National Defence Committee on May 13th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the 20th meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Monday, February 23, 2009,

we are continuing our study on Arctic sovereignty.

Before I turn the floor over to the witnesses, I believe Mr. Coderre has a question.

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I realize that we could give 48 hours' notice, but I'm wondering if members would consent to our inviting the Auditor General to testify before the committee, subject to her availability. Since the report that she tabled yesterday includes a chapter on the Department of National Defence, she could come and explain the main points to us.

Otherwise, I will table a motion, but I don't think we really need one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you, Mr. Coderre.

Mr. Hawn, do you want to add something?

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

No, that's fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Is there unanimous consent to move the motion?

(Motion agreed to)

I want to welcome all of the witnesses.

We have with us, from MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd., Mr. Iskander, the president. I want to welcome you to our committee.

We also have with us, from the University of Ottawa,

Mr. Donat Pharand, emeritus professor at the University of Ottawa. I can confirm that because I had the good fortune of being one of his students at this very university. You were one of my best professors, sir.

Welcome to our committee.

[Denis Coderre, Liberal, Bourassa, QC]

On a point of order, I'd like to know if he passed his courses.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

I will give the floor to Mr. Iskander, please. You have seven minutes.

[Mag Iskander, President, Information Systems Group, MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates Ltd.]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee.

My name is Mag Iskander and I am the President of the Information Systems Group at MDA Corporation. It is indeed a privilege to have the opportunity to describe for you how space and defence technologies developed by MDA Corporation are and can make significant contributions to the security of Canada's Arctic.

I am sure the committee members all appreciate that providing security and ensuring sovereignty in Canada's Arctic is a daunting task. The land and ocean areas are immense, and the climate is harsh, making it difficult and often impossible for human activities. Much of the area is in darkness several months of the year.

To secure such a vast and unforgiving area will require multiple complementary systems working together as an integrated system of systems. I'm proud to submit to you that we have outstanding technology and industrial capacity here in Canada to provide and operate such a system. In many respects Canadian technology and Canadian operational experience in this realm are unique and world-leading.

The information systems group at MDA is Canada's prime space company and a major player in the Canadian defence industry. In 2008 the group had sales in excess of $400 million, of which approximately 60% were exported outside Canada. We employ approximately 1,700 Canadians, literally from coast to coast, in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Halifax, Gatineau, and Suffield, Alberta.

For more than 40 years, MDA has been a key contributor to most of the current and the future Arctic surveillance and communications projects in space, in air, on land, and on and below the surface of the ocean.

It's clear that the key to Arctic security is wide-area situational awareness, and it is equally clear that space-based systems are the most efficient and only way of providing that awareness.

Operational for almost 15 years, Canada's Radarsat-1 and Radarsat-2 satellites, built and operated by MDA, have been providing daily, near real-time surveillance data for use by a wide-range of Canadian government departments. These satellites are routinely used for ice monitoring, ship detection, pollution monitoring, illegal fishing monitoring, maritime security, and continuous mapping of our dynamic coastline and maritime regions.

The follow-on to Radarsat-2 is the Radarsat Constellation Mission, known as RCM, currently in the design phase at MDA under contract to the Canadian Space Agency. When the RCM satellites are launched, this system will provide frequent, all-weather, day and night, high-resolution wide-area surveillance of the entire Canadian Arctic region, a task that can only be accomplished from space.

The key component of the system-of-systems approach is communications infrastructure. In the Canadian Arctic strategy, the polar communications and weather satellite mission that is currently proposed by the Canadian Space Agency will provide high-bandwidth communications linking together many of the different Arctic systems.

While space provides a very wide area of surveillance and situational awareness, airborne systems provide persistent surveillance and the ability to respond to specific incidents.

MDA is a major player in providing Canada with airborne surveillance capabilities necessary for these tasks. MDA is currently building Canada's next generation airborne imaging radar for the DND CP140 maritime patrol aircraft, and other future Canadian airborne surveillance projects. MDA is also providing the highly operational Noctua UAV service—unmanned aerial vehicle service—in Kandahar in support of our deployed Canadian troops. Following from this experience, MDA is developing world-leading Canadian industry solutions for DND's joint UAV surveillance and target acquisition system, known as JUSTAS, as well as the Canadian multi-mission aircraft, known as CMA.

On and below the ocean surface, MDA was the system integrator and continues to provide to date the in-service support for the navy's maritime coastal defence vessels. These vessels currently patrol Canada's coast, monitoring maritime traffic and performing mine detection to keep Canada's shipping lanes safe.

Looking to the future, MDA is actively developing comprehensive Arctic situational awareness solutions for the future of the Arctic offshore patrol ships. In order to effectively meet their missions, the AOPS need to be linked with other Arctic systems, such as Radarsat-2, RCM, JUSTAS, and CMA.

To maximize their efficiency and operational value, all of these surveillance systems must be tied together in an operational network and information fusion centre. MDA has built, and continues to maintain today and upgrade, the Canadian navy's maritime command operational information network, known as MCOIN. MCOIN is a key element of the maritime security operations centres, which provide secure maritime information fusion and situational awareness to Canada's navy and other Canadian agencies.

Through the government's efforts and the work done in Canadian industry, I believe we now know the parameters for each of these systems. We also know how to network and integrate them in an operational and efficient system of systems to meet Canada's Arctic security and sovereignty requirements.

I urge Canada to move these projects forward as quickly as possible. Furthermore, given that the fundamental objective is Canada's Arctic sovereignty, it's critical that these projects are controlled and implemented here in Canada and by Canadians. This can be achieved through a strong partnership between the Government of Canada and Canada's world leading space and defence industry. To achieve these objectives, we recommend the development and implementation of a strong Canadian defence industry strategy, and a Canadian long-term space plan.

As a proud Canadian, I am pleased to be leading MDA's Information Systems group which is a key contributor to Canada's Arctic security and sovereignty. I look forward to continuing our long productive relationship with the Canadian Government.

Thank you very much for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much, Mr. Iskander.

I will now turn the floor over to Professor Pharand, for seven minutes.

[Prof. Donat Pharand, Emeritus Professor, University of Ottawa]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to begin by thanking you for your kind introductory remarks. I taught for some 30 years at the University of Ottawa. My students have always been very generous in praising my work in the classroom.

I do not have any prepared text, but I do believe that you should at least have an outline in front of you. Do you not?

I sent you an outline over a week ago. I said that I could bring about 20 to 25 copies, but then I was told that if I sent it soon enough, which I did about ten days ago.... I sent an outline in French and in English, as well as a map in colour.

Well, I don't know what to do. Frankly, without an outline in front of you, I just don't know what to do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

The Clerk is looking for the document. Please continue your presentation. Committee members can follow along with the chart you provided.

[Prof. Donat Pharand]

I was supposed to take between five and seven minutes. Hopefully, I can take a few more minutes than that. I have seven points here, which you're supposed to have in front of you. I will simply enumerate those points. Also, I will suggest to you what I could spend a few more minutes on.

The first point is the meaning of what I call key terms. The second is about sovereignty over the islands. Well, I'll cover that in thirty seconds. The third is about Canada's rights, which we call sovereign rights, over the continental shelf in the Arctic basin. The fourth is Canada's sovereignty, and I emphasize sovereignty, over the waters of the Canadian Arctic archipelago. Number five is the legal status of what we call the Northwest Passage, which has six or seven different routes. In number six, I suggest a few measures to prevent what I call the internationalization of the Northwest Passage. Number seven is Canada's cooperation with the other Arctic states. Those are the seven points, which you're supposed to have in front of you, as well as sub-points on each of the seven.

Now, you might wonder why the key terms. Well, I can tell you that this convention, the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention, after all, took some 12 years of negotiation to arrive at this text, so that nearly every word has a very special meaning; certainly a good number of them have. It's quite important for us to get our vocabulary straight before we have any kind of discussion. I repeat this, because sometimes I've heard it said that those are guidelines. They're not guidelines. This is a legally binding treaty among the 155 parties to the convention. As I said, it was adopted in 1982 after some 14 years, and then it did not come into force until 1994. You can understand just from that how important this text is.

Now, on the meaning of key terms, I have six terms here, which I do believe are most important, even though this is not the energy committee. It's the national defence committee, and of course you're mainly concerned, I would presume, about naval navigational rights and that sort of thing. Nevertheless, I do believe you must be interested in the definition of those terms.

The first term is sovereignty. Everybody talks about sovereignty. Sometimes, I'm afraid they do so inappropriately. Sovereignty can be very simply defined. We're talking about territorial sovereignty. Political sovereignty is presumed. Territorial sovereignty can be simply defined as the totality, the whole bundle, of state jurisdiction. That is the jurisdiction that a state may exercise within its territorial boundaries. It applies horizontally, but it also applies vertically. It's usque ad caelum et ad infernos, subject of course to the rights of aircraft passage as provided in treaties and conventions.

The second term is internal waters, not to be confused with territorial waters. Internal waters are the waters landward of the baselines from which you draw your territorial waters. And those internal waters landward of the baselines include--and this is important in the case of Canada--the waters that have been enclosed by straight baselines across various indentations in the coast or along a coastal archipelago. That's the case for Canada, as I mentioned a moment ago.

Then you have territorial waters. Territorial waters are seaward of the baselines, and now it's generally accepted and provided for in the convention to be 12 miles. Of course, you have sovereignty, but subject to--and this is important for naval people--the right of innocent passage of foreign ships. But subject to that right, the coastal state has sovereignty over the territorial waters of 12 miles.

The fourth term, exclusive economic zone, is new since the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Before that, you had the high seas immediately beyond territorial waters. Now you have an exclusive economic zone of 200 miles. Those 200 nautical miles are measured from the baselines, and the coastal state does not have sovereignty at all over those. The freedom of navigation applies in principle, as on the high seas. However--and this is where the continental shelf comes in--the coastal state has sovereign rights, not sovereignty, exclusive rights over the resources of the continental shelf, both the water resources and those of the continental shelf. We will say a few words about that later. Beyond the 200 miles you have the high seas, complete freedom of navigation, of course, and all the other freedoms of the high seas.

The last key word I have put on this list, which you don't have, is continental shelf. The continental shelf is the continuation of the land territory under the sea. You have, as a coastal state, at least 200 miles, but you can have more than that. If it is established that it is the same geology, it is therefore the continuation of the land mass under the sea, and it can go quite a bit further. We will say a word about that later. I'm talking about the seaward limit.

Those are the key terms.

Number two on my outline is sovereignty over the islands. There is no question whatever about Canada's sovereignty over the Arctic Islands. On only two occasions in history has Canada's sovereignty been questioned. The first was in 1920, when Denmark espoused the point of view of its explorer, Rasmussen, who said that Denmark's Eskimos, as they were then called in Greenland and everywhere, can go across and shoot muskoxen on Ellesmere Island; it's no-man's land. Great Britain, who was looking after Canada's foreign affairs at the time, sent a note to Denmark and that was the end of that. There was never any question after that.

The second time, when there was a little bit more serious question, was in 1928, with respect to the Sverdrup Islands, west of Ellesmere. Sverdrup, a Norwegian explorer, had spent some three or four years exploring three huge islands. This one was more serious. Norway could very well have claimed those islands on the basis of its nationals' explorations and the spending of quite a bit of money. However, in 1928....

I'm sorry. I drove some 400 miles yesterday, and I don't know how I got a cold.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

You have two minutes remaining, Professor Pharand.

[Prof. Donat Pharand]

Okay.

In 1928 we arrived at a settlement of this question with Norway. In 1930 we had an exchange of notes whereby Norway recognized Canada's sovereignty over the three islands called the Sverdrup Islands, subject only to the non-recognition of the so-called “sector theory”, about which I can say a word if you want me to. So that's the end of that.

The basis of our title of course is doubled: number one, the transfer of the islands in 1870 to Canada; number two, the explorations that we, Canada, made after the transfer in 1870. So there's absolutely no doubt about Canada's sovereignty over the islands.

Now, number three, Canada's sovereign rights over the continental shelf, is more complicated. Mr. Chairman, I was very pleased to see on the agenda I received from this committee that Ron McNabb was to appear. I don't see Ron here. He's not here, is he?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

He was supposed to be here, but I've been told that he's ill today.

[Prof. Donat Pharand]

If he's going to appear before the committee, I won't say anything about this.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

He is supposed to appear. We're going to try to have him before us.

[Prof. Donat Pharand]

Okay. He's really, in my humble opinion, the authority on the question.

I will limit myself simply to saying this. We have two problems. We have a problem, of course, an old problem, of lateral delimitation—that is, with our neighbouring states. We in Canada have one problem with the United States through Alaska in the Beaufort Sea, and we tried to settle that in 1984 and 1985 by negotiations. We had four maritime boundary problems with the United States, and we tried to settle the four of them during about a year and a half of negotiations. We didn't succeed, so we went to court on the Gulf of Maine and we left the other three. They're still there, and that's one of them.

The second problem of lateral delimitation we have of course is with Denmark--that is, Greenland. We did arrive in 1974 at a continental shelf delimitation, up to Lincoln Sea, and we left a little gap in the line. The reason for the little gap is because there is a big rock right in the middle of the medium line that is called Hans Island, named after Hans Hendrik, a Greenlander who was on an expedition as part of the expedition of the American Elisha Kane, who was an American explorer. It was Kane—and you have Kane Basin—who named the island after Hans Hendrik.

In any event, that's not a serious problem, and that's why I said a moment ago that we have no sovereignty problem, properly so-called, it's so minor.

In any event, and so far as—

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Professor Pharand, could you wrap it up in the next thirty seconds. I see that members have some questions for you.

[Prof. Donat Pharand]

Okay. I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Chairman. Let me go directly to the waters of the archipelago of the Northwest Passage.

In 1985, after the passage of the Polar Sea, the American icebreaker that had refused to ask Canada's permission to go through from Lancaster Sound right to the other side.... They refused to ask permission, so after that we drew, in September 1985, as the Soviet Union had done in January, straight baselines around the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

Those straight baselines were drawn on the basis not of this convention—we were not parties—but on the basis of customary international law as interpreted and applied in 1951 by the International Court of Justice in The Hague in a dispute between Great Britain and Norway. The decision of the court—with, I might add, the concurrence of the American judge Hackworth—was that all of the waters within the baselines were internal waters, through which, I might add immediately, there is no right of innocent passage.

A modification was made in the 1982 convention, which didn't come into force, as I said, until 1994. The modification is that now there is a right of innocent passage. It remains if it existed prior to the establishment of the straight baselines.

I can go into more detail.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Could you wrap it up, sir?

[Prof. Donat Pharand]

Yes.

Concerning the legal status of the Northwest Passage, of course the main route of the Northwest Passage is the one at the entrance of Lancaster Sound, the McClure Strait, and the Amundsen Gulf. This will definitely become, in a matter of a few years, according to the scientists—in particular

Mr. Fortier, who is an eminent authority on the subject, —

the main route, and not the others.

I was in an icebreaker for 28 days, the Sir John Franklin, and this is the route we followed. It is, shall we say, not as dangerous a route insofar as the presence of ice is concerned, but a much longer route. It is a particularly slow route because we do not have up-to-date hydrography; we do not know precisely everywhere where the bottom is.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much, Professor Pharand.

I'm sure the members will have a lot of questions on this; it is a subject that is very interesting for every member of the committee.

I will start with Mr. Wilfert. You have seven minutes.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Mr. Chairman, I will share my time with Mr. Bagnell.

Professor Pharand, I enjoyed your presentation. I hope we can have you back so that you can complete it. I certainly found it most interesting.

Our major concerns have to do with climate change, economics, and defending the Arctic. Some have suggested that we haven't been as quick off the mark as other circumpolar nations in responding to the needs of the Arctic, in terms of climate change, adaptation, defence, etc. How would you respond to those concerns? How do you feel that we can capitalize on the economic benefits of the north?

Secondly, can you indicate to us, on your point with regard to the Northwest Passage.... There was some concern raised before as to whether we actually control the waters in the middle—yes, along the side of the islands, but not necessarily the passage itself.