Evidence of meeting #17 for National Defence in the 40th Parliament, 3rd session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nato.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
I guess I would suggest that we need an army, navy, and an air force.
Liberal
Bryon Wilfert Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
But of what capabilities, what role, in order to respond to these types of issues? You don't need an army, navy, and air force, necessarily to respond. If we believe that some of these are the critical issues.... We could have emphasis in certain areas, in other words.
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
We don't need the Canadian Forces to deal with global warming. We don't need the Canadian Forces to deal with most of the threats in the Arctic—some, yes. We will need the Canadian Forces to deal with the threat from China, if it comes to that.
What we need are well-equipped, well-trained, mobile forces that can play a part with our friends in meeting the various threats as they arise--threats to us, where realistically we must rely on the United States for the heavy lifting if there is a direct threat to our territory, because any threat to us is almost by definition a threat to the Americans. The Americans aren't going to seize our territory by force. They may try to exercise influence over us, but I would argue that we achieve the best kind of defence against that by having the capability of actively looking after our own territory.
We count on the Americans for support in a crisis, and that is fine, but we must be prepared to contribute to other parts of the world--UN operations or coalition operations--and that requires a certain kind of capacity.
Again, our first priority should be home defence; the second priority should be North American and hemispheric defence.
Liberal
Bryon Wilfert Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
Recognizing, obviously, those limited capabilities, but being able to maximize what we do have.
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
Yes.
Liberal
Bryon Wilfert Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
In response to Mr. Martin, you made a comment that reminds me of your book Who killed Canadian History?, about maybe push-back with regard to Canadians of Somali descent. We're all equally guilty around here of killing Canadian history, it seems. We pander—and I think the word is “pander”—to those who come from abroad to this country. We don't say leave your baggage at home. We're now apologizing for events that occurred 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 300 years ago.
How do we say what is in our national interest when many people who come here say that's not in our interest, it's in somebody else's interest? How do we establish that, in order to have the military forces being able to execute what we see as our national interest?
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
Your colleague Mr. Dosanjh has spoken very well and effectively on that subject in the last couple of weeks. I thought he made points that every Canadian should ponder and consider very closely.
The test for us must be Canada's national interest. It's not the national interest of the old country where their people came from. That can't work. It has to be our national interest, as Canadians. If you choose to come here, you buy into this country. You must do that. A government that permits people to assume that this country will always follow the old country's efforts to achieve whatever goals it's trying to--and all our governments have for the last 50-plus years--is deluding itself.
We are Canadians. Our national interests are the only tests that matter for our governments.
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
Buy several copies. Give them to all your friends.
Liberal
Bryon Wilfert Liberal Richmond Hill, ON
You're in the second edition, so yes, I think we could do that.
Thank you.
Conservative
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Professor, I understand you are absolutely a wealth of knowledge here. One of the things you talked about, of course, is our national interest and in fact when we should be going into missions. In particular, you talked about the executive and Parliament but also about how important it is to convince the Canadian people on a mission. You did also talk about our fixation, if I might put it that way, with peacekeeping. I know that there are situations and that Afghanistan is in our national interest, but in that case we are actually working on peacemaking. So my first question to you is what could we do to convince Canadians that this is in our national interest?
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
I was very impressed when the present Prime Minister came into power in early 2006 and went to Afghanistan, as really his first trip abroad, and spoke very strongly about why Canada was there, why it was in our national interest to be there. That was a speech by a Canadian political leader that I had been waiting for for a long time.
Unfortunately, the issue began to be rather divisive in Canada as the war went on, and there was a substantial lack of that kind of speech from the Prime Minister and from government ministers as the war went on. Public support went down. There was a lack of explanation from our politicians as to why we were there.
I have always believed that if the Prime Minister had made that 2006 speech again, in 2007 and 2008 and 2009 and 2010, then the public support would have held up for that commitment in Afghanistan.
It requires leadership. We need our politicians to tell the truth to the Canadian people about why we do the things we do. Sometimes truth is hard. Sometimes it's probably enough simply to say that we must do our share of the dirty jobs, but you need to explain to Canadians. I think there's a well of idealism in the Canadian people. They want to believe that we do good in the world, but sometimes doing good is difficult and it requires real explanations from our political leaders.
I think it's absolutely critical, and I can understand the minority government situation and all the difficulties involved, but it's absolutely critical that we have leaders who will speak the truth to the people. That's a requirement of the job, it seems to me.
Conservative
LaVar Payne Conservative Medicine Hat, AB
Thank you for that, Professor.
The other thing you talked a little bit about was the Congo, and there are some suggestions that potentially Canada should go to the Congo. Certainly you indicated the president suggested that the UN get out of the Congo. The other thing you touched on was infrastructure. Could you expound upon the difficulties, particularly around infrastructure, if Canada were to send troops to the Congo?
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
We're a western nation. We have forces that require a long logistical chain in order to operate. We are road-bound to some basic extent. The Congo, the region of the Congo where we would have deployed, the eastern Congo, is an area where it can take eight hours to travel 25 kilometres, where there is no civil infrastructure on which we can piggyback. There was none in Afghanistan, for example, but the Americans built a couple of huge operating bases we were able to piggyback on. There is none of that in the Congo. So we would go in crippled right from the start because of our inability to guarantee our supplies, our inability to get people in or get people out in a hurry. That's a serious problem that I think should shape any decision to deploy in an area like that, anywhere in the world.
We need the capacity to be able to operate the way our forces operate. They're adaptable. They're flexible. They can do many things. But they do need secure supply lines. They do need the ability to be reinforced and to be extricated should the need arise.
Conservative
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm going to ask questions based on the national interest.
We've been focused lately on the Middle East. Of course there's the looming threat in Iran and asymmetric warfare to a great extent, but relatively recently we've observed some expansionist tendencies on the part of Russia. For example, the homes of Georgians in South Ossetia were shelled for a number of days, and Georgia did retaliate. It seems that the Olympics were used as a distraction. The international observers were away at the Olympics. At the end of the day, Russia has 20% more of the South Ossetian territory under its control and 30,000 Georgians from that region were exiled.
Do you see whether there is an expansionist tendency arising from that corner? Do we still need to prepare for more conventional deployments, as we had previously? In terms of national interest, would it be of national interest to play a role in the security of patrolling buffer zones, for example, in those former eastern European countries, especially those that are prospective NATO countries and have been contributing to the NATO mission in Afghanistan?
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
Good hard questions, and no easy answers.
When the Russians celebrated the 60th anniversary of the end of the war, they had, for the first time ever to my knowledge, British, American, French, and other troops parading on Red Square. There is some hope that Russia may turn in what we would think of as positive directions. There is some hope that Russia will not play its old power games.
It seems to me essential that we do what we can to encourage those tendencies. The idea that we would send NATO troops, or Canadian troops as part of NATO, to patrol borders of Russia and its former component states would be a red flag, to make a bad pun, to wave in front of the Russians. They would naturally see that as outrageous. Obviously we don't want them to fight a war in Georgia. We don't want them to swallow the South Ossetians. Georgia should be able to have independence, if that is the choice of its people. It probably would help a bit if the Americans didn't meddle quite as much as they have in Georgia, but it's a dicey situation.
The Russians were a superpower. They believe, in many respects, that they still are a superpower. They above all do not want to be humiliated, and it seems to me that we must be careful not to do that. That means, in my view, that we should be very cautious about absorbing some of the key areas that concern the Russians into NATO—Ukraine, for example. On many levels it makes sense for Ukraine to be a part of NATO, except for the fact that it is a large and crucial part of the former Soviet empire, and that complicates matters.
The ideal, I suppose, and we may get to this at some point, is that you have Russia as a member of NATO. You have, in effect, a European North Atlantic alliance that encompasses the entire continent. That would resolve that problem, and that is not such a fanciful dream to contemplate. I think that should be the goal to which we strive. That would resolve most of the conflicts in that area of the world, if we could achieve that.
As to the kinds of capabilities, should we prepare for more conventional deployments? In my view, yes. I don't for a minute believe that in the next 20 years we will not see conflicts of a kind that require a Canadian expeditionary force to be deployed abroad. I think that's entirely possible. I don't know where, but I think it's entirely possible that will arise.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Maxime Bernier
Thank you very much.
We'll very quickly have a third round.
Mr. Dosanjh, you have two minutes.
Liberal
Ujjal Dosanjh Liberal Vancouver South, BC
I just have a couple of questions.
On the issue of the national interest, if Canadians believe that we're doing good, in terms of their understanding of what good means, then Canadians will support these kinds of excursions. There might be a situation when we have a national interest in pursuing a particular matter abroad, yet Canadians don't believe that we would be doing the kind of good that they agree we should be doing. That would be a problem.
My sense is that in Afghanistan we have not been able to convey a national interest. They believe that we're trying to do good, but that has not been brought together with the idea of the national interest.
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
I think that's right.
I mentioned the Prime Minister's speech in March 2006, I think it was, in Afghanistan, which explicitly put our participation in national interest terms. And I believe, as I said before, that had that message been repeated, support for the war would have been greater than it has since become. We're facing the difficulty of what happens when public support declines while Canadians are fighting abroad. We're in Afghanistan. There's great support for the troops, in ways I would not have thought possible 20 years ago, but there is decreasing support for the mission. And that is what's driving us to pull out.
Liberal
Ujjal Dosanjh Liberal Vancouver South, BC
I have one very short question.
We see that across the border in the U.S. there is more of a consensus on foreign policy. They rarely argue over major foreign policy questions in terms of the Republicans and.... At least, I see that there is more consensus.
Liberal
Ujjal Dosanjh Liberal Vancouver South, BC
In Canada, do you think that kind of consensus would be healthy or unhealthy?
Senior Research Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, As an Individual
I'm not convinced that there's consensus in the United States. Do you think the Iraq war has consensus? Does the Afghan war have consensus? Surely not. I wish we had consensus. I think it is a great and good thing when domestic politics ends at the waterline and that when you go abroad, you have a consensus on what the state should be doing. It exists, perhaps, more so in the U.S. than it does here. But then, we have less influence. We have less power.