National Defence Committee on Feb. 23rd, 2015

[MGen Christopher Coates]

Sir, it would be disingenuous for me to say that we can ensure one hundred per cent security. What I can assure you is that we are in extremely tight coordination with those Canadian agencies that provide intelligence to us, that are the first line of defence in Canada for understanding what the threat is. We are very conscientious about threats today. We always were, but are more so now. There's a threat response, a real one, going on out in Comox right now as a matter of fact, because of the heightened level of awareness that people have to potential threats.

What I can assure you is that if there's a threat or even the generality of a threat identified, we are certainly in a great position to take every measure possible to ensure the safety and security of our troops.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you.

Just on a broader question—and this is a big question, given the number of personnel—how would you describe the morale of the men and women who serve here in the country? They obviously understand the risk. Is there a change in the thinking now, or are people just saddling up and getting ready? What's the feeling, in terms of when you're talking with your men and women, your colleagues, about what we're seeing around the world and how it struck home here recently?

[MGen Christopher Coates]

The first thing is that we all shared in the grief of the events of October, all of us in uniform. But then everyone seemed galvanized after that to get the uniform back on and to represent Canada, and to protect Canada and Canadians the best we can. I doubt that anything good could be said to come out of those events, but certainly, the strength of Canadians and the strength of men and women in uniform was apparent after that, and it still is.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Harris, five minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

General Coates, I'm going to follow up on the question of my colleague, Mr. Brahmi, about Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. I'm interested in how the decision-making goes down. You described a scenario where Admiral Truelove would independently make a decision, even if he didn't know what was going on—you, or I guess anybody else—and you also described the JTFW commander's decision to move in Calgary. Yet we have a situation described by Mr. Brahmi of the public safety minister and defence minister talking about deployment of troops.

How does this decision-making work, not only on this level, but with the Canada-U.S.? Are there pre-arranged protocols where you're called upon by USNORTHCOM, which says, “We need you”, and you just go? Or does there have to be authority given by someone else? And that's in both domestic cases and in the Canada-U.S. arrangement.

[MGen Christopher Coates]

It's a really big question and I'll try to compact an answer into the time available.

The process consists of two parts for responding domestically. There's either a planned response and it receives approval at a high level, potentially from the minister, down to the direction of the CDS to respond. What happened in Calgary was that the commander in Edmonton saw the situation developing, was in close contact with his provincial counterparts, who work on the north side of Edmonton, actually, was aware of what was going on, and started to move his troops down.

He called us and we were aware of what was going on, but it was on his authority. We didn't wait for a request from the Alberta minister of public safety across to the federal Minister of Public Safety, and down. It was apparent that wasn't going to be needed in that case.

If he was responding to an earthquake scenario, Rear-Admiral Truelove...we would expect all commanders, whether they're at the base level, the formation level, or nationally, to take those actions necessary to respond to Canadians in immediate distress. It's under that philosophy that he would respond to an earthquake scenario.

I can only imagine....If there was a structure remaining, if we were able to communicate very quickly after the earthquake, there would be national oversight of what was going on. We would be thankful for whatever initial steps he took, but then we would superimpose a national structure on that, a little bit like what happened with the floods in Calgary as well.

I can come back to that, if you'd like, but I'll quickly answer your question about international.

What exists under the Canada-United States civil assistance plan, CANUS-CAP, is a framework plan, and really just says to NORTHCOM and CJOC the factors that need to be considered, the command and control that would be put it place. It allows us to start having an initial conversation if, for example, in the case of Katrina—I wasn't around, but I can imagine if we had to do that again today—NORTHCOM would say to me or one of my officers, “We could use a couple of your Hercules”.

That request would go up to our minister and we would say, “They requested a couple of Hercules from us”. The same request would probably go over on the political side. Then we would get directed to provide; we would not respond unilaterally in that case. CANUS-CAP just provides the framework.

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

There's no pre-arranged authorization?

[MGen Christopher Coates]

No. None. Zero.

In the case of Vancouver 2010, that was a bit pre-arranged. We understood what the threat was going to be and there were some of these advanced CBRN capabilities that the U.S. had. They were, I'll say, pre-positioned on their side of the border, so that if an event had occurred, we had pre-scripted and worked out some arrangements where their response could be required.

There was some pre-arrangement there, but it was all authorized. It wasn't just military commanders acting on their own accord. It was acting within a scenario that had been pre-authorized.

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

I guess what you're saying—if I'm reading between the lines on Saint-Jean—is that once the initial response is taken, at higher and political levels, there can be other decisions made.

Is that the situation?

[MGen Christopher Coates]

I'm sorry. I'm not really familiar with Saint-Jean, but in general, yes.

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

I'm not asking you about that specific situation, but I'm saying that once the initial is done, there can be other decisions made by some other people more senior that yourself.

[MGen Christopher Coates]

Yes, absolutely.

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

Is it true what I'm reading here that your plans and priorities 2014-15 state that the army reserve will intentionally take the land forces lead in domestic operations with support from regular forces required?

Does that deal only with disaster relief or in general?

[MGen Christopher Coates]

I'm not familiar with....With that comment, I'd require more than 15 seconds to—

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

It's not a comment, though, it's a quote. It's a quote from your plans and priorities for 2014-15.

Anyway, I'll have to ask you later.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Mr. Bezan, for five minutes.

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

Thank you. I am going to ask one question and then Mr. Chisu is going to take the rest of my time.

We've had a lot of witnesses here talk about the use of UAVs or drones. I know that the Canadian Armed Forces made use of them in theatre, but has CJOC looked at making use of them as a domestic surveillance asset, especially dealing with the broad expanses of the north?

[MGen Christopher Coates]

We at CJOC provide a demand signal, so we say that this is the amount of surveillance we're looking for in various areas of the country, including the north. Then it's up to the force generators to satisfy that. For example, the demand signal we sent today is being satisfied by satellites and CP-140 aircraft, as well as contracted support that we share with other government departments under Transport Canada.

Under a project that I'm the operational sponsor of, there were some unmanned aerial vehicle trials that occurred in the north last year, so we are interested in that. The scenario last year was a search and rescue-based scenario using an unmanned helicopter. We are interested in this, but CJOC, per se, doesn't conduct experiments like that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Mr. Chisu.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

General Coates, you mentioned the cooperation between the United States and Canada regarding the military framework for provision of military support from one nation to the other in the case of civilian emergencies. You were mentioning in this context the Vancouver Olympics. In Toronto this summer they will have the Pan American and the Parapan American Games with the participation of 10,000 people from 41 nations.

Is there anything similar to what was going on in Vancouver for the winter Olympics going on or taking shape in this moment? Because I'm just thinking that in 2010 there was a different situational awareness and now there is a different threat and we know how it is developing. Now this event is taking place in the largest city in Canada with a great concentration of population, civilians and so on, much larger than in Vancouver.

[MGen Christopher Coates]

It's a very good question, sir.

Our regional joint task force commander, who is based in Joint Task Force Central Toronto, and his staff are linked in very closely with the games' organizing committee. He has representatives who work with the integrated security unit that's I believe under OPP jurisdiction.

At this time we do not have a demand signal from the province or from the games to provide support other than ceremonial support. We remain in very close contact with them. I'm in contact with my counterparts in other federal departments to make sure that we're all appropriately prepared if that were to change.

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

For my next question I'm just going back a little bit to the DART. When you were speaking about the DART and how it's deployable in one day or in 48 hours, do you have any reserve components in the DART? Or is it only led by the regular forces?

[MGen Christopher Coates]

No, it's regular force at this time, sir.

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

This additional question is about the training of the DART. I'm not speaking about the necessary military training and deployment and chain of command but the trades training, for example, how to be a carpenter and so on, plumbers, operators, Loki operators, because in my deployment in Afghanistan I had problems in the direct deployment with these trades.

[MGen Christopher Coates]

Sir, I'm not in a position to comment on their training other than to say that I'm aware that out of the Philippines deployment, for example, there were no post-operative points that identified les lacunesin the training. There were a lot of post-op points that came out that are being actioned, but none with respect to the training that I'm aware of.

I'm sure we could provide you with an answer. I'm not an expert though to address that.

Greg, do you have any familiarity with that?