National Defence Committee on May 13th, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

I bring to order this meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence, as we continue our study on the defence of North America.

Before we begin, committee, you will notice on your agenda that we were to go in camera near the end of the meeting. We were going to talk about when we would receive the report on the ill and injured.

I have been informed that the in camera meeting is not necessary, because we will have that report before the committee on Thursday. It will come before you in printed form on Thursday, so there will be no need for the in camera portion of this meeting. It was the chair's desire, and it continues to be my desire, to get that report before the House before we adjourn for the summer.

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

I thought it was to deal with Ms. Murray's motion, but I was wrong.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Yes.

So at that time on Thursday, after our witness, we will have the executive summary of the report, just to permit the researchers to fill us in on a basic summary so that we can go away better prepared to roll up our sleeves and get it passed before the summer.

It's my pleasure today to welcome two witnesses: Lieutenant-General Stuart Beare, commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command, and Brigadier-General Loos, commander of Joint Task Force North.

Welcome, gentlemen.

General Beare, you have the floor for 10 minutes.

[Lieutenant-General Stuart Beare, Commander, Canadian Joint Operations Command, Department of National Defence]

Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for allowing us to be here with you today. This is my second time appearing before this committee, and it's a great pleasure to be back.

Let me start by saying how grateful we are for the National Day of Honour that took place on Friday of last week from coast to coast across our country, with a major event here on Parliament Hill recognizing the men and women of our forces for their service in Afghanistan and providing us the opportunity to recognize and thank Canadians for their tremendous support for us over those 12-plus years of our mission there.

So thank you for the National Day of Honour. We really appreciate that it took place and in a very public way with Canadians.

I take great pride in coming here to highlight today the great work of our men and women in the armed forces focused on the defence of Canada and the homeland. I am accompanied, as you mentioned, Mr. Chair, by Brigadier-General Greg Loos, who is my commander of Joint Task Force North. We both thank you for the invitation.

Today we will speak with you about the defence of North America. In this context, the Government of Canada has made it clear for us, in the Canada First defence strategy, that we must defend Canada while we also remain a strong and reliable partner with the United States in our shared responsibility to defend our homeland, the continent.

On the national front our mandate means that we not only provide first line military defence, but we also have an important role—and you see us routinely playing it out—in providing for the safety and security of Canadians as we support our federal and provincial partners in their mandate to deliver on safety and security missions.

For example, when we support law enforcement, whether it be in counter-terrorism, in illegal smuggling, or in responding to disasters such as floods, we work in partnership with a broad range of partners: Public Safety, the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Correctional Service of Canada, Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the coast guard, and Environment Canada, to name a few, as well as territorial and provincial partners.

A key part of our mandate in Canada is to conduct sovereignty operations all across the country. We are an Arctic country, and the Canadian Armed Forces affirm that. We conduct regular patrols for surveillance and security purposes, including of the northern airspace as part of NORAD, and maintain the signals intelligence facility at Canadian Forces Station Alert. A key part of what we do in the Arctic is in cooperation with other federal departments and agencies as well as with the territories. My command has a planning process that includes long-term plans, such as the northern employment support plan and the Canadian joint operations command planned for the north, both of which lay a solid foundation for the synchronization of our current and future activities and our collaboration with other government departments in the north.

The home front is our core mission, and the continental game is no less important.

The defence of North America is carried out in a joint, integrated manner. As you know, the military relationship we have developed with our American allies over more than 50 years is proof of the importance we attach to NORAD. From an operational perspective, the synergy that exists among the three continental commands—the Canadian Joint Operations Command, NORAD and USNORTHCOM—provides a solid foundation for developing our capabilities and accomplishing our mission.

The realities of today's world make this mission that much more difficult, since current threats are diverse in nature and have many different sources. To translate the synergy among these commands—which is the key to success—into concrete results, we must work to ensure that our two armed forces are wholly interoperable and coordinated with our civilian partners on both sides of the border.

In military jargon, this means striving every day to discover and comprehend what is happening, to be ready to respond and, when we must respond, to do so effectively. We watch, we prepare, we practice and we conduct operations.

We conduct daily surveillance operations in all domains. We do it to ensure we have the best possible understanding of the continental environment. We also prepare plans for every contingency, which means making sure that our partnerships with other government departments and agencies are working efficiently, as well as regularly exercising to maintain operational readiness. In other words, our goal is to achieve an optimum level of preparedness with our partners. In recent years we have implemented plans that highlight our willingness to have an effective, integrated response in particular with our United States Northern Command and U.S. partners. We have the civil assistance plan, which is a framework that provides guidance to the military forces for our two countries in support of civilian-led operations, such as in the case of natural or man-made disasters. We also have the combined defence plan, which details processes and procedures for interaction and interoperability between our two militaries during combined and parallel operations across multiple domains.

Planning for all contingencies cannot be successful without a solid tri command. That is a Joint Ops Command, NORAD, and U.S. Northern Command relationship. We hold annual tri command staff talks in which we continue to improve the defence, safety, and security of our nations. Furthermore in 2009 all three commands signed the tri command framework, which laid the foundation on how to operate and interact. It paved the way for the three commands to identify a series of action items aimed at improving cooperation, efficiency, and interoperability. In a similar vein, we also developed a tri command vision and strategy and a tri command Arctic framework. Finally, we exercise these plans together.

Long-term planning is also a key part of what we do. NORAD was renewed in perpetuity in 2006 while adding a maritime warning function. This means for us that we have to ensure that we keep the agreement relevant. Last year, under the direction of both Chiefs of Defence, Canada and the U.S. initiated a strategic review to analyze and examine the threats and ensure that NORAD remains informed, ready, and above all, capable of responding. We too in CJOC, partnered with NORTHCOM, are evolving in parallel with NORAD. The result is ensuring that the sum of CJOC, NORAD, and NORTHCOM actions keep us on top of any threat we may face.

Finally, as you may be aware, I come before you today probably for the last time as I am retiring this fall. It has been and remains an honour and a pleasure to serve Canada with so many superb Canadians in uniform being so well supported and admired by a great nation.

I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Thank you very much.

We hope you have a long and fruitful retirement. We appreciate that information. We will hear your response to some questions. I suspect that General Loos will also receive some questions.

We'll begin with Mr. Chisu for seven minutes.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much, generals.

Thank you, especially General Beare, that you are here again. It was a great honour to serve with you in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2004.

What are the Canadian Joint Operations Command's five most difficult challenges right now? What is the plan to overcome them?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

Mr. Chisu, thank you for the question.

In terms of the defence mission in the homeland, be it in Canada or partnered with the United States, the perennial and persisting challenges include natural disasters and the requirement to provide for the safety and security of Canadians in the face of natural disasters; and man-made disasters, be they accidental or deliberate, in particular when in comes to hazardous materials and what we've seen recently, for example, within Canada itself in terms of man-made disasters.

In the homeland we're challenged to ensure that we provide for the aerospace defence mission and to be confident that we're on top of aerospace threats into the continent. Clearly, NORAD is leading in addressing that particular challenge. Approaching our nation are threats and challenges that can be related to illegal immigration, transnational criminal organizations, and their influence within Canada and North America. And last but not least, we remain responsible for and capable of providing for the defence and security in our maritime domain on the approaches to Canada. Clearly, we're undertaking that responsibility with our maritime security partners, as well as our American partners.

Within the homeland, man-made and natural disasters keep us preoccupied every day. We are preoccupied every day with the approaches to the homeland aerospace and maritime space, and with the human networks or the threat networks that know no boundaries.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Could you please provide an overview, General, about the activities in the Arctic? We have three oceans surrounding our country and I understand that the United States has pivoted toward the Pacific. The Arctic is becoming a very interesting place for some nations who would like to claim a little bit more than they need to. In this context I would like to ask you if you could elaborate on what the threats are in the Arctic, what kinds of operations are conducted by some other nations, and what we can do to preserve our sovereignty in the Arctic.

[LGen Stuart Beare]

I'll definitely defer to my Commander of Joint Task Force North here in a moment. I know you've heard this before, but there's a universal consensus that we see no direct military threat to our interests in our Arctic. But we do see an incredible increase, a significant increase, in the civilian activity and commercial activity in our Arctic. All of that creates the requirement for better domain awareness and understanding of what's going on in our Arctic so we can provide for the safety and security of our people and our interests in the Arctic.

That said, I will ask General Loos to give you a bit of a better feel for the kind of things he's seeing, especially with the security and safety partners in the Arctic on a routine basis. Greg.

[Brigadier-General G.D. Loos, Commander, Joint Task Force (North), Department of National Defence]

Thank you for the question.

I believe there are two parts to it. The threat has already been dealt with, but certainly there's an increase in activity across the board. One of the first parts of my mission in exercising sovereignty is knowing what's going on. That's a big thrust for us, to get better at surveillance, and get better at integrating and fusing information from different sources and from partners, so we know what that activity is, where it is and, if necessary, how we can get there after being able to locate it.

There is more commercial activity and other shipping activity. There are certainly more adventurers there, both summer and winter. We make it part of our business to try to keep tabs on that activity, in the event that we get a request from other northern partners—whether they be federal, territorial, or municipal—to come and help with search and rescue, or to respond to any crisis situation.

In terms of activities more broadly, I would say that I administer and look after one group of activities under my own command to exercise sovereignty, and to prepare and posture ourselves to respond to any kind of operation—safety, security, or defence. We hold operations on a regular basis, and we call them the N series. Operations Nanook, Nunakput, and Nunalivut are in different areas with slightly different focuses, but in all cases we look to work with other government departments to get better at that piece.

I won't speak to the details, but the army as well has ramped up its activities in the north so that it's better prepared to come up and operate when I call for it in time of need.

The air force has regular activities in the north, whether it's resupply to Alert, surveillance missions with the CP-140, or NORAD activities. For anything that we call to move north, in terms of forces, we've got airlift support that goes up.

The navy also has a presence in the north through fisheries patrols, and also through something we call Op-QIMMIQ, which is about surveillance and presence.

Those activities are integrated, and in our premier northern operation, Nanook, they're meant to be joint. We bring all those forces together. We bring our interagency forces together, and some of our allies, with a different set of scenarios each year.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Thirty seconds.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

How is the cooperation going with the United States in the Arctic, if you can say? You know, the Arctic has Alaska there, so....

[LGen Stuart Beare]

I'll just say, through the tri-command Arctic framework, with joint-ops command, the United States Northern Command, and NORAD, we have put in writing, and then translated into action, very routine interactions about our shared Arctic interests in safety, security, and defence. JTF Alaska is a battle buddy, U.S. Joint Task Force North, sharing an Arctic frontier.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Norlock]

Thank you very much, General.

Mr. Jack Harris for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, General Beare and General Loos, for coming to us. In particular, and thank you, General Beare, for your long service to Canada in the forces. Sometimes when I see young men like you leaving, I'm wondering where all that experience is going and whether it could hang around for awhile to benefit the Canadian people. I wish you well in your retirement.

Your command, sir, is the combination of three previous commands: CEFCOM, the Canadian Expeditionary Forces Command; the Canada Command; and the Canadian Operational Support Command, which was stood up in 2012. Is that still the case? Do you still have all those responsibilities?

You talked about the primary role being the defence of Canada and Canadian sovereignty, as well as disaster relief and other aspects, or what I call defending Canada and protecting Canadians. In that mandate, is the search and rescue responsibility there? They answer to you?

[LGen Stuart Beare]

They are—

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

And the nods won't be picked up on our—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

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

—transcript, but I appreciate the answer.

[LGen Stuart Beare]

Sorry. I'll have to learn how to translate this into a “yes”.

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

Thank you.

So you are responsible and they report to you as well.

[LGen Stuart Beare]

That is correct.

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

Also, General Loos mentioned the availability of the patrolling of the north and you mentioned the coast guard. Are the activities in the north—I don't want to call them integrated—are they integrated in the sense of, do you work on planning for patrols to create presence? Presence is obviously an important matter, as you mentioned, General, but is that something that you've worked out with the coast guard in terms of timing, in terms of who's going to be where and when?

[BGen G.D. Loos]

I would say that we absolutely have a normalized relationship. We don't have an integrated plan for surveillance and presence, but we're certainly aware of each other's activities and end up providing support to each other.

The one thing I will say is that it's been very refreshing in my time commanding in the north that the whole government collaboration really is—

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

I get the collaboration part and I would be extremely disturbed and surprised if there weren't collaboration. But just from a planning perspective, there is no idea that there should be one ship in there at any particular length of time for coverage or whatever?