National Defence Committee on Feb. 28th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

We're going to call this meeting to order. We're running a couple of minutes behind schedule. We're going to continue with our study on readiness, and joining us today we have a bunch of academics.

First, from the University of Calgary we have David Bercuson, director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies.

From Dalhousie University we're joined by Vice-Admiral Gary Garnett, who's retired and is a research fellow at the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies.

From the Université du Québec à Montréal is Stéphane Roussel, who is a professor and Canadian research chair in Canadian foreign and defence policy, and he is joined by his analyst, Professor Battiss.

Welcome, all of you.

We'll open it up to your brief comments to kick off the discussion.

Mr. Bercuson, please start us off.

[Professor David Bercuson, Director, Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary]

Thank you very much. I don't have a lot to say, which will probably make things a lot easier for everybody else this morning.

I was not aware that you were specifically discussing the question of readiness. I have to say with all due respect that I'm not quite sure what that means. I thought I would come here and say a few things about capabilities and I'm sure this easily slides over into readiness.

I've been asking myself for quite some time now as to why we have so much difficulty making defence policy in Canada, or making it stick. I think there are essentially three reasons.

The first is that direct threats to Canada are obviously abstract threats. We don't live in as difficult a neighbourhood of the world as Australia and other countries do, for example. We think of ourselves as taking part in operations with allies for reasons of national interest, whether that be full-scale wars or small wars, as we had in Afghanistan, but those are, again, abstract because they don't directly impact citizens. Canadians don't really see the threats unless they are major wars. But in the wars such as we are just about to conclude in Afghanistan, it's more difficult for Canadians to understand what's at issue.

The second reason is that the political decision-making calendar—and I've worded that very carefully—does not coincide with long-term strategic developments. We have our own political decision-making calendar in this country and it's largely nailed down by election cycles. It doesn't really matter what party is in office, because the considerations are the same. Long-term strategic developments, whether they're surprising ones like the Arab awakening or Arab Spring, ones that catch us off-guard, or ones that we can see evolving long term, such as the growth of naval power in China, don't wait for the Canadian political cycle. They just go on.

The third reason is that it takes a long time in this modern age to build military capability. I'm not only talking about kit, or equipment. Obviously it takes a long time to build something like the maritime shipboard helicopter or a modern strategic fighter jet, but it also takes a long time to train infantry, just to give you one example. Again, the political decision-making cycle is not particularly a long-term cycle. It's an annual cycle, it's a budgetary cycle, and it has to respond to the daily realities of what's going on with the Canadian economy and with the global economy. What we've seen since 2008 has had a very significant impact on defence planning in Canada, but that isn't the first time it's happened. It's happened on and on since the end of the Second World War.

The best current example I can give of that is Canada's defence strategy of 2008, which I reviewed again the other day before my appearance here. The more time that elapses since the announcement of that policy in 2008, the more out of date it becomes. I strongly suspect that the next federal budget—the one we will hear either next month in March, or maybe early April, we're not really sure—will push its force and funding projections further down the road, shift it to the right some people say, in response to the real pressures that exist on the Canadian budget.

Not for the first time, the fiscal situation will have a significant impact on defence planning in Canada, but again, the world's strategic evolution isn't waiting for Canada, the United States, or NATO, for that matter, to resolve its budget problems. The Chinese are not waiting for us to resolve our issues in their push to create hegemony over the South China Sea and the approaches to the South China Sea.

It's not only in strategic problems that we see this. I wanted to pick two examples, one domestic and one international. It's pretty clear, it seems to me, that we have a growing demand for search and rescue capability in this country, and we've had it for a long time. I was trying to remember the first time that the replacement for the fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft was raised, but it was back early in the 2000s, maybe 2001, and maybe 2002. Now 10 years later, we have a really serious effort, I'm told, to actually carry out a competition to find and acquire a new fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft.

I'm sure you're all aware of the fact that not too long ago, a young boy died in Newfoundland and Labrador as a result of the lack of availability of a helicopter. I don't know what the Department of National Defence and the minister would actually say about this, but I do know that in the military we're told that this is a cost-benefit factor. We can't have search and rescue equipment all over the Arctic. I understand that—it would be a phenomenal waste of resources—but do we have enough and why haven't we solved that problem before? Well, again, it's because the question has been put off for various reasons, including budgetary ones.

I also think that almost everyone who sees the world situation today understands that we absolutely must build up our blue-water naval capabilities. The next generation of Canadians ought to be as much or more concerned about the navy. I'm not saying this because Gary's sitting on my right and is going to give me an elbow, but that's where the challenges are going to be—not just in the South China Sea but in many places around the world where the global commons is going to be less well guarded by our neighbours to the south.

The U.S. Navy is going to experience considerable budget cuts. They're talking about laying up numbers of cruisers and destroyers. There was a long list enunciated recently. Apparently, right now they're not going to cut into their carriers, but just about everything else is going to be cut back significantly.

This is not a value judgment on my part, but I like to think that the United States Navy, today, plays the same role in the world as the Royal Navy played in the 19th century, and that all of us who are trading nations and who believe in the freedom of navigation depend very heavily on the Americans for guaranteeing that. When the Americans begin to cut back, what role will our navy play, if any?

Everyone talks about smart defence, the allies fitting together, and so on. Our navy has been interoperable with the U.S. Navy since the mid-1990s. But at a strategic level, what decisions need to be made as to what role our navy ought to play in the future to help the Americans, the Australians, Great Britain, and others carry on the work the U.S. Navy has basically been doing by itself for the last generation or two?

Finally, I want to say I think we ought to study our Afghanistan experiences very closely, because I think they might prompt us to revise our NATO-centric defence planning. I don't see us ever leaving NATO or threatening to leave NATO, but there's a significant difference between the work we do with the so-called Five Eyes—the British, the Americans, the Australians, the New Zealanders, and ourselves—and the work we do with NATO in all of NATO's different characteristics. That includes the NATO countries that do nothing, the NATO countries that do a lot, and the NATO countries that make political commitments but are not prepared, either because they can't or because they won't make military commitments. I think we have to look at that very carefully rather than continuing to discuss NATO in sacred terms.

That's really all I wanted to say for introductory remarks. Obviously, I'll be happy to answer questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Admiral Garnett, you have the floor.

[Vice-Admiral, Retired) Gary Garnett (Research Fellow, Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University]

Mr. Chairman and members of the Standing Committee on National Defence, I'm pleased to have the opportunity to appear before you today, although I must say it's a bit of a shock coming from sunny and mild Victoria, British Columbia.

As a vice-admiral my last three appointments have all had something to do with readiness in a time of resource constraint, so I do have some experience in the field of readiness. I was the admiral of the east coast navy, then the commander of the navy, and finally the vice-chief of the defence staff, where my primary occupation was resource management and squeezing every last penny to obtain the biggest bang for the buck.

Since retirement I've been involved in the private sector and with several institutions. I appear before you today as a research fellow with the Centre of Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie University. Any views or opinions I express are mine alone and do not necessarily represent those of the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies.

Readiness is a complicated and somewhat confusing topic. It varies considerably for each of the services, however, the principles are similar—how ready do you wish to have your capability to take on any given task? That simply means how quickly Canada can meaningfully react with military forces to meet an emerging situation or threat.

Studies need to be done and updated to keep current the threat analysis, security environment, and the likelihood of force deployments to deal with these situations. Some contingencies require unit response, and some require a larger grouping with supporting forces. Some units are relatively self-contained, and others require support from a variety of sources for their deployment. Some have a degree of freedom in their operations—mostly maritime—while most others require bases, or sea or air support, to deploy and be maintained.

Readiness includes people and their level of training, as well as the state of their equipment and leadership. It includes the platforms—weapons, vehicles, and equipment—that they deploy with, and the availability of support, including lift capability. It also includes what their level of notice to move is, which is of course affected by their unit deployability. For example, a ship can up and sail, while other capabilities require a platform, or more than one, to move them. So, is that integral support, or do they have to be supplied by contract? Others require arrangements for landing and support en route to a mission area.

You normally want to keep the minimum number of forces at the higher states of readiness, as it costs more in terms of resources and limits the freedom of the unit or group personnel. Thus, in your force structure you need to have multiples of the same capability—many similar small units, multiples of two, three, or even more, large groupings of capabilities that can respond to larger and more likely warfare-like tasks.

An example of these large groupings would be two naval task groups. One is ready to deploy within a given timeframe, and the other could be brought to that agreed readiness state in time to take the place of the first, if necessary to sustain the operation. This is an example of the first task group being at high readiness, and the second likely at normal readiness. However, if significant elements of the second task group were in long maintenance, then that would be an example of extended readiness.

Government needs to understand the overall readiness state of the forces, and be comfortable with the fact that they can only demand action in predetermined timeframes based on the agreed readiness posture. The military, on the other hand, must keep the government apprised of the range of options for both domestic and international operations in response to potential government interests and needs.

The timing of some events, like Y2K or the 2010 Olympics, are known, and the necessary force structure to support these events can be task-tailored and trained in advance. But the vast majority of events are not known in advance, and must be handled by the force structure within the overall readiness posture.

There was a belief that being trained to the highest levels would provide the capability to respond equally well to lower level tasks. I think this sort of thinking has somewhat changed, as even the lower level of domestic response tasks have become more challenging, as has the overall range of potential force requirements, ranging from humanitarian support to all-out war and counter-insurgency.

Training has several aspects that start at the individual and the team level, progress to the unit level, and then progress to larger groupings, such as a task group or task force, brigade, or squadron. There is the joint level beyond the services, whereby units of the various services are brought together to train and operate, thus providing an overall resulting capability that is often greater than the sum of the individual participants and that provides the government with a highly visible national capability.

Canada often deploys and joins a coalition for combined operations, thus adding an additional training requirement beyond that of the national joint level.

Of course, if you're already embarked on a mission that is enduring, then mission-specific training is also required, so that as the mission progresses in time, lessons are learned from the operations and fed back into the training cycle. Thus, in this case, the first deployment to the mission would have to be conducted within the readiness state of the responding force structure, and then after that the readiness cycle would be aligned with the rotation of forces on that mission, à la Afghanistan.

As I said before, readiness is costly and needs to be carefully funded so as not to jeopardize the members of the forces or limit the government's desired ability to respond to contingencies in an acceptable timeframe. This needs to be carefully studied and briefed to government.

There will always be trade-offs, particularly when resources become constrained. There is a degree of judgment required. Putting too much of your limited resources into readiness is not an answer either, as one of the other pillars—personnel, equipment, or infrastructure—will suffer and become distorted.

All of the above being stated, there is, however, a need to have a defined set and scope of capabilities at sufficient readiness to deploy. Otherwise, any government's options would be severely constrained in responding in a meaningful way when reacting to domestic situations, or internationally.

Mr. Chairman, that's the limit of my opening remarks. I'm sure we'll explore some of these concepts and issues during the question and answer period.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Admiral.

Professor Roussel.

[Professor Stéphane Roussel, Professor, Canada Research Chair in Canadian Foreign and Defence Policy, Université du Québec à Montréal]

Thank you very much.

I will make my presentation in French, which is a bit dangerous because David Bercuson was talking about “readiness”, and I don't even know how to say “readiness” in French, but I'll try.

First, I would like to thank you for inviting us here this morning. This is like a homecoming for me because I started my university career as a parliamentary intern with the National Defence committee in 1990, which obviously dates me.

My colleague Samir Battiss and I will be discussing two themes. Just so you know when asking your questions, Mr. Battiss is an expert on all matters pertaining to relations with NATO allies, interoperability and overseas missions. I mainly specialize in public opinion issues and U.S. relations and, in the past six years, have been very much involved in Arctic issues. So we will also be discussing the Arctic a little.

This morning, in the few moments we have, we would like to draw your attention to the concept of global commons, or biens communs, in French. It is a concept increasingly used in documentation. You will find it at NATO and in the white papers of other states and governments. In many cases, it is the new buzzword.

We want to talk about it for two reasons. First, it means good opportunities for Canada and the Canadian Forces. At the same time, however, it may also be a very serious problem for Canada. We will be addressing those two aspects.

First, what is meant by “global commons”? These are the areas between states that must be controlled to ensure some stability in the international system. They are air spaces, outer space, cyberspace and marine space. So these are four areas that should be given special attention. For example, the Canadian Navy's anti-piracy missions are an example of this type of mission.

It is crucially important for Canada that shipping routes, particularly those in the Pacific, are secured so that trade can continue freely.

Canada has extraordinary expertise in satellites and telecommunications, and that is also a vital area for Canadians. These are essential fields for the Canadian Forces and for the future of the missions they are assigned.

Discussions of the environment, globalization and trade can also provide a broader vision of global commons. These are all aspects that are concern to the Canadian government.

You will certainly have to talk about them. You will often talk about them in positive terms; that is to say that Canada is a state that can contribute to the stability of the international system, and the Canadian Forces must help maintain the global commons.

However, there is a trap for Canada. This concept of global commons brings with it a problem. The global commons argument is being used by more and more governments, and many of those governments are states interested in the Arctic and the High North, without being Arctic states. It is generally held that there are eight Arctic states: Canada, the United States, Russia, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Iceland.

Most of the other states that are not Arctic states and that have an interest in that region, such as China, France, Japan or Germany, may use this concept of global commons to justify their presence in the Arctic and potentially to dispute the methods of governance currently being put in place in the region.

The main governance method is the Arctic Council, which essentially consists of the eight Arctic states and a number of other participants and observers.

However, states such as China and France may question the Arctic Council's predominance on the basis of this concept of global commons.

In more practical and concrete terms, for us and for the Canadian Forces, what is the significance of Canada's presence in the Arctic and of the need to be there to manage the problems that arise and that are genuine problems in that region, but also to counter the argument that the Arctic states are incapable of managing those problems? The Canadian government must invest in the region.

What does this mean in concrete terms? First of all, there are three basic assumptions or elements on which our reasoning on the issue can be constructed.

There will likely be an increasing human presence in the Arctic over the next few years. The trend has started and will definitely continue. Consequently, there is a growing presence in the Arctic, an economic and trade presence, the presence of a lot of extreme sports enthusiasts and adventurers and a scientific presence.

Second, despite the pan-governmental approach that we tend to use in discussing the Arctic, the Canadian Forces are still the main provider of Canadian government services. The government relies first and foremost on the Canadian Forces to deliver services and assert its presence in the Arctic.

The third point that we also tend to forget is that Canadian Forces missions in the Arctic are the most popular with the Canadian public. If there are any missions that the vast majority of Canadians appreciate, support and are prepared to encourage, it is those linked to the protection of Canadian sovereignty and the environment in the Arctic. Canada's military presence in the Arctic is very favourably received by the public.

In concrete terms, what can we do over the next few years to increase Canada's presence in the region and to enhance its readiness? I will essentially make three suggestions. I am referring to those that are extensively cited in the documentation.

First of all, you should ensure that the promises that have been made since 2007 are indeed kept, particularly the creation of a deep-water port and training centres in the Arctic.

Second, we must establish closer collaboration with the United States. There are very few agreements or protocols with the Americans in the region. In fact, Canadians and Americans are surprisingly among the countries least involved in the Arctic, compared to the Russians and the Norwegians. So there is a need. Not only is the task enormous and immense—David Bercuson said so a few minutes ago—but, at the same time, neither Canadians nor Americans can perform all tasks alone as matters currently stand. There is therefore greater room for collaboration between Canada and the United States.

Third, the Canadian government should take initiatives to help define this concept of global commons and how they must be managed so that it can simultaneously counter the definitions that might potentially be risky for Canada. One of those initiatives could be taken in the context of the Arctic Council, the chair of which Canada will take over next year. For Canada, that would probably be the ideal framework for implementing other agreements such as those recently signed on search and rescue. The idea would be to have a single type of agreement that would define, in concrete terms, how the Arctic states, whether it be the eight Arctic states or the five coastal states, will be able to manage the challenges and problems of that region by themselves and simultaneously counter the risks associated with the global commons concept.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you very much.

We're going to go on with the questioning. We'll kick off the first round of seven minutes.

Mr. Christopherson, you have the floor.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you very much to our witnesses today. It's fascinating. I wish we had a little more time. I'm not sure where to begin.

I have a micro question, Professor. You talked about the Arctic. I've had the opportunity to go to the Arctic, to Resolute and stand in the Northwest Passage. I encourage colleagues, if you haven't had a chance to go there, to go. It gives you a whole different perspective on Canada and certainly on the challenges in the high Arctic. It's so different that it really is like another planet.

The one question I want to ask, Professor, at a macro level, is whether you agree that using the military to the degree the government is currently planning is the best way to populate that area as quickly as possible. The positive side is that you can do it quickly. There are certain strategic benefits to it. There are a whole lot of practical reasons why, if you want to do it in a hurry, that makes a lot of sense. There are those, however, who are concerned that from the get-go, we're over-militarizing a beautiful part of the planet, let alone our own country.

Do you have any thoughts?

[Prof. Stéphane Roussel]

There are many thoughts on this.

The first one is that over the short and mid-term, there are no alternatives. We have to realize that these guys know how to operate in that region; they have all the assets to be there. No other department can do the same, except maybe the Coast Guard, and the Coast Guard needs to be beefed up a little bit. So, yes, in the short and mid term.

In the long term, if we develop the Arctic—if there is more infrastructure, if there are more communication lines, and if there are more places where other departments can set up and organize their own activities—it could be changed. The Canadian Forces would gradually leave the place to other departments.

But there's a downside when you're talking about the militarization of the Arctic. There's a little risk here, and we have to manage it. When I'm travelling in Europe and speaking with my European counterparts or with foreign diplomats, they always scratch their heads and ask “Why are you Canadians acting like this? Why are you militarizing the Arctic? You are the most aggressive. You are the one who started the arms-race spiral here”. So there is a danger.

The message the Canadian government has to convey at the international level is that it is legitimate, there's no alternative, and we're not aggressive. I mean, it's not Canadian to say that. So there's a risk to manage here. Also, we have to design some plan in the long run to make sure that other departments will be present, and will act and perform their duty without relying on grey ships or on military aircraft.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Excellent, thank you for that very thorough answer.

Admiral Garnett and Mr. Bercuson, if I can ask you questions. Admiral, you ended your presentation by saying, “All of the above being stated, there is, however, a need to have a defined set and scope of capabilities at sufficient readiness to deploy. Otherwise....” and then you go on. That sort of speaks to the heart.

We have two pieces to this. The first is what we want the military to be ready to respond to, and the second is, having set that out, what pieces need to be in place to be able to achieve those goals. For everything we get, we have to keep boiling it down to that point. The domestic one is somewhat obvious, although complex, but obvious in its answer in terms of our needs. The real question, and where the political divide, if you will, may happen within our Parliament, is on the expeditionary forces aspect.

In both of your minds, give us your thoughts on what international commitments you think are an absolute priority for us. Be as specific as you can. I realize that's difficult, but what would those be, accepting that we can't be ready for everything for everybody?

That is just not possible. The whole idea of Canada having a standing armed forces that could respond to anything in the world, unilaterally, is just not on. Therefore, the question is what pieces are paramount to ready for? Give us your thoughts on what international pieces are must dos.

[VAdm Gary Garnett]

David, do you want to answer that? David's a political scientist.

[Prof. David Bercuson]

No, I'm not. I'm a historian, Gary. Come on.

First of all, I totally agree. You can't have a military designed to do everything, and I think our very best example is the Americans themselves in January 2012. They're very clearly responding to the economic reality by redesigning their own military to be a lot more specific in terms of what they can respond to.

There are two answers to that question. One is, what strategic interests do we have that are so vital that we would contribute to an international military force of some kind? One has to think about certain sea lane choke points, for example, and one also has to think about the extent to which we can actually make a contribution. I'll give you a concrete example. The Strait of Hormuz is as important to Canada as it is to the United States and about half of the rest of the world, for obvious reasons, but do we have a capability to operate in the Strait of Hormuz? And is there anything we could do there that would actually add to efforts to keep the strait open?

We could talk about certain passages, for example, into the Caribbean—the Windward Passage, the Mona Passage, and so on. We declared the Caribbean to be a pretty important Canadian national interest over the last 10 or 15 years. Do we have the capability to operate in certain areas of the Caribbean, should there be some political threat arising from within? I would say the answer is we have a lot more capability there than we do in the Strait of Hormuz.

Then, another one is this. What do the people of Canada think about something at a particular given time? An issue that may not be on the horizon today will all of a sudden catch the public interest and the public will demand some kind of response from the government two or three weeks from now. And who knows what that might be? For example, nobody could predict 9/11 a week before it happened and yet the Canadian response after that was a fairly strong one.

I think what we haven't really done in this country is say, these are vital Canadian interests and we're prepared to take part in international operations, whether they're UN, NATO, or whatever they are, because they're key to our requirements. I think they have to do with the lives of Canadians. They have to do with the ability of Canadian enterprises to do business in important places overseas, and I think they have to do with certain aspects of what we'd call international morality and the maintenance of certain norms—a responsibility to protect, if you will.

I think we need to try to boil those things down in ways that have a practical reflection on how we design our military, and what our military should be for. I don't think we've done a very good job of doing that. We knew in the Cold War what our military was for, and then for the last 20 years or so I think we've been wandering around and not really making a significant effort to design a Canadian strategy or a Canadian defence policy.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Time has expired.

Madam Gallant, you have the floor.

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

Dr. Bercuson, you wrote a report titled, “In the National Interest: Canadian Foreign Policy in an Insecure World”. In this report you accurately predicted that the Arab situation would develop, and it did present itself as a future hot zone. You mentioned it was suffering from critical underdevelopment, along with a dangerous combination of incendiary conditions. We certainly saw this region turn into a hot zone with the emergence of the Arab Spring and the NATO-led mission in Libya.

Looking at global conditions, what are some of the other threats, both conventional and unconventional, facing Canada?

[Prof. David Bercuson]

First of all, I probably didn't write that part of the report.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Prof. David Bercuson]

Seven people, I think, contributed to it.

As a historian, I adhere to something called “Bercuson's iron law of history”, which is that nothing much ever happens until it does, and when it does, it usually happens very quickly, and it is never predictable.

I think when you're talking about long-term unemployment, poverty, degradation, etc., and the rising expectations that come out of the global revolution in communications, there's always going to be pressure on governments that are non-democratic and are pushing down the aspirations of the people in that society. There's always going to be pressure for some kind of social, political, quasi-military explosion.

I'm not an expert on Africa, but I see many areas in that part of the world where not only do we have ongoing military conflict right now, but we will continue to have it. My own problem with it is that I don't know the degree to which we are capable of intervening in it, and whether or not we ought to intervene in those parts of the world. It's not that some parts of the world are inherently more important than other parts of the world, but there are places where we can do better, where we can reach, where we have allies, and where we have the logistical support we need in order to operate.

We have to remember that we always need to operate in a coalition. We've never not operated in a coalition. I think in the War of 1812, as we all know, the Brits were here too. We've never not operated as part of a coalition. It's very important to make sure that the partners we operate with are ones who are there and who can deliver the logistical support and whatever else is necessary for us to operate.

That's part of the problem—we just don't have the capability on our own to plan, because we're not a prime mover in this. I think we have to decide more how we are going to respond when our allies move, which campaigns we're going to join and which ones we're not going to join.

It's probably not a good answer to your question, but other than trying to predict when the next Arab Spring will happen and where it will happen—which I don't want to do—that's the best I can do.

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

So what should Canada do that we've not already been doing to be prepared for these potential threats that we may or may not get involved in?

[Prof. David Bercuson]

I think the lesson for Canada is that the ability to project our military power abroad has always been very important to Canada politically, and to a certain extent, economically. I could go right back to how we won our independence as a nation in the First World War. I could keep going, but I'm sure you're all very familiar with it.

The question is how much can we contribute, and what do we get out of it? As to how much we can contribute, I think it's the military's job to try to make sure we have forces that can be deployed, whether army, navy, or air force—not huge forces—that are in keeping with our role in the world as a major trading nation with a high standard of living and so on. I think the political level has to decide the other part of the question: where do you deploy, and where are Canada's national interests?

Those kinds of rules, if you will, have not really been laid down very clearly. As I said, it's very difficult to make defence policy in Canada, but I don't think we've had a lot of defence policy-making in this country for a long time. And I would cover two governments with that.

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

Dr. Bercuson, you have written that the world that Canada knew between 1945 and 1990 is gone, so what does this new world look like? How have the threats that face Canada changed with the turn of the century?

[Prof. David Bercuson]

We didn't have to do a lot of thinking between 1945 and 1990. We knew where the bad guys were. We knew what they we're going to do, more or less. We knew what we had to do to respond to them, and we knew what all our allies were going to do. The rules were all written. We didn't have to do a lot of strategic planning, if any, although there was some strategic thinking that was going on in NDHQ about all kinds of things at the time. Basically, we fit into a slot, and there we were.

That world changed dramatically in 1990, and it's still changing. So, even though we are part of the Five Eyes, part of NATO, share defence with the United States, operate within the United Nations, and so on and so forth, we have a lot more room to manoeuvre than we did in the period of the Cold War.

I think we have to do a lot more thinking about what our place in the world is than we had to do back then, because our role has not been predetermined to nearly the extent that it was during the Cold War period. We can disagree. We can tell the Americans we're not going to participate in that operation, but we are going to participate in this one. That would have been inconceivable during most of the Cold War. I think that our ability to act more in a Canadian national interest, and less in an interest in coalition with our allies, is much greater today than it was in the past, and much greater today in 2012 than it was in the past.

When you look at what the Americans are projecting for their own military, it leaves a vacuum that we can help to fill or not, depending on our own national interest. Again, that leaves more room for us, if we choose to exercise the greater degree of freedom that we have.

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

It has been suggested to our committee that, with the ending of the Cold War, we should go back to the spending limits we had previous to the Cold War. Do you think that's logical?

[Prof. David Bercuson]

I'm not sure what that means. We spent different amounts at different times on the Cold War. There were times in the Cold War when we were spending 7% of our GNP—as we called it at the time—on military, in 1955, 1956, and 1957. We were spending 40% of the budget on national defence back then. There's absolutely no need for anything like that today.

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

What about pre-9/11? Should we go back to those spending limits as well?

[Prof. David Bercuson]

I honestly can't remember what the spending limits were. I've always been leery about saying that we need to set our limit as a given percentage of the GDP. I don't believe that either. I think our spending has to be determined by what our political requirements are, and you have to make political decisions as to what sort of a military you want and what it's capable of doing, and then you fund it. Whatever it costs, it costs.

People will talk about how we're only spending 1.1% of GDP today, whereas we were spending 1.3% before. Turkey's percentage of GDP spent on defence is much higher than that of the United States, but that doesn't tell you that Turkey's armed forces are more powerful than those of the United States. So I'm not really sure what that number measures.