National Defence Committee on March 2nd, 2009

[VAdm D. McFadden]

Certainly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

The last spot is for the government.

You have five minutes, LaVar.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I'll share whatever time I have with Ms. Gallant.

First of all, Admiral, I'm not sure if I heard a question regarding the reservists. Do you have a number? Can you tell us roughly how many reservists will be used in the Olympic security system?

[VAdm D. McFadden]

The estimate at the moment, sir, is that approximately 20% of the force--certainly on the land environment--would likely be reservists. It's a ballpark number, but that's pretty close.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

I have another question. What's the timing to have the military personnel deployed to the various locations for the Olympics?

[VAdm D. McFadden]

The deployment phase will not occur until the beginning of January, and the deployment will likely last until the Olympics are completed. There will be a reduction in the deployment between the Olympics and the Paralympics. That's because the number of venues goes down dramatically between those two events. We would start a redeployment phase in between the two, but we will maintain appropriate resources in place for the Paralympics. By March or April, all the redeployment will have occurred.

The bit we will then address essentially is the question of.... There will be a bed-down footprint that goes into place. We will dismantle the bed-down footprint, and I expect that will occur through the spring. By the summer, I would expect that all the costs should be predominantly completed.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you.

I have two questions. One, for the people who are not reservists, would you give us a breakdown by percentage of which soldiers are coming from which bases around Canada in support of the Olympics?

And secondly, obviously threat assessments change when the information and the ground game changes. I know that a lot of information is probably sensitive, if not classified. Would you provide us with a characterization of the threat assessments and what you're envisioning as your most serious concerns?

[VAdm D. McFadden]

The first question with respect to what bases the forces come from to establish that capability I can only answer in a general sense. Even if I were I to give you information afterwards, that identifies the level of capability. As soon as we put numbers to that, it moves it into the classified sphere.

This will require a whole-of-Canada effort, to be able to assign forces into the region, and also to put on notice those forces that won't deploy but who will be trained and identified, ready to move, should that requirement come into play. It would be both a threat and any developing situation that will have us move reserve forces.

I need to explain the use of that word. I don't mean reservists in comparison to full-time regular forces; I mean forces that we hold in reserve to be able to move if required. There are a substantial number of forces that we earmark to be on notice, trained, ready to do specific mission sets, who are called “a reserve”. A reserve will already be deployed into the region; there will be other reserves held outside the region.

What was your second question?

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

With respect to threat assessments, what are you anticipating may arise during the Olympics?

[VAdm D. McFadden]

There are both security concerns and safety concerns. By safety concerns, I mean that it's Vancouver and it's winter. I grew up on the north shore, and the Sea-to-Sky Highway seems to close down on a fairly frequent basis.

From a security perspective, I suppose the worst thing we could imagine would be the same types of things that we've just seen in Mumbai. There is, to my knowledge, no indication of a specific threat vector that would be to that extent, but we will ensure that what we have is a scalable response capability in place to support law enforcement.

But I suppose the level of concern from security is really with the movement of very substantial numbers of people. It's the activity that brings with it the level of concern. There will be hundreds of thousands of visitors, the vast majority of whom will be there to enjoy the games. I presume there will be some who will also have other interests.

The harm that could be done as a result of a wilful attempt to do harm is the reason why the Canadian Forces are being asked to bring our skill sets to bear in support of police forces. The wilful harm vector is the greatest concern we have. It also potentially could be the least likely to occur, but the consequences are the most catastrophic, which is always the difficulty.

It's winter on the west coast, so I expect stuff will happen. A capacity to be able to absorb that shock will have as little effect upon the good functioning of the games as there can possibly be.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Great. Thank you very much.

I'd like to thank the committee for being so prompt, because it allowed us to get through the full speaking order.

I'd like to thank you gentlemen as well for your responses. It's a huge task you have on your hands, but it sounds to me like you're well on your way to getting it done properly.

I'd just like to dismiss you now. We want to deal with a notice of motion that Mr. Wilfert has put forward. But before I do that, are there any comments you'd like to make to wrap up? No? Thank you very much, but you might want to stay there and listen to this motion, because it might affect you anyway.

Mr. Wilfert, we have a notice of motion, so I'd like to deal with that. It was presented in the right timeframe in both official languages. Sir, I'll let you read it and move it, and then we'll have discussion.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The motion is:

That, in light of the recent incident of a Russian military aircraft approaching Canada's Airspace, the Standing Committee on National Defence receive a briefing from Department of National Defence officials on: the current resources available to meet such threats, the role of NORAD, military communications between the Canadian and Russian Governments, and the detailed defence strategy to defend against similar future threats.

Mr. Chairman, this has come about not only because of the comments of the Minister of Defence, but in light of some comments made by the American general for NORAD, who seemed to be at odds with those comments. I thought it might be helpful, and given the fact that we are looking at an Arctic strategy, this might be able to dovetail into that as well. It could be very helpful.

I think Mr. Bachand has what I would consider a friendly amendment.

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

I'm always friendly.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

He's always friendly to me.

It deals with the Russian ambassador and military attaché.

I put this out for a briefing for members. I think it would be helpful as we move towards our eventual discussions on the Arctic.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

I would like you to move your motion and then we'll--

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I so move, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

We'll now open it up for debate.

Mr. Bachand, and then Mr. Julian.

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

I would be willing to support the motion, on two conditions. I find that our work on post-traumatic stress syndrome is moving forward well. In addition, we have just had a discussion on the Olympic Games. Soon, we will broach the issue of Arctic sovereignty. So here is my first condition—that any testimony we hear on possible intrusion by a Russian airplane into Canadian territory also be used in our study on our Arctic strategy.

In any case, I had said I wished to contribute when it came to establishing the topics we would examine. There is no doubt in my mind that airspace is a significant aspect of Arctic sovereignty.

The second condition would be that the resolution comprise a friendly amendment inviting the Russian embassy to come before us and explain their point of view. Many have said that an intrusion of this kind was useful to the government. Has it been exaggerated? Did the Russians really breach Canadian airspace? Did they cross the line? How many times have such intrusions occurred? NORAD has been tested a number of times when Russian bombers entered our airspace. As far as I know, we haven't seen intrusions of that kind for quite some time now. I would like us to invite the Russian ambassador or military attaché to give us their version. At the same time, we might hear the views of National Defence and have a briefing from them.

If those two conditions could be included in the motion, we would support the motion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

So you're offering an amendment to the motion that the Russian ambassador or a military attaché also appear?

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

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

We've heard the amendment. Any discussion on that?

I have Mr. Julian and then Ms. Gallant....

Go ahead, Ms. Gallant.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

I'm wondering whether the amendment that Claude is suggesting is maybe a motion unto itself. Regardless of whether or not we obtain a briefing, we may want to invite the ambassador to Canada from Russia separately.

I wouldn't want to see these tied together. They both seem like good ideas.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Well, if we do it as an amendment, we can deal with it now, but if we do it as a motion, then I'll have to have unanimous consent from the committee for the 48 hours. I guess I'm at the will of the committee.

Let's just leave that for a second.

Mr. Julian.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I support the amendment and I support the motion. Something smells fishy here, and it's not Arctic char. There is a discrepancy between the Prime Minister's initial comments around this and then those of the Minister of National Defence. The Prime Minister was talking initially about Russian intrusions into our airspace. The minister was then sort of backtracking, saying that this was a flight along Canadian airspace. You have indications that there have been regularly, since 2007, these kinds of contacts.

My sense is that there are a lot of unanswered questions around why the Prime Minister came out and why the Minister of National Defence came out...and what is actually happening up in the Arctic. To what degree is there communication between the Russian military and our military about these flights, which are, depending on how you define them, surveillance flights or intrusive flights?

I think we need to get to the bottom of this. I would hope that the committee would be able to speak both to the Russian ambassador or military attaché and also to our Department of National Defence officials to find out exactly what did happen. It's not clear whether or not there was notification.