National Defence Committee on April 26th, 2012

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Okay. What about new threats? You mentioned this assistant secretary general, but from the perspective of our committee, as you know, we studied readiness, and a recurring theme with almost every witness was that you have to do these things to be ready and to achieve high readiness, but no one can really answer the question of “Ready for what?” in today's world.

You can certainly discuss probabilities and so forth. Do we have a collective NATO staff, body, or joint staff that tries to look over the horizon at what operations may be coming into play a year down the road, or five years down the road?

Obviously, no one predicted quite the Libya operation that we ended up with. Certainly, no one predicted 9/11 on its scale. Is someone at least trying?

[Col Brian Irwin]

I would certainly say both. You have SACT, or commander of transformation, but you also have SACEUR, commander of operations, who does very much that closer end look of the years ahead. Very much between the two of them, their remit is to provide military advice to both the military committee but also to the council on those issues. They are very much part of that scanning the horizon and understanding those threats.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Time has expired.

Mr. Storseth, you have the last of the five-minute rounds.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

I will be sharing my time with the parliamentary secretary, as I thought he had some excellent questions.

I did note that he talked about his diplomatic circuit. It sounded more like a party circuit than a work circuit.

I'd like to thank you guys very much for your presentation. I thought it was very educational. I do have some questions for you with regard to our role in NATO moving forward, particularly when it comes to interoperability and the importance that interoperability plays in relation to any agreements or treaties we sign around the world. Obviously we have to look at our responsibilities to the commitments we've already made to organizations like NATO.

One example I would give you is that of the Oslo process, from the cluster munitions agreement that came about a couple of years ago. Obviously we need to ratify that as a Canadian government, and in doing that, the discussion of interoperability becomes very pertinent. I'd be very interested in the position of the Department of National Defence, but also in the NATO perspective on how far we can go, and whether we're comfortable with where we are on interoperability for that.

[Jill Sinclair]

Thank you.

Just to begin, with regard to interoperability for Canada, everything we do is designed to make us interoperable with our allies, because we know we're not going to be doing stuff alone in any sort of expeditionary setting, so it is very inherent in the training and the exercising or the procurement or the equipment that we have.

In terms of things like treaties and other treaty arrangements, when we went into the negotiations on the cluster munitions convention, NATO allies spoke about this and caucused. In fact, I think it is article 21—I may be wrong—of the cluster munitions treaty that actually gives us the ability to maintain the interoperability, because it's extremely important to be able to have that in the spirit of the treaty itself.

As I say, the treaty itself has article 21, which was designed for that purpose. We have been able to find a compatibility between being able to get into a position to ratify the cluster munitions treaty and maintaining our ability to have interoperability.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

The Department of National Defence is comfortable with article 21 and is also comfortable that it fits within the broader scope of NATO?

[Jill Sinclair]

Absolutely.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Excellent. Thank you.

I have one more question for you on capacity. It is something you talked about to some extent in your briefing, which I found very interesting. With regard to capacity—and I thought this was very pertinent—because of our size, we as a country can be a very active and positive player in the international scene in missions like Afghanistan and others. I'd like you to address in a little more depth the importance of that capacity and whether there is anything else—you had mentioned the C-17s—that has helped us to create that capacity in our military.

Could you just address the importance of that moving forward as well? I think Haiti is another example of where this was crucial.

[Col Brian Irwin]

I think Haiti is a terrific example of how we have not only that physical capacity but the readiness capacity in that we were able to embark on something at fairly short notice with a fairly broad range of capability. Certainly within the alliance we bring some of those core capabilities: from the multi-purpose combat-capable land piece to the very capable air piece and the maritime piece and the like, which are robust and perhaps more robust than those of some others.

I think that in itself is impressive capacity.

[Jill Sinclair]

I would just add to that—and I think this is something we haven't talked about—our ability to mount a role 3 medical facility in theatre and to sustain it. We used that in Haiti. We've used it in Afghanistan. We've had helicopters to be able to take people off the ground so they don't have to go through IED-infested terrain. These are the sorts of capabilities that we've been able to use in multiple situations, whether it's close to home in Haiti, earthquake assistance elsewhere, or out in deployed operations.

[Brian Storseth, Conservative, Westlock—St. Paul, AB]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Well done. That was exactly five minutes.

We'll move into our third round, where each party gets another five-minute question, and we'll start with Madam Moore.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

I would like to go back to the question of interoperability and to ask what happens when, in the context of interoperability, something is acquired that is not compatible with what we have in Canada. For example, if our tanker aircraft are not able to refuel certain planes, what is the best thing to do? If things are not compatible with what we have in Canada, is it better to go with the interoperability or to choose something that will work with what we already have?

I have another question. Can you give us some details about the cooperation between NATO and the UN? I would be interested in your view of that cooperation in the coming years.

[Jill Sinclair]

Thank you very much.

In terms of interoperability, maybe I have not explained it well. There has to be a coherence for our own purposes in what we procure. It just so happens that since the First World War, certainly since the Second World War, we have worked so closely together with allies, and we work with the United States in continental defence. We've worked with Europe, obviously, over many years. Interoperability is something that we factor in as a matter of first consideration, because there are very few occasions when we're going to procure something that is so singularly for Canada that there aren't other countries that have it, other countries with whom we can share that capability.

So we are not contorting ourselves to meet a NATO interoperability standard that somehow counts against what we need on a national basis. These are two sides of the same coin.

On NATO and the UN, NATO and the United Nations have been establishing progressively over the last decade, I would say, much closer relationships. This has been one of the priorities also that Canada has taken to the alliance in its discussions over the last number of years. We now have representatives in each other's headquarters, which never used to be the case, and certainly in terms of the UN seeing NATO as an important and helpful tool in realizing Security Council resolutions and other things, we have the experience of Afghanistan and of Libya to say there's an absolute dovetailing.

The final thing I would mention is that NATO derives its legitimacy from the UN charter. There is a provision within the UN charter that says there's an ability of organizations to establish themselves in regional organizations. So everything goes back to the UN charter, back to the relationship with the UN. Obviously, all NATO members are members of the United Nations.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

My question is about the economic aspects. As we often choose things that are interoperable, do we not run the risk of being at the mercy, if I can use that expression, of a single supplier? For example, if every country is running software from a certain company and it goes bankrupt, does that not complicate things a little? Are there ways to prevent situations like that from happening?

[Jill Sinclair]

Thank you for the question.

NATO is an association of sovereign nations. Nations take their own decisions for their own reasons in the first instance. So there has never been.... I think NATO dreams of such coherence of approach, that NATO nations as a community would say they're all going to this particular supplier for this particular widget. It just doesn't happen that way, because nations take their own decisions.

What nations do is they take into consideration their desire—and that could be on a spectrum of little desire to a lot of desire—to make sure that whatever it is they're getting is going to allow them to, as Brian says, plug and play, to be able to actually join up with others and do things together because they use the same fuel or the same ammunition or they can speak on the same radios.

But NATO is fiercely an alliance of sovereign states in the first instance.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

By asking the question, I am trying to compare the situation with the world of medicine where, after one type of equipment is chosen, everything suddenly falls apart and we have to change 25 other things to get everything to work. That is what worries me. Sometimes, we want something to work everywhere but that leads to major changes in the equipment we already have and that we can't replace. Are problems like that occurring at the moment? Does Canada have things that are not compatible and that do not work together?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I'd ask that you give a very short response, please.

[Jill Sinclair]

In fact, I'm afraid that I'm not in a position to answer that question. I just don't have the knowledge and expertise. Sorry.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Mr. McKay, you have the floor.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's pretty obvious that at this point, we're looking, if you will, at almost seismic shifts in defence capability. The U.S. budget is somewhere around three-quarters of a trillion dollars. It's almost invariably going to go down to about half a billion dollars as civilians assert their control over the military. Whether it's Romney or Obama really doesn't much matter, because it just has to be reined in.

The U.S. is far and away the largest contributor to NATO. They've also suggested or said that they're going to be shifting their emphasis from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Isn't it virtually inevitable that NATO will be a reduced organization within a very foreseeable future?

[Jill Sinclair]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You're right in saying that the U.S. at the moment covers 21.7% of the NATO budget. It's a major contributor.

You might want to get somebody from the U.S. here to talk about U.S. policy, because I don't want to interpret it for them.

Their shift in emphasis from the Atlantic to the Pacific is a shift in focus and intensity. There's a message being sent to European allies. Frankly, it's a message Canada also sends to European allies. They have to step up to the plate a little bit more. That's all part of a healthy debate.

Is NATO a reduced organization? I don't know. Maybe it's a refocused organization. Maybe it will prioritize its spending in different ways. I'm not sure that it's going to be a reduced organization in terms of its political importance. It remains the singularly unique military organization in the world that can pull together an operation on behalf of the United Nations and on behalf of the EU to provide capacity-building for the African Union. It's actually unique. I'm not sure that it's going to be a reduced organization, but it has to be a transformed organization. There's no question.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

If you look at who's going to carry the freight if the Americans draw down, it won't likely be the Brits, because they are reducing their own military commitment. They've mothballed their aircraft carrier two years ahead of time. They've sold off their carrier fleet.

It won't likely be the French. There's really no other country that can step up to the plate. Yet the threat environment is.... Well, who knows what the threat environment is?

I'm kind of puzzled by your argument that it won't be reduced. On the basis of economics alone, it seems to me that economic constraints are going to invariably.... I'm not disagreeing with your argument about the importance of NATO as an alliance. I am questioning whether NATO as an entity will be able to do all the tasks it has been doing for the last, say, decade.

[Jill Sinclair]

I think that's a very good question, and I think that's a lot of the debate at the moment—what will we be able to do, what will we be able to afford? I don't want to speak for the United States. You might want to get somebody from the U.S. embassy or from Washington in here to talk to these issues. But the U.S. has been very clear that it still considers NATO, the indivisibility of its security with that of Europe, to be of fundamental importance to U.S. national security and interest. They'd like the Europeans to do a little bit more, as we all would.

The other thing that I think is important to pull out here is that it isn't just the raw dollar cost of what you spend in defence. It's then how you deploy and use those assets. It's a point that Canada has been making for ages. It isn't about what your percentage of GDP is. It's how much you actually make available when the needs arise. We have a lot of NATO allies who have a lot of assets who sit on their home territory and don't do anything. If they were more disposed to use them a little more frequently, then maybe we'd get better burden-sharing, notwithstanding all the things I've said about domestic, democratic processes. Everybody has to challenge themselves as to what we can bring to this collective effort, which is a preventive effort, a capacity-building effort, and occasionally, unfortunately, a fighting effort. There's an awful lot in NATO's collective resources.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Time—