had some success a few years ago, and then it seemed everything was stalled.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

So if they're not providing us with any kind of notification, basically these flights are testing our ability to intercept and defend our territory.

[MGen M. Duval]

As I said in the exchange I had with Mr. Hawn before, that's certainly a possibility. I must reiterate, though, that it's in international waters, and they don't necessarily have to do so, but it would certainly be a good gesture in promotion of transparency to do so, as I said, in the interests of safety.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you.

I'm going to share my time with Monsieur Blaney.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

Welcome, major-general, and thank you for your concise answers.

The ADIZ includes territorial waters, over 12 nautical miles. Is that correct?

[MGen M. Duval]

No. The zone—

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

Pardon me. It is the continent, plus the 12 nautical miles around the continent, is that not correct?

[MGen M. Duval]

No. The continent, plus 12 nautical miles represent our territorial zones, as well as the sovereign space above.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

That is called the ADIZ, correct?

[MGen M. Duval]

No. It's simply the sovereign space and the territorial zones.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

Okay.

[MGen M. Duval]

Further, at a greater distance in international space, an identification zone has been established around North America.

[Steven Blaney, Conservative, Lévis—Bellechasse, QC]

That is called the CADIZ.

[MGen M. Duval]

It is called the CADIZ; in the U.S., it is the ADIZ, or the Air Defence Identification Zone.