National Defence Committee on Feb. 18th, 2015

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

Since you're dealing with electronic information, one of the questions I have is whether or not you have constant access to information. Do atmospherics interfere with the consistency or the quality of your signals intelligence? For example, would you be shut down by the northern lights as electronic noise of some sort?

[Col S.M. Moritsugu]

Yes, sir. The high frequency, which is the long-range radio type that people use in ham radios and up, is strongly affected by atmospheric conditions. It's a physical thing, because a lot of the signals bounce off the atmosphere, and the layers at which they bounce change with things like solar flares. Everybody, not just us, is affected by that, which is why sometimes you can pick up a skipped signal, from AM radio in particular, from central United States as you're driving to Toronto, and other times you can barely pick up Kingston as you drive by it. The same principle applies to us, except we're talking about longer distances.

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

Because you're looking at foreign signals, you're not looking back in Canada but looking out to the whole array. You indicated there was no cooperation with other allies, so NATO is not involved in any of this at all and it doesn't get any access to your signals or information—

[Col S.M. Moritsugu]

Sorry, I said there is no direct cooperation from me to them. There's me back to Ottawa and—

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

—to Ottawa and whatever.

Okay.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Mr. Brahmi.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

To follow on the question my colleague Ms. Michaud asked about electronic non-communications intelligence, do you also include all the scrambling and warfare operations that an enemy might carry out? Does that come under what you exclude from communications? Is it just scrambling?

[Col S.M. Moritsugu]

Scrambling or encryption of communications is extremely common in military communications because all of us, no matter who we are, want to keep what we're doing hidden from anybody who, like us, might want to know what we're doing. So—

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

I'm also talking about aggressive scrambling where the goal really is to interrupt communications between enemy forces.

[Col S.M. Moritsugu]

The term we would use for that in English is “jamming”, which means that somebody sends a signal to interfere with ours.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

That's it, jamming.

[Col S.M. Moritsugu]

That is a tactic, but it's so aggressive that it's the type of thing that's getting close to being a conflict, if people are doing things like that to each other.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Actually, my question is this.

In electromagnetic non-communications emissions, do you include jamming from sources outside Canadian facilities? I don't think my question was clear.

[Col S.M. Moritsugu]

Yes, sir. Jamming would be included in our electronic intelligence. If we think of pursuing that, it would be very important and indicative of something to us.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

And it would be defined as non-communication.

[Col S.M. Moritsugu]

That's correct.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Right, okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you, Mr. Brahmi.

Mr. Bezan, I understand you have just one minute here.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Yes, before you adjourn I have one last question for the colonel.

I appreciate your taking time to be here, especially on short notice, and giving us this background information that is important to us in forming our position in our report on the defence of North America.

You do talk about your responsibilities within Canada and relationship to NORAD, and the binational relationship that we have with the United States. You talk about three facilities, one in Alert, one in Gander, Newfoundland, and one in Masset, British Columbia. Do the capabilities exist there to patrol all the airwaves that you're monitoring and to do signals gathering, or do we rely on the Americans to help fill that gap in Alaska?

[Col S.M. Moritsugu]

Our own sovereign sites allow us to cover our borders and those approaches to North America. Basically, I would say we're good with the three that we have.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

So, everything you're looking for, of course, is in the three main areas.

I know there are some things you can't comment on, but if you have submarines under the ice, the only time you can ever really see them or hear them is when they're trying to communicate back to their home base.

[Col S.M. Moritsugu]

That's right. If they stick an antenna up and talk and they're making an emission of some sort, the intent would be that we would hopefully be able to pick that up.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you very much, Colonel, for your time with us today and for operating within the constraints of which we are well aware.

Colleagues, just to give you a heads-up, I've been requested to identify the witnesses for next week's meetings.

On Monday, we're scheduled to have Major-General Coates, the deputy commander of CJOC, continental operations; and Brigadier-General Loos, commander of Joint Task Force North.

At our Wednesday meeting, we're scheduled to have Rear-Admiral Newton, commander of Joint Task Force Atlantic and commander of Maritime Forces Atlantic.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

We could always put reductions into their statements, so that Joyce could have other questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

The meeting is adjourned.