National Defence Committee on March 1st, 2012

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

I know, I know. I needed to eat some crow there. I apologize.

[A voice]

Pass the Kleenex.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

I know you said your expertise is in aerospace, but I wanted to talk a bit about the navy. I come from British Columbia, and the new focus is on Asia-Pacific. We have Halifax-class modernization for our frigates. We have signed contracts and are in the process of building new destroyers and supply ships. I'm just wondering, given your comments on conventional warfare, if those are good investments, strategically speaking. Are we missing something there? Given the various threats you believe Canada may face, do we still need to have that strong, conventional naval force in Asia-Pacific?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

You seem to be asking if the current way we distribute the fleet between the west and the east should remain in place. The question, as you suggest, has to be viewed in light of the rising concerns about the Asia-Pacific as the dominant cockpit of future rivalry and competition and conflict. The current system goes back to the Cold War. The fleet was based in the Atlantic, and there was almost nothing in the Pacific. But in this world we're going into, the threats are going to be in the Pacific, and the fleet should shift over there. There should be less concentration in the Atlantic.

Do we need to modernize the conventional forces of the Canadian navy? Yes, we do. They need to be replaced because we are not going to be doing World War II-style escorting of convoys. That type of war is part of history now. I think some of my colleagues need to realize that. As for our presence there, the need to commit advance forces and integrate and be interoperable with the advanced navies of the world, the U.S. navy in particular, drives us down that path. That's why I think it's still a very important investment for us.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

I know in response to Mr. Chisu we alluded to the submarine program. We've heard that this is a force multiplier as well, not in terms of, perhaps, subnaval conflict, but more in terms of surveillance or the ability to project our forces in places where they can't be seen by satellite, etc.

Do I get a sense you may have some further comments on that? We've heard from different folks in this study. Some say they are a waste of resources; others say they're essential in a modern navy to have that capability. Can we just have your thoughts on that?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

Very quickly, having submarines is a capability where we have been trapped by a bad decision made long ago. We've invested millions and millions of dollars with little to zero return, on the basis of a World War II image being repeated, on the basis of, “Well, look, everyone else has submarines, so we need them as well”, on the basis of other factors. They were cheap. I could go over it at length.

This relates to the F-35 decision, a question that was asked to me, and I think there's an important linkage here. When do you cut and run? We've been trapped by all the past investment in this that we really can't escape from it. Let's hope and pray that in fact this operational capability will be useful and valuable to us down the road.

We'll be operational, first of all—truly operational—and valuable to a Canadian strategic interest down the road.

My fear is that in fact we have been trapped. If you were to ask me, the arguments made for Canada and submarines are more driven by naval images than they are by really strategic requirements relative to available resources.

I am not convinced, for surveillance reasons, they're of any use to us. I'm not convinced we're going to be sending our conventional submarines to sneak around the coast of China or Southeast Asia—to look at what, to do what? I'm not convinced about using submarines to look at fishing trawlers and take their picture—and, what, bring them back to court? We're not able or willing, and it's strategically dangerous to try to develop an air-independent propulsion technology for submarines, to stick them in the Arctic and play cat and mouse with the strategic fleets of the United States, Russia, and, in the future, China. I think that's problematic for us. We have to think that through.

On the value of submarines in the surveillance of our territory, I think it can be done with lots of other more cost-effective technologies, but I don't think we can escape from it.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Your time has expired.

Mr. Brahmi, you have the floor.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I find Professor Fergusson's comment that the F-35 is the only option for us to choose today very interesting. I would like to ask him a hypothetical question.

If we had to reduce the current fleet to some 30 or 40 aircraft, what would we have to give up to focus these 30 or 40 aircraft on something more important, in the end?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

I always get mystified by the numbers game. I grew up in the nuclear age when how much was enough for nuclear strike capabilities was the obsession of the academic community and the strategic world at large. Now we get to the numbers.

I think part of it depends upon this. How much is enough? Can we do with 30 or 40? What are we going to lose? In terms of the fundamental role in the defence of Canada of an advanced multi-role fighter like the F-35, given what I can discern about the number we deploy on a daily basis or leave on standby on a daily basis for NORAD and air sovereignty missions, reducing that by 30 to 40 is not going to affect anything whatsoever in order to meet those missions. The question becomes, what, then, in terms of 30 to 35...?

I think the bigger question this committee might want to ask is, why 60 or 65? Where does that number come from? I don't have the answer, because every time I've asked it, it's classified.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

I think there is also the issue of the last delivery of F-18s. There were over 100 aircraft. That was some 30 years ago, and we are hearing that we could do the same thing today with some 30 aircraft. That is, in fact, the issue.

[Dr. James Fergusson]

If I remember correctly, the number of F-18s we originally purchased was 140. That number came out of a calculation related to an existing threat to Canada, which was a Soviet bomber air-launched cruise threat. You then had to calculate the number you might need also in terms of our foreign commitment to NATO and what we could deploy and then sustain out there, if we were in a lengthy campaign rotating those forces.

One also has to ask what the capability of an F-35 is relative to the capability of an F-18, and the argument is that the capability is much greater and you can do with fewer. But I don't see that there is any shrinkage in the roles we can play by cutting the F-35 by the 30 or 40.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Based on your logic, we would have to count to a greater extent on our NATO allies. We could do the same thing with fewer aircraft, if our NATO allies stepped up their participation. That might be a possibility.

[Dr. James Fergusson]

It certainly is a possibility. Except for the United States, among the allies no small nation today can afford, because of the nature of military technologies, to maintain a capacity to act independently. It's just too expensive for all of us. So it is all about not just us, but about our cooperating with our allies and integrating more fully with them.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Since I have a minute left, I would like to turn to the submarines.

According to your previous statements, you do not think we need Victoria-class submarines.

Do you think Canada could choose to not have submarines? If we look at the example of Great Britain, which does not have aircraft carriers, could Canada live without submarines?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

The simple answer is yes. It's an easy answer: we can live without submarines.

We may still be playing—and it's one of the important roles in the future, if we're talking about conflicts overseas and forward deployment of forces.... If we take the Chinese naval denial strategy, which most observers think is where China is going in terms of their capabilities, we'll potentially have to deal with submarines. But you don't need a submarine to deal with a submarine. There are advanced and ever more sophisticated technologies, remotely controlled technologies, that enable one to deal with the submarine threat.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you very much.

Madam Gallant, it's your turn.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Fergusson, you said that even if no budget cuts were anticipated, we still could not possibly train everyone to know what they should know in order to counter cyber warfare. To what extent should we be relying on private sector IT specialists for readiness and working through an actual attack?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

The first part of my answer is that National Defence—the government—has no choice but to work with the private sector, because most of the key assets are privately owned.

But the more important question is this. Outside of the requirement for the forces to be prepared to deal with cyber attacks upon our military capabilities, particularly in the field or at home—and I make a point of saying our military capability—and potentially the need to develop counters and also offensive cyber capabilities ourselves for overseas military operations, such as jamming, computer viruses, and similar things, I don't think in terms of the national issues involved here that cyber threats, particularly to our national critical infrastructure, are a job for the Department of National Defence.

I think the problem here is that Defence, in part because it's dealing with the cyber question for its own systems, has become the default actor to take the lead on this. There's a serious need by any government, in my view, to take a look at the particular place where this really belongs. In my view, it belongs in Public Safety, and legislation is required, as much as I understand the legislation, to enable them to take a greater functional lead role. The home of the RCMP and of CSIS is where those issues really lie.

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

As you mentioned, we have interdepartmental overlap with respect to cyber threats. Do you see any opportunities for inter-agency cooperation or task sharing that are not already in place? You say we need it, but from your viewpoint, do you see gaps between what we could be doing and what we're already doing?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

I really can't answer the question, because I'm not sure exactly where the gaps are, but there are always problems in overlap. There are always problems in information sharing between organizations. This is something, as I suggested, that National Defence really needs to pull away from. The government needs to put the resources into a central agency that is going to be responsible for Canada's nation-wide critical infrastructure and negotiate with the provinces—doing more than simply coordinate and facilitate, but actually taking much more a lead regulatory role in doing this.

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

Do you mean putting in place something more along the lines of the Office of Critical Infrastructure that we used to have?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

Exactly. Part of the reason Defence got this is, if you go back to Y2K, that they were the unfortunate guys: no one wanted it, and they got it.

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

Again—and you may have already partially gone into this—in terms of cyber warfare, in what ways could we be cooperating in task sharing or info sharing with our allies that we're not already doing?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

Now you're into the highly classified world of intelligence sharing, and I would just be guessing.

But one thing that is missing—this is a side note to this cyber war thing and the cyber threat, and I'm not trying to downplay the problem here—is that we have numerous examples historically in which nations tacitly agree out of their own self-interest, in the context of potential warfare between them, not to do certain things. Given that modern societies and increasingly even developing societies—all of us—are vulnerable to the cyber world, potentially this is an area we need to start talking about or tacitly to recognize that it is something wherein...all our interests lead us away from doing this.

Now, that doesn't account for the potential terrorist attack and the non-state actors involved, about which we do have to be concerned. But I'm a bit of a skeptic about the emphasis we should place and the amount of investment outside of normal security requirements that we need to make in these areas.