Evidence of meeting #23 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 defense.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake, MB
When the committee was in D.C. meeting with our counterparts in Congress, it was brought to our attention that the House of Representatives defence committee is concerned about the lack of infrastructure for protection from ballistic missiles on the eastern seaboard. I want to get your take on whether or not this is an area that needs to be beefed up, from a U.S. standpoint.
Also, we haven't talked at all with you about the Canadian relationship concerning BMD.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
As General Jacoby may have told you when you went to NORTHCOM, the United States has plans in place to strengthen our own ballistic missile defence against the emerging threat from North Korea and potentially from other nations as well. So the United States has a plan in place that it's executing.
In terms of U.S.-Canada collaboration on this issue, Canada is going to make its own sovereign decision as to whether it wants to engage in a ballistic missile defence cooperation with the United States. I believe that when the decision is made by Canada to revisit its current position, if a decision is made to engage in this dialogue, there could be fruitful opportunities for collaboration, but this is purely a decision for Canada to make.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake, MB
Just on Sunday we commemorated in Canada the Battle of the Atlantic, the longest battle that Canada faced during World War II. Ultimately we had command of the Atlantic fleet, and there were German U-boats that came within the shores of Canada and the United States and sank both navy ships and merchant marine vessels that were trying to deliver goods and services for the war effort. They were going after everything. Newfoundland was part of Britain at that time. Of course, they made a huge contribution as well.
To get to my point, things are changing in the world today. We see what's happening in Ukraine in the context of Russia. In considering threats to North American security, knowing what happened in the past, during World War II, do you have concerns—not only from the standpoint of the Arctic, which you say you see as involving more an environmental than a defence issue—that the aggression that Russia is demonstrating today in eastern Europe could spill over to other regions? I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
I have two quick answers.
First, with regard to Canadian military history, I wish I could march every American citizen through the Canadian War Museum here in Ottawa. The contributions of Canada for centuries now are really astounding.
With regard to the aggressive behaviour of Russia, I believe it exemplifies why Canada and the United States need to continue to press for NATO transformation and the revitalization of NATO, because the thought that Europe was going to be a zone of peace and that the risk of conflict in Europe was over, those days are long gone. I'm looking forward now to opportunities to collaborate within the NATO framework with all of our partners. It makes it essential to sustain the dialogue.
Conservative
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
I'd like to extend the conversation around maritime security.
I come from the west coast of British Columbia, and we share waters—the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Georgia Strait. We are very interconnected. At the northern part of British Columbia, southern Alaska of course has a lot of overlap in terms of maritime activity.
One question I have is whether you see the fact that our coast guard is a non-armed service in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, whereas the American coast guard is an armed service, as being a constraint on collaboration and cooperation in maritime defence.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
I do not. I think maritime collaboration is very strong. The recent exercise of the marine event response protocol—we had a big binational exercise, a potential terrorist threat coming from the maritime realm—shows how deep this collaboration already is.
Clearly, Canada and the United States are going to make their respective decisions on rules for the use of force, the degree to which armaments and other capabilities are going to be provided to their coast guard, but as each nation makes its own sovereign decision, a terrific foundation for collaboration exists, and it's getting stronger every day. That needs to be sustained.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
In terms of equipment capacity, at this point Canada does not have a resupply ship available on the west coast, because we only have one, and it had a big engine fire. It might not be put back into service. Essentially, with procurement failures over the last years, there may not be another supply ship until 2022.
Do you see the current kind of cooperation and collaboration as adequate, or does there need to be something more formal in terms of the utilization of supply capacity by the United States for Canadian purposes over the coming years, wherever there may be a big gap?
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
The United States is a little short of icebreakers; we have our own capability gaps. This is precisely why, on both a formal and an informal basis, I recommend that dialogue continue on how we can be in mutual support. In areas in which one nation lacks capabilities and another has strengths in that regard, let's figure out who can support whom and build a system that works better for both of us.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
You mentioned earlier, in response to a similar question around oil spill response, that it should be discussed at the Arctic Council. Is there something more tangible by way of a process that you would recommend? When you say “dialogue”, is this informal dialogue, maybe between commanders? Is it a particular framework for collaboration around sharing of equipment? Or is it something else?
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
I always start with NORAD, that being the crown jewel of U.S.-Canadian defence collaboration and indeed the gold standard for defence collaboration around the world.
There are opportunities in the maritime awareness and warning realm to tackle this question of understanding which ships of interest are transiting the Arctic in order to better share information and to sustain dialogue again on how we're going to invest at a time of terrific pressures on our respective defence budgets in building capability where it is short today.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
What do you see as major threats, aside from the ones that have already been discussed, such as oil spills from pipeline tanker projects or from ships transiting the Arctic? What do you see as the major threats that the maritime strategy needs to address in the collaboration between the United States and Canada?
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
I think of the Sun Sea incident. I think of risks that the maritime approaches to Canada and the United States would be exploited by adversaries, state and especially non-state; this needs to remain a focus of collaboration. I think of the law enforcement challenges posed by human trafficking and drug smuggling.
Again, these are shared challenges. We need a binational, collaborative approach to meet them.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rick Norlock
Thank you very much, Mr. Stockton.
Mr. Chisu, you have five minutes.
Conservative
Corneliu Chisu Conservative Pickering—Scarborough East, ON
Thank you very much, Mr. Stockton.
We have spoken extensively about cyber-security and the necessity to pay attention to cyber-defence. In your opinion, where is the threat coming from? Actually, who is the enemy, or the perceived enemy? You are not building a defence without knowing who potentially will attack your systems, basically.
I am excluding here absolutely North Korea, because they don't have the technical capability to do that. However, in the area we have seen, somebody has been flexing their muscles in Europe, and somebody else is flexing their muscles in Scarborough Shoal in the Pacific and is building up a great military capacity, which is not negligible. Two countries, which I haven't named yet, are building a great military cooperation. It is the height of their military cooperation.
Does the United States perceive a threat from something? The Cold War ended 20 years ago, but now a new situation is evolving quite quickly.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
I didn't use to worry particularly about the cyber threat from al-Qaeda's affiliates or from rogue nations such as North Korea. But over the last few years a very important development has occurred in the cyber realm, and that is the growth in black market sales of zero day exploits and other kinds of cyber-weapons that enable potential adversaries who never would have had the resources on their own to develop sophisticated cyber-weapons to buy them, no questions asked.
The proliferation of sophisticated cyber-weapons is a challenge and an opportunity again for U.S.-Canadian collaboration: what to do about this arms race, essentially, in cyber-weapons; whether there are opportunities through the Wassenaar Arrangement or other international cooperative arrangements that might begin to clamp down, knowing that doing so will be very difficult.
Conservative
Corneliu Chisu Conservative Pickering—Scarborough East, ON
When you are speaking about the technology of the arms race in the cyber war, who do you foresee will be the potential nations that can afford to have this technology? I don't think we cannot think about Russia or China in this area, because in most of the cyber-attacks you mentioned—you cited a water plant and so on—who was attacking it? I don't think it was North Korea or Iran.
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
Attribution for these attacks is notoriously difficult. Hackers operating on behalf of states, grey areas in terms of difficulty in figuring out attribution as to who exactly has launched an attack, is a problem that characterizes the cyber realm.
I'm all about understanding that the threat is going to become more severe and that we need to build protections against these threats. But at the end of the day, my working assumption is that an effective, large-scale attack will someday succeed, and so building resilience, building the ability to get the power grid, the natural gas system, or other critical infrastructure back up and running, is imperative.
Conservative
Corneliu Chisu Conservative Pickering—Scarborough East, ON
You were speaking about the infrastructure in the north. You cannot build a gas power plant, but what about nuclear mini-generators?
Managing Director, Sonecon, LLC, As an Individual
This is being explored in the United States in both the private and the public sectors. I agree with President Obama on the all-of-the-above strategy: pursuing every promising development for generating capacity, knowing that the imperative to reduce carbon emissions is absolutely vital. That's why we need to explore all of these opportunities, including renewables, as we discussed a little earlier.
Conservative
Corneliu Chisu Conservative Pickering—Scarborough East, ON
Okay.
Thank you very much for your presentation. It was very good.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Rick Norlock
We'll move on to our next questioner.
Mr. Larose, you have five minutes.
NDP
Jean-François Larose NDP Repentigny, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I would like to thank the witness again for being here.
Can you hear me, Mr. Stockton?