Evidence of meeting #47 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 rangers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Foreign military objects. Okay, that's good.
I didn't get a chance to look at your website before you came. I heard about it earlier today.
The essence is, do you use satellites as part of your array of intelligence gathering, or is that simply the means of communications to the south, as you pointed out?
Col S.M. Moritsugu
We do use satellites to communicate to the south, but we can't do that from Alert because Alert is so far north. It's around the curvature of the earth from where any geospatial satellites are, so we have a series of microwave radio towers that go down the spine of Ellesmere Island to Eureka, where we can just see the global geostationary satellites.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
So you are too far north. You're farther north than the satellite path.
Col S.M. Moritsugu
That's right, sir. At Eureka the satellite dishes are essentially pointing horizontally to point towards the equator.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
I did consult a map since I spoke to you. Are there parts of Greenland that are farther north than Alert?
Col S.M. Moritsugu
I believe there are parts of Greenland that are farther north, and when you're in an aircraft a few hundred feet up you can see Greenland off to the east. It's very good. There are cliffs over there. It's very close. Alert is the most northern permanently inhabited, or year-round inhabited, place in the world.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
You have 10 people there. Does Environment Canada have people there year-round?
Col S.M. Moritsugu
When I was there last, Environment Canada had at least four people there permanently.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
You have year-round occupation with at least 10 people there and Environment Canada has people. Is there anybody else?
Col S.M. Moritsugu
Yes, sir. There are a number of support people who the air force counts, but I don't. Colonel Lowthian should be able to talk about that in a couple of weeks, but we're talking about between 50 and 100 people in total.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
It's essentially a permanent operation there with between 50 and 100 people year-round supported by the air force.
NDP
Col S.M. Moritsugu
In 1956 we started signals intelligence, and it was a couple of years before that the station was constructed.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Your mandate is to supply that information to central command here in Ottawa or wherever?
NDP
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
The signals intelligence could be any kind of signals. They could be voice communications. They could be any electronic communications, electromagnetic communications, or electromagnetic signals of any sort.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
You could potentially detect engines even if they weren't communicating.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
All right. I'm not sure where else we can go with this, sir, except to say that we're glad you're there keeping an eye on things. It's obviously a very important part of the system, especially when, as you say, we can't communicate with satellites. Satellites can't really see what's going on either.