Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, I'm pleased to have the opportunity to participate in your review of the defence of North America. I'll keep my initial comments brief.
Previous witnesses have provided you with input on a wide range of issues related to the subject at hand. While my first-hand military experience is now dated given my retirement from the military some 10 years ago, I've maintained a direct interest in many security and defence areas through my consulting work and my association with the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute. Having said that, I will focus my comments on NORAD to quite a few points on ballistic missile defence.
Several years of my military career were spent in NORAD or NORAD-related positions, the final one being the deputy commander of NORAD at the headquarters in Colorado Springs from 1998 to 2001. I am an ardent supporter of the partnership and am pleased to see that it remains a strong, efficient, and effective means of contributing to the defence of North America.
After 9/11, I was a proponent of expanding the NORAD mission to address other domains and was encouraged to see the inclusion of maritime warning as a step in that direction. Much of the binational cooperation that I thought we could achieve is now being coordinated bilaterally between CJOC and NORTHCOM, the Canadian Joint Operations Command, and Northern Command, which is fine. It may or may not be the most efficient way of operating but it seems to meet the needs of both nations. Lieutenant-General Beare offered you a fairly complete perspective in this regard in his comments given to the committee in May.
On a more general not, I cannot overstate the importance of our partnership with the United States in NORAD. We don't just work together; we operate in a fully integrated command. Tasks performed by Canadians and Americans are interwoven to the point where in most cases the nationality of the person performing them is immaterial. Canadians report to Americans and Americans report to Canadians throughout the structure. We share sensitive and highly classified information in order to perform the mission. We are dependent on each other even though the U.S. provides the majority of the resources. Throughout, the NORAD relationship engenders a level of trust that serves us well beyond NORAD issues. The success of the partnership and the professionalism of the Canadian military personnel have cemented personal relationships in both nations consistent with our inseparable domestic defence requirements. We Canadians benefit in the achievement of a priority national defence mission at a fraction of the cost were we required to do it on our own. Pursuing a natural evolution of the NORAD mission to retain its relevance and effectiveness must continue to be a priority.
Cooperation for aerospace warning and aerospace control along with maritime warning is good and important, but we could do much more. To that end, we should reconsider Canada's involvement in the ground-based North American ballistic missile defence system. Just as Canada participates with the U.S. in NORAD for aerospace warning and aerospace defence, it is a natural extension that Canada's participation in ballistic missile warning should evolve to engagement in ballistic missile defence. I've been an active advocate for Canada's involvement in BMD and was disappointed with the decision in 2005 to decline participation. I felt at the time, and still do, that we missed a great opportunity to reinforce our NORAD relationship, not to mention ensuring the protection of our sovereign territory from a rogue ballistic missile threat.
We subscribe to the necessity of the alliance to defend North America and yet we have abrogated our responsibility to the partnership with regard to the BMD mission. We have left it to the American side of NORAD to perform using their territory, their resources, and their rules. With improvements to the BMD system over the years there's a real risk that NORAD involvement will be marginalized to the point where the U.S. will want to consider excluding NORAD from missile warning altogether and simply execute both the warning and the defence mission themselves. I believe that we should engage the U.S. to assess how we might become involved. It is the responsible course of action for Canada.
Mr. Chairman, I look forward to providing whatever assistance I can in answering any questions you have.