Evidence of meeting #22 for National Defence in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was ships.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rick Norlock
Thank you very much. We'll have to end it there.
Mr. Williamson, you have five minutes.
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Thank you very much, Chair.
I'm going to come back to my question on defence of the Arctic and kind of skip the sovereignty issue and go to interest, because depending on how you look at it, if foreign ships are going through what we call Canadian waters, there will be some police oversight necessary. The same thing goes for some sort of air defence as well.
I do wonder if you're perhaps downplaying as well the buildup that we see from Russia with naval bases in ports and a greater emphasis on sea-based capacity in the north as well, and being prepared for that.
Again, getting back to that question, we'll skip the sovereignty issue. But we'll focus on the projection of power and our ability, whether it's a military conflict or not, to at least be able to police an area that we view as our zone of influence.
12:50 p.m.
Paterson Chair in International Affairs, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, As an Individual
I think that's one of the challenges of having all these ships—the frigates, the support ships, the icebreakers—being built all at once. We can't really do it all at once, and that's a challenge right now, right? So it does seem to me that building icebreakers is a priority. Building ships that can handle the north is actually perhaps a greater priority than others because it's something that is lacking more than anything else.
I would put a caution on the discussion about Russia's spending increasing by 10% or 20% per year. That is from a lower base. When we think about increasing spending, they're starting from a baseline that's much lower than the United States'. Somebody last week put it that the cuts the United States are making this year are the size of the German military budget. On the one hand that seems like a really big cut, but it suggests that the United States has a lot of capability.
Conversely, Russia is building from its low ebb in the aftermath of the Cold War, so it's trying to recover from years of neglect. The Chinese have a much more robust military program than the Russians. I'd say that we need to be concerned about their investments in the north, but as expensive as it is for us, it's expensive for them. If they're putting a lot of resources into building a lot of ports in the high north, that may not be a bad thing from our perspective because they're wasting money. They're spending a lot of money on that, just like they spent $50 billion on the Olympics that got them no reputation in the aftermath of Ukraine. If they want to waste money on things, then we should let them. We need to invest a little bit, but we need to think about a lot of perspective—
12:50 p.m.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Let me interrupt here. You're saying that if they send a ship or a plane in, then we shouldn't be worried about a quick response. Do we not have to, if not match—and I'm not saying dollar for dollar, but capabilities, in terms of being able to patrol our airspace so that if it is infringed upon, we're right there and not turning a blind eye to it because you viewed it as a waste of money?
12:50 p.m.
Paterson Chair in International Affairs, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, As an Individual
Absolutely. I'm not saying that Canada should not build a next-generation plane. One of the next-generation plane's day jobs is going to be encountering Russian planes that come close, no doubt about it, so we're continuing to invest in that. As I said, we should invest in some sea patrol vessels, both for environmental security problems, having ships that are dumping waste in our Northwest Passage, and also for dealing with whatever Russian ships come close.
But the question of trade-offs is apparent. We need to focus on those capabilities that we can afford, and not just focus on what the Russians are building. We need to remind ourselves that we cannot spend ourselves into the ground trying to keep up with the Russians, particularly by working with the United States.
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
12:55 p.m.
Professor, Political Science, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, As an Individual
12:55 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rick Norlock
Thank you very much for that extra time, which I will take up.
I'm a very practical person. I believe that the people who are footing the bill for military equipment should receive the maximum benefit of those investments where possible and where practical.
So to my question, we're talking about large purchases, such as ships and aircraft. If we purchase an aircraft other than the F-35, for which we belong to a consortium of nations, we can benefit by building parts for it, with the realization that we have arguably the world's fourth- or fifth-largest aerospace industry. We have no shipbuilding capability. We used to have it, so we want to build that up. From the standpoint of building jobs, building the economy, maximum benefits to Canadians in the long term, could you submit in writing the pros and cons of both of those issues that I outlined? I don't want to take up much more time.
Mr. Harris, you have five minutes.
12:55 p.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Thank you, Chair.
I was interested, Professor Saideman, in your comments that Canada could and should do less with less, given the constraints on military expenditures.
We've been criticized for spending too much money to do too many things, and not achieving all those things, and trying to be all things to all people. In your scenario of doing less with less, could you tell us what you would leave out? That involves priorities. I'm thinking of domestic priorities, the SAR and those things that we don't do well enough at the moment. But at the same time, you said we could do NATO and NORAD, meet our obligations there, provide international support for missions, with less money. Can you tell us, is there something you would leave out?
May 1st, 2014 / 12:55 p.m.
Paterson Chair in International Affairs, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, As an Individual
The classic example of this, and it's one that doesn't play well, is that Canada currently has four submarines that are semi-operable. Someone said, “We had a good year; we had 250 sea days.” That's four ships, meaning that on average one ship was able to operate for some portion of the year.
Submarines have a lot of great capability. I'm a big fan of submarines from when I was a kid reading about the U.S. submarine warfare in the Pacific. But it's an expensive capability, and Canada is unlikely to buy six, eight, or 10 new submarines in the near future, which is what it would need to actually do the job. Canada's submarines are entirely symbolic in the current format of having four submarines, two or more of which are semi-broken. To have a real submarine capability means to have a real submarine capability, and if Canada is unwilling to have a real one, I'm not sure why we should invest in having a fake one.
The problem is that if you stop having submarines entirely, then that means you're not going to have submarine capability for 20, 30, 40, 50 years out, and you lose the capability of the sailors and officers who are trained in this stuff. But the question I would then ask is this. Are we going to buy six or eight real modern subs in the near future? If the answer is no, then that's some place where we could have fewer officers and fewer sailors, and cut the size of the navy.
12:55 p.m.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Professor Moens, it's a big question, but you talked about being a Christian realist. I'm not sure exactly what that means. Other people who approach military matters from a Christian perspective talk about disarmament and trying to achieve peace through other means. Do you have any views on nuclear disarmament as a goal? It's listed as a goal for NATO, for example, as one of its important activities. Obviously Iran, North Korea, those are part of that but also nuclear disarmament in general. Do you have any views on that we should hear about?
12:55 p.m.
Professor, Political Science, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, As an Individual
I think my comment was that moral realism denotes this tendency to want justice, peace, disarmament, and the realization that interests clash and therefore it is possible to achieve only some of it. So nuclear disarmament falls, as all other types of disarmament, in the category of if the nuclear states can do it together, proportionally at the same time, then nuclear disarmament is highly desirable. If it means unilateral nuclear disarmament, I would say the political insecurity of the world is such that it would not be desirable.
1 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rick Norlock
With that, I am going to have to adjourn the meeting.
Thank you very much. Please get back to us in writing if you want to fully answer any question that you felt you didn't, and please keep in mind the question the chair asked, and we will share it with the other members.
The meeting is adjourned.