National Defence Committee on April 29th, 2009

[Alan H. Kessel]

That's something the Canadian military may be able to tell you.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

But you know of no legal intrusions that would cause any issues for our position.

[Alan H. Kessel]

I not aware of any flights.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much, Mr. Harris.

I will give the floor to Monsieur Blaney. I know you will share your time with Mr. Boughen.

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

I may be too much of an egoist to share my time.

Mr. Bernier, thank you.

Mr. Chair, “we feel finally that we have a federal government after many, many years that actually has some interest in the North.” The premier of Yukon, Mr. Fentie, said that at the beginning of 2009. I am glad that Mr. Kessel said in his presentation that we have allocated $40 million over 4 years to delineate Canada's Arctic seabed.

I would like to go back to the slide that shows the financial envelope for the continental shelf. We will have five new patrol vessels and one deep-water port, which seem to be very important measures.

I would like to know what you thought about the first presentations. Mr. McFadden, Colonel Leblanc was in charge of the north for five years. He recommended increasing our surveillance and response capabilities, among other things. I want to know your thoughts on that. It seems as if we are playing catch-up. I want to understand the impact of our claims, particularly on internal waters.

Mr. McFadden, do you want to get the ball rolling by talking about the recommendation to increase our surveillance and response capabilities?

[VAdm D. McFadden]

We are substantially increasing our surveillance capability. I've talked about some of the measures of doing that from a space-based process. Situational awareness is the foundation of understanding what's going on in the region. We are increasing the rate of activity and the complexity of the operations we're doing.

One of the comments I heard from the colonel was that we're not operating in the high north in bad weather in the winter. We just finished an exercise at the end of March in the high Arctic--it's one of three that we run on an annual basis--called Operation Nunalivut. We're not only increasing our capacity to survey through space-based systems and integrating underwater sensors with that; we're increasing the presence in the north.

One of the government announcements was on the intention to increase the size of the Canadian Ranger program fairly substantially. It had fewer than 4,000 people, and the intent is to increase it to 5,000. We have five Ranger patrol groups and only one of them is actually in the Arctic itself--1 Canadian Rangers Patrol Group. We have over 1,600 rangers in that program now. The intent is to increase it by just over 450 people. We have 56 communities in which rangers are based. We're opening five new locations. The rate of that increase is growing very rapidly. In the last six months, 122 rangers signed on, and another 35 will complete training in June.

I think you should understand that the Ranger capability for us, from a sovereignty perspective, is a force multiplier. The numbers are substantial, but people don't quite understand that these are community leaders who also serve.

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

Thank you, Mr. McFadden.

I also have a question for Mr. Kessel, but first, I want to quote an excerpt from the presentation made by Ms. Lalonde, the law professor:

The Canadian Armed Forces must therefore have the capability to interdict a foreign ship navigating through the Northwest Passage without Canadian permission. [...] This coercive interdiction capability is necessary if Canada is to assert effective control over its internal waters in the Arctic.

I would like to hear your opinion on that.

[Alan H. Kessel]

Thank you, Mr. Blaney.

All the waters inside the Canadian base lines fall under the authority of Canada, and as such, any security, policing, or other activity would be entirely consistent with the exercising of our sovereignty.

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

I imagine that the coast guard is also involved. What is the difference between the red line and the white line?

[Alan H. Kessel]

The red line is the extension of our economic zone to 200 nautical miles, which is permitted under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The white line is actually a guesstimate--an attempt to see where the extension of our continental shelf would lead to. The area between the red and the white will amount to the size of the three prairie provinces once we finish doing the mapping. We are doing that mapping now. We are required to put in a submission by 2013 to simply confirm that our mapping is correct.

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

Is this the type of discussion you're going to have in Ilulissat, Greenland?

[Alan H. Kessel]

What we discussed in Ilulissat was that all the countries around the Arctic circle--Canada, the U.S., Russia, Norway, and Denmark--would conduct their activities within an international legal framework and that we would cooperate with each other to ensure that we deal with disputes within that process.

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

There is another conference, the one on the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Are you taking any steps regarding the Arctic under that convention?

[Alan H. Kessel]

I'm not sure I understood the question. The conference on the United Nations Law of the Sea has developed the convention, and there are obviously states that get together now and again to review specific aspects of it.

But I'm not quite sure what the question was.

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

The question was whether you had any involvement regarding this convention in regard to the Arctic.

[Alan H. Kessel]

That's a very interesting question that people have raised, and it usually comes from NGOs that would prefer there were some kind of international regime in our territory, rather than allowing Canada or the U.S. or Russia or Norway or Denmark to basically apply their domestic law.

For us, if you take a look at your map, that's Canada. We apply our environmental laws. We apply our pollution laws. We apply our security law within Canada. So we have stated on many occasions that we, as the Government of Canada, do not see a need for an international regime that looks like the Antarctic Treaty in the Arctic.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank all our witnesses for their participation in our work today. We really appreciate it.

We will now move on.

You have before you an email that we received about a delegation of parliamentarians from Pakistan who would like to meet with us for an hour or so on Tuesday, May 12 to discuss the budgetary process and to assist a committee in their country. What do the committee members think?

Mr. Wilfert.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I'd certainly be prepared to meet with them, though we might suggest looking at maybe a more open-ended agenda so that we could have a discussion with them and probably bring in some other aspects. I know one of the gentlemen, and I'm sure he'd be more than happy to also talk about things such as Afghanistan. I wouldn't want to mislead them by suggesting we're going to talk just about the finance aspect.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I would agree with that. I really have no interest in their coming to talk about finances and budget. We have an interest in their coming to talk about Pakistan, Afghanistan issues. I don't know how much warning we have to give them that this is where we intend to go--and they may decide not to come.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Just in the flow of conversation, right?

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Right, or we can set a trap and just let them fall into it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Mr. Bachand.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

The letter before us clearly indicates that they are extremely interested in meeting with the Standing Committee on National Defence. I think that we should absolutely meet with them.

Just yesterday, Pakistan reacted very strongly to a Taliban takeover of one of its districts. As you know, they tried to give the Taliban a little more religious and administrative freedom, and the Taliban seized that opportunity to increase their control. The Pakistani army intervened today.

It is important to meet with them to discuss what is happening in their Parliament and how they will react in the future. I am very open to meeting with them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Mr. Blaney.