Evidence of meeting #34 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 norad.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Perhaps it's unstable enough not even to last longer than the next few years.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Sir, could I ask you one more question? I'm running out of time, here.
I believe you spoke about the tri-command with the CJOC and USNORTHCOM and NORAD command. Are you satisfied with that, or have you argued in favour of a more integrated approach between the two countries?
LGen George Macdonald
I guess in this context I remain a pragmatist. Dr. Bow has given you some pretty good ideas about what could be done differently, and I would have argued, when NORTHCOM was set up in the States that NORAD could have piggybacked onto that opportunity to make more than NORAD, and to make more of that broader command that would be a shared command between Canada and the United States. But some years have gone by since then, and it has evolved to the tri-command issue. My approach would be that if we can improve it, yes, but I'm not sure there's the will or that the interests of both nations are consistent with making those changes.
Conservative
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Thank you both for being here today.
We've heard a lot about the evolution of NORAD in conjunction with the rising importance of the Arctic, although there is debate about how quickly the Arctic is changing in terms of both shipping and other possibilities in the north.
Given the increased attention to the Arctic, how do you think Canada should approach the issue of sovereignty over the Arctic looking at the question through a North American lens? I'm not talking in terms of disputes we have with the United States, but in terms of protection of the Arctic. Should that be done through NORAD, or is that something that Canada is really going to have to put an increased emphasis on, whether it's through a beefed-up coast guard or through the RCMP units that are scattered throughout the north?
What's your thought on that? What's the best way to maintain our eyes and ears in oversight of the Arctic?
Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute
I think there's no single thing that we have to do and many of the things that we would have to do in order to have a more ambitious assertion of our presence in the Arctic are things that have nothing to do with NORAD. To the extent that NORAD is relevant to the Arctic, it's mostly about missions in the Arctic area that are air surveillance, air response, and some kinds of maritime activity that are relevant to NORAD. In that sense we should feel encouraged by the fact that we already have NORAD in place as a mechanism for establishing dialogue and cooperating with the Americans on some of those issues. NORAD is not a fix-all for this and we shouldn't be thinking about our approach to the Arctic more broadly as something that goes through NORAD.
LGen George Macdonald
I would agree with that. I think that obviously, the airspace control mission in the north is something that NORAD does. Maritime warning applies to the Northwest Passage as well. That's an evolving mission that has occurred and has engendered cooperation between the two countries, but there's much more that we do independently of that as well.
LGen George Macdonald
There are army exercises and the deployment of maritime patrol aircraft and space surveillance.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
How would you both assess the maritime component of NORAD?
LGen George Macdonald
I don't have any direct personal first-hand understanding of this, but my understanding is that the evolution of it was fairly slow to start. After about four years of initiation they started to develop real information. Now they gather information from all the stakeholders who are involved and have been issuing maritime advisories for the last two or three years. NORAD is the place where all that information is fused on behalf of not just NORAD, but everybody that's involved.
I think it has evolved into a functional, useful mission and is recognized to be so.
Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute
I would agree with that. It's important to recognize that maritime warning, whether it happens through NORAD or not, is an inherently much more complicated thing than air defence or air warning. If we go back to the Cold War context it's really just our air force and the American air force, two entities, cooperating with each other. It's a relatively straightforward thing, though in practice more complicated.
After 9/11 air warning obviously expanded. We had the FAA and other civilian agencies involved in the process, but it's still a relatively small number of players bringing information together into one package and trying to work with that.
Maritime warning is much more complex with many more players involved. It shouldn't be at all surprising to us that it takes a longer time for us to get to the point where we're not just in the process of actually exchanging information but we're actually in a position to make good use of it; the right kind of filtering is going on, and once information is packaged together, it can be put out to stakeholders in a way that is useful to them.
I think at this point in the process it's still very early days. A lot of the participants feel that they pool information into the centre and then it comes back to them, and they say, “That's what we told you two days ago and now you're sending it back us.”
I think in the longer term there is plenty of potential for them to get beyond that and to have a more meaningful centre that actually digests that information and can do more than just give out advisories.
LGen George Macdonald
I won't take issue with the complexity of one mission versus another, but the reality is that the kind of maritime warning that's done is kind of the core competency of NORAD: to collect information, fuse it, disseminate it, assess it, take action. It's a natural, in some respects.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Is the thinking behind the maritime component one of combatting smuggling? Is it security? Is it all of the above? Is it to just issue marine weather advisories? I don't know the degree of information, but what are they hoping to get out of this if they're able to get all the various parts put together, all the various agencies and whatnot?
Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute
It is a security initiative. It all depends. The information will come up through the process, and then it can be shared in ways that are useful in other domains, but it is primarily a security initiative.
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Do I have time for another question, Mr. Chair?
Conservative
Conservative
John Williamson Conservative New Brunswick Southwest, NB
At the end of the day, we have this structure in place, if it goes well, with NORAD marine. To me, it seems that one strength with the air capability of NORAD was radar, but we also had the ability to send planes out to provide eyes on the ground if we needed to. It seems to me that if we're going to do that in the north as well, Canada is going to need some sort of presence there, whether it's a coast guard or marine presence, to complement what NORAD's collecting. Am I right on that thinking? What's your thought on that?
Fellow, Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute
Certainly there's not much point in just collecting information and not having the capability to do something to act on that information. Whether or not all of those responses have to be things that are managed directly by NATO is a question to be worked out.
I guess it depends on what we are talking about. If we're talking about Russian air incursions, then it's probably something that would be handled through NORAD. It would rely on a mixture of the air assets we already have and the ones that Americans can bring to bear. There's some room for coordination so that the two capabilities can complement one another.
If it's something else like pollution at sea, then totally different players and totally different kinds of assets would come into play.
Conservative
Liberal
Arnold Chan Liberal Scarborough—Agincourt, ON
Thank you, gentlemen, for your presentation, and thank you very much for what you've suggested.
I wanted you to comment on something that's occurred over successive governments and over a long period of time.
We've gradually seen a reduction in defence spending across the board. This has really reduced Canada's capacity to reinvest in capital and reinvest in equipment, even to the extent that it's affecting our ability to have spare parts for existing equipment. On top of that, we've started extending ourselves in a number of other missions around the world, including Afghanistan, and perhaps even our recent mission in engaging ISIL.
Do you think the gradual reduction in defence spending and these various deployments ultimately affect our capacity to invest and commit to our relationship in NORAD?
LGen George Macdonald
We have always accorded the defence of Canada and the defence of North America as the primary mission. In the end, the direct investment in NORAD is not that great beyond the personnel involved and the sustainment of fighter forces and so on that are involved.
There's no doubt, though, that there's a potential for an incipient degradation of our overall defence capability that may narrow us down to something less of an ability to deploy internationally, with the defence budget decreasing.
