National Defence Committee on May 1st, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

We'll call the meeting to order.

For those present, especially our witnesses, my apologies. The workings of the House of Commons are such that from time to time the best laid plans of men and men...and men and women too, yes of course.

Today we are continuing on with our study of the defence of North America.

Our witnesses are Stephen Saideman, the Paterson Chair in International Affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. We also have Dr. Alexander Moens, a professor of political science at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.

Thank you you very much, gentlemen. As usual you will have a 10-minute introduction and then we'll start our questioning and answers. Please start. I'll let you gentlemen decide who is going to be first.

[Dr. Stephen Saideman, Paterson Chair in International Affairs, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I am honoured to be invited to speak to this committee.

The starting point for any conversation about Canadian security is that Canada is in a rare position in the world. Geography limits the threats that Canada faces, and its economic strengths and its political stability mean that Canada is quite secure compared to the rest of the world.

While there is much talk about terrorism, cyberthreats, and other unconventional challenges, the reality is that Canada is secure enough that it can make mistakes without paying too high a price, which is a good thing since Canada does tend to make mistakes because its politicians refuse to face some of the difficult trade-offs and make the hard choices needed to confront the changing realities of 21st century defence. Of course the problem is that mistakes can still be quite serious as they can endanger Canadian soldiers, pilots, sailors, and others working for the Canadian government.

To be clear, many of the defence procurement challenges are not new to Canada, nor new to advanced democracies, nor the fault of the current government. That Canada is facing recapitalization of its navy while having to purchase replacements for the core of the air force is a real problem. In my family we try to buy one car at a time and pay off one car at a time, space those purchases out, so that we are not facing too high a price at any one point in time. That worked great until a school bus rammed my younger car.

In the case of Canada, the life spans of the ships and planes were entirely predictable, so it should not have been the case that Canada needed to replace all the ships and the planes and the Arctic patrol vessels all at the same time. Even if the accounting allows for all the stuff to be spent at the same time, I'm not sure Canada has the expertise inside the government to run so many programs simultaneously. Clearly, we apparently do not have the shipyard space to be building many ships at once.

Still, this government has been in office for quite some time, yet refuses to face the trade-offs that must be addressed. The best example of this is the notion that more than $3 billion can be cut from the budget without any real consequence. Perhaps the most important and least necessary denial of reality is this. We have been keeping to a symbolic level of 100,000 troops, which is very costly, and it's almost entirely unnecessary. That is a commitment to a symbolic level. Personnel costs are a huge part of the budget, more than 50%, so if we're going to cut the military budget we should cut there, as well as other places.

The refusal to do this, combined with the large procurement projects, means that cuts will fall on operations, maintenance, and exercising. In the U.S. there is always much concern about the hollowing out of the force, that they will still have much equipment and many soldiers, sailors, marines, and pilots, but they will lose their sharp edge due to a lack of practice. This is going to happen in Canada. Here the consequences are being ignored for the symbolism of being strong on defence by keeping the force at that level.

Experts know that the government today is spending about the same as it was in 2006, once you control for ordinary inflation. The problem of course is that inflation in military equipment is hardly ordinary. A flat budget is problematic when inflation is significant. Exacerbating this is the move to emphasize industrial benefits of defence programs so that systems that are built in Canada are advantaged in competitions over those that do not employ Canadians.

The shipbuilding program seemed to be a good idea, to have a nationwide competition to decide where in Canada the ships are built. The problem is that restarting long-dormant shipyards means that Canada will be paying a premium for these ships, and a hefty one at that. The ships will be much more expensive and almost certainly less capable than those made in Europe or elsewhere. This will almost certainly mean fewer ships, which means that DND should be thinking now of what a smaller navy means, including what kinds of cuts can be made to the number of sailors and officers, since fewer ships means fewer sailors and fewer officers.

Of course, this speaks to an enduring problem. Canada’s military should be designed to fit Canada’s strategy: an assessment of the threats Canada faces, the means by which those threats will be dealt with, and a balancing of commitments and capabilities.

The Canada First defence strategy was overcome by events a long time ago. The new strategy that takes seriously the fiscal constraints and the increased costs of equipment will recognize that Canada will have to do less with less, not more with less, including a smaller navy, a smaller army, and a smaller air force. Canada can still be a good partner in NORAD and a good ally in NATO as long as the forces it contributes to the various missions are not hollow. Smaller is better than hollow.

Rather than cutting by default and cutting by accident—literally in the case of the navy with some of the accidents it's had—Canada can, and should, make difficult choices. This government is actually in an excellent position to do so since—here is where I become the political scientist—the opposition parties are unlikely to pick up votes from those who want more defence spending. To be sure, those problems are not unique to Canada, as most advanced democracies face these problems: tighter budgets, defence procurement challenges, and alliance commitments.

Canada can choose the traditional path, which is to muddle through, but this time the stakes are higher since the programs are so very expensive, and all of this is coming to a head at this time, at the same time.

I look forward to our conversation today.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Moens.

[Dr. Alexander Moens, Professor, Political Science, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm thankful to the committee to have this opportunity to share my thoughts on the defence of North America.

Canadians feel reasonably secure. There is a widespread sentiment we can afford to concentrate on domestic economic matters and put defence questions into the future. I assume you do not have many constituents pressing you for more defence spending.

As a result, some will counsel you to choose narrow designs for Canadian defence policy with niche areas, limited capabilities, and low budgets. Though resources are scarce and priorities required, I would like to argue that our values and interests in light of ongoing international insecurity require a broad definition of Canadian defence policy.

First, what we are defending is priceless. Our Canadian liberal constitutional democracy is highly valuable because it offers legal protection for individual freedoms including life, speech, religion, assembly, and property. These freedoms form a moral interest, moral because the individual has infinite value. As a Christian realist, I would argue this value derives from God's creation of every human being to be his image bearer.

Liberal governance also mandates representative, accountable, and limited government. Canada enjoys a balance of individual freedoms and good government, and we have a duty to defend these and to help other peoples obtain them.

My point is this. We would spend 100% of GDP to defend our freedoms if push came to shove, so what does it take to keep our security level high? Is it really worth only 1% of our GDP, our prosperity? Are we really so secure that we can let our guard down so low? Let me explain why I believe this effort is too little.

States remain the key focus in international security. Groups and networks either operate in order to form states or with the support of states. Individuals are prone to harm others to promote themselves. This predominant inclination is explained by the fallen sin. In international affairs this propensity is magnified, and we have neither enough law nor enough authority to avert lawless behaviour. We need power to counter illiberal interests. Sufficient military capacity is a necessary condition to do so.

Our defence policy must ask, who opposes our way of life? The answer is two broad political interests: first, autocracy such as we find in great powers like Russia and China as well as in numerous smaller states; and second, totalitarianism such as we find in jihadist terror networks and nascent Islamist states, and in the Juche ideology in North Korea. Neither autocracy nor totalitarianism is monolithic. There are qualitative and quantitative variations in each.

Rapidly growing military budgets are found in the two largest autocracies, namely China and Russia. Both Beijing and Moscow are asserting global influence and regional territorial and resource claims. These two trends do not mean inevitable conflict, but they do mean that liberal democracies must have both the political will and military capacity to restrain autocratic ambition.

The totalitarian thread is located in a large arc of geography spanning from West Africa all the way into East Asia. Here we find jihadist and violent Islamist ambitions for domination and statehood. Many of these cause religious cleansing, political instability, mass atrocities, and lead to extremist states. Totalitarian Islamist networks and states almost invariably threaten our political, religious, and economic freedoms.

Now, political antagonists can evolve into democratic friends. We use diplomatic, economic, and soft power relations to advance this transition, especially in the case of China. But our defence policy must be ready for foreign policy failure. Thankfully, Canadian defence policy does not exist in isolation. Our most important partnerships are with the United States, with NATO members, and in intelligence and cyber, with the Five Eyes.

Three strategic parameters inform Canada's security supply and demand in this constellation of alliances. First, America's military power relative to the number and size of challenges is trending down. Second, NATO has a de facto war-fighting upper tier. Third, cyber is a civilian as well as military security domain in which offensive and defensive capabilities are not easily separated, and where rules are few.

What do these parameters mean for Canada's defence policy?

First, Canada and the middle powers in the democratic world must carry more defence capacity. The 1990s and the ISAF operation showed that we cannot renew defence at 1% of GDP. Defence renewal means starting from 1% as a maintenance level and investing on top of that to obtain genuine renewal.

Second, NATO's political and military flexibility is an opportunity, an opportunity to work with other constitutional democracies. Canadian defence and foreign policy should actively seek partners among constitutional democracies in Asia-Pacific, in the Arctic, and in South America. Later this month at Simon Fraser University we hope to have a conference organized between the NATO Defense College and SFU to look at the alliance interacting with Asia-Pacific.

Third, Canada needs to continue participating in robust cyberoffence and cyberdefence, including in Five Eyes and with the United States. After 9/11, some intelligence about individuals is inescapable. There is room for responsible parliamentary involvement in this balance of objectives between security and liberty. During ISAF, Canada made investments in airlift and in the army. It needs now modern air and sea war-fighting capacity. We must enter the stealth era of aircraft. We need to renew our naval surface fleet to increase our part in the U.S. naval task forces.

Canada has a moral obligation to be part of the defence of North America against nuclear blackmail. Missile defence is not an ideology but a practical military option. The present danger is North Korea, because we do not have confidence in the rationality of the regime to be dissuaded by nuclear deterrence. It has no regard for the life of its people. Canada's entry into missile defence should not be cost-free but should include an ongoing contribution and bring about substantial participation.

Arctic capabilities are difficult and expensive. Canada ought to consider in-depth trilateral burden-sharing with the United States and Denmark to provide security in this region.

Our public, I believe, has lost confidence in Canada's military procurement process. Every time I hear it mentioned in Vancouver, it is in the form of a joke. It is time, I think, to think outside the box and consider a plan that is multi-year, that involves other political parties, and that has the power to upend the status quo.

I thank you for your time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Thank you very much, Professor. You were right on time, as a matter of fact.

Mr. Williamson, you have the first seven minutes.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It's good to see you both today. Thank you.

Mr. Moens, I want to pick up on your last point. Could you maybe flesh out what you have in mind in terms of a new system, an alternative system, for the forces to purchase equipment? It sounds good, what you just said in a few words there, but one of the challenges, of course, is that with a change of government, you sometimes have a change in direction or outright cancellation if priorities don't match.

I would be curious to get your thoughts on that a little bit more.

[Dr. Alexander Moens]

Thank you.

I have deliberately taken a broad approach in terms of objectives, values, and parameters. I do not have any specifics on a new procurement process. I think it is a broad political process that needs to stop the trend we have seen of one party when in government ordering A, another party when in government cancelling A and ordering B, and another party wanting to postpone them all. What the exact format is.... I'm not sure if it is my place this morning to try to give you details, but I do know that in my life as a teacher and researcher almost everybody believes that the process is bust.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

All right.

Let me ask a more specific question then. I'd be curious to get an answer from the two of you.

In reference to the Canada-U.S. defence relations in regard to the defence of North America, I think it's important to discuss the replacement of CF-18 fighter jets. I'd be curious to know what capabilities and requirements you would recommend looking for in a fighter jet. Some witnesses who have appeared before this committee have indicated interoperability between allies is an important requirement. Can you comment on this? How is this important for the defence of North America?

I'd be curious to get your thoughts on this, gentlemen.

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

The interesting thing about the question we face ahead is that we've had a lot of confusion about what the purpose of this plane is going to be. The reality is that we're buying this plane for the next 20 or 40 years. The threats that we face today are not the threats we'll face tomorrow. The real questions when we look at this plane are: what are the long-lasting threats, and what are the long-lasting commitments that Canada has?

I have been very ambivalent about the F-35 project because it is incredibly expensive and the development process in the United States has made Canadian defence procurement look like it's actually not that problematic, because the F-35 has had all kinds of controversies about what it is and how expensive it's going to be, and all the rest. But I think the enduring reality that Canada faces is both as a member of NORAD and as a member of NATO. One of this plane's key selling points, as far as I understand it, is its interoperability.

What we've seen over the past 20 years in Canadian efforts in the world is that Canadian planes don't fly alone. They fly as part of other missions. So they flew to drop bombs on Serbia and Kosovo, they participated in the Libyan mission, and they're now participating in the reassurance package in eastern Europe. These are all part of NATO. So it does make sense that whatever plane we purchase interoperability be a fundamental feature of the plane. I think some of the competitors are actually pretty good at that, but there are various arguments we have for the various planes.

I do think interoperability is fundamental because Canada will never have enough capability, enough planes that is, by itself to thwart any menace besides the random one plane flying over the Arctic from Russia. But in any real crisis, it's not going to be one plane.

[Dr. Alexander Moens]

I'm in general agreement with my colleague. I want to add a few points.

First of all, the stealth capability, just beginning, is a capability that we ought to join because it's a process that we will join with NATO partners, and the United States, of course, in the development of an aircraft into the future. The F-18, even the Super Hornet, is an airplane built 20 or 30 years ago that has kept going, and that is not an option for the future. There may be some bridging possibilities, but for the future I think the reality of having a manned fighter plane will remain a necessity, especially given the enormous air, land, and sea space we have, for Canada to be in the frontier of technology.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you.

In the same vein, in terms of our ability to project power or to monitor our coastline, the Canadian government considers the Northwest Passage part of Canadian internal waters, while the United States and various European countries and allies maintain it is an international strait for transit passage allowing free and unencumbered passage.

What do you recommend Canada do to assert our sovereignty over the Northwest Passage?

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

I have to side with the Americans on this, that Canada, as a country that depends greatly on trade, depends on passage between other straits in the world. Our shipment of oil—if we want to ship it elsewhere—is going to pass through straits that belong to other countries. By the law of the sea, as I understand it—I'm not any legal expert by any stretch—basically Canada is pretty close to being alone in interpreting the Northwest Passage the way it's interpreting it. I think the best interest of Canada in the long run is to trade, essentially, and compromise with the United States over the Northwest Passage, and perhaps get a better slice of disputed territories beyond where Alaska and Canada meet offshore, where there are controversies over where the territory is.

Thus, I think in the long run it's not going to be beneficial to Canada to have a fight of Canada versus the rest of the world on a point of international law that Canada has agreed with up until this point in time, until it became inconvenient up north with the melting of the ice cap.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Thank you very much for that response.

Mr. Harris, you have seven minutes.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

It's rare that we have such a divergent view in a panel of two before this committee, but your views are equally interesting on both sides of the fence, I must say.

Also, we're very wide ranging, although we're studying the defence of North America. I will ask one question about the overarching issue we're dealing with, the joint strike fighter. Of course, stealth is one aspect of it. It's being challenged daily as to how stealthy, and when, and what the technology will be, and if it really is going to last, even if it was perfected for now, and how long it would actually be effective.

Also on interoperability, we've been told by the general in charge of transformation for the NATO alliance that interoperability has to do with how you work together, and that the NATO allies—28 nations—all bring what they have to the table, and their key is to figure out how all this works together and that interoperability was not the same aircraft. So that's also a debate that we're confronted with.

I will ask both of you, in terms of the defence of North America, we being the second largest country in the world, with a huge coastline and sovereign space. Is there a geographical imperative with respect to Canada's situation that might determine what kind of aircraft, or what kind of capabilities we might need to be able to patrol that space, to provide domain awareness, to provide interceptability, for example? Would these things play as equal or greater a role than having the same aircraft as somebody else?

I could ask both of you to deal with that.

[Dr. Alexander Moens]

I think the comment about interoperability you mentioned is very true, but it is not exclusive of technology. Neither is the question about the F-35 exclusively around stealth. It's about developing an aircraft with technology from today into the future, rather than working with—

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Can we stay away from the aircraft itself and talk about the requirements and expectations and what our priorities are as a nation for the defence of Canada, and about participating with the U.S. in the defence of North America?

[Dr. Alexander Moens]

I would say we don't know what our threats will be in five years from now. Therefore, since what we are trying to do in Canada is so ambitious and so difficult, we must be very careful not to go with the best, most modern technology available.

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

I'm a skeptic, because I do think that in arms races, advantages get offset, particularly in that particular field. We've seen a lot stories about that lately. I do think that the concern for the next plane would be how much area it can cover, not necessarily measured entirely by how far it can fly but by how far it can sense, and whether it has weapons systems that can reach out. The problem with Canada is that it's just such a very vast country, and any plane would have a hard time maintaining control over the entire airspace.

I think one of the priorities would be which planes have the best sensor package combined with the best ability to use weapons that are long range to compensate for the fact that they're going to be based in Bagotville and Cold Lake, and that means there are lots of places that are hard to get to.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

Professor Moens, we've had a number of witnesses so far in terms of the defence of North America talk about the Arctic as not exactly a demilitarized zone, but that we don't see any military threats in the Arctic, and the Americans tell us that they don't want to see the Arctic militarized. You're probably the first to suggest that we should have a joint plan with Denmark and the U.S. for military capability. Would you go that far—military capability in the north?

Why do you see that as being the circumstance? We even have Russia talking about not wanting to militarize the Arctic.

Why would you see that as important? Is it not an extremely expensive thing to try to do?

[Dr. Alexander Moens]

In my comments, just to clarify, I did not use “military capability” in that sentence.

I meant the ability to have air and maritime surveillance among three countries, because Denmark and Greenland guard the east flank, the United States guards the west flank, and we are in the middle.

So I do not mean this to be the militarization of the Arctic, because I agree with you that we do not have a Russian expression of interest or activity that would suggest that it's needed. But I do think that rather than trying to decide the Northwest Passage, which I think is not an important security question, there is an important need for joint surveillance among like-minded states.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

In your view, then, is NORAD and its mechanisms inadequate for that purpose, or are you suggesting that NORAD should have some joint capability with Denmark in terms of surveillance and domain awareness?

[Dr. Alexander Moens]

I'm suggesting the latter.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

That's interesting.

Perhaps, Professor Saideman, you could tell us, in terms of cooperation with the United States.... We had an interesting witness, a professor from Montreal, Professor Roussel, who talked about being a cautious continentalist, and who, I think, was expressing that in our dealings in partnership with the U.S. over continental defence, we need to be careful when defining what we want and what we don't want.

Do you have any views on how Canada and the United States can cooperate on continental defence, on the defence of North America, yet ensure that we don't have questions about our own being, as they say in Quebec, maîtres chez nous? Is that an issue for you?

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

I think the United States and Canada have a lot more in common than in conflict over protecting North America. The threats are similar—cyber, terrorism, those kinds of things, those distant kinds of threats. I think there's a lot of room to manoeuvre. I think we have a lot of experience through NORAD. I think we could build on NORAD. I would actually say that we could expand NORAD to cover the sea side of things, because there's a need to cooperate off the shores of our countries.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

We'll have to end that thought there.

Mr. Leung and Mr. Warawa are going to share their time, so I will let you know when three and a half minutes is up.