Evidence of meeting #48 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 operations.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Commander, Joint Task Force (North), Department of National Defence
No. I'm not sure if your question is about the training or about the availability of certain trades and the relative numbers?
Conservative
Corneliu Chisu Conservative Pickering—Scarborough East, ON
The training of the trades. For example, I have had the problem that navy electricians were not able to bend the conduit.
Conservative
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Thank you, Chair.
I enjoyed this discussion. It's interesting.
I wanted to ask a question about threat assessment and how you arrive at threat assessment.
Recently I was listening to a Freakonomics program, and they had brought on four experts on terrorism. And the question was, if you were invited to President Obama's recent meeting, which I think our public safety minister went to, what advice would you give the President on threat assessment? And they talked about the efficiency of terrorism, that you get a lot of bang for the buck, for want of a better of term, and the inverse, which is that we pour a lot of resources into coping with the threat of terrorism with sometimes questionable results in the end, and so it's a reverse.
Interestingly, they made the same comment that you made, which is toxic chemicals or the spread of toxic chemicals is probably the most significant terrorist threat. Their argument was it's really more good luck than good management and maybe just the stupidity of terrorists to not realize that this is actually the most significant threat to a large population.
Mr. Chisu's talking about the Pan Am Games where there will be a large gathering of people and so a smart terrorist wanting to do really serious damage would use an event such as that and would use chemicals rather than other forms of terror.
I just would be interested in your thoughts on whether that is in fact an appropriate threat analysis, that it is, if you will, the chief of your worries.
Deputy Commander (Continental), Canadian Joint Operations Command, Department of National Defence
Toxic industrial materials are certainly the most probable threat in a CBRN portfolio that we would face, I believe, in Canada. It's the most probable.
To be more general in a response to your question, sir, CJOC isn't responsible per se for threat assessments. It is the chief of defence intelligence who does that and analyzes all of the information and offers a threat assessment, or the civilian counterparts would also do that.
It is my sense that our military threat assessments have largely been based on the previous generations of threats, which were characterized by intentions and capabilities. Given the unpredictable nature of the current situation and the adversary, the factor of vulnerability is an interesting one from an operational perspective. It's not only considering from the adversary's perspective, their capability and intent, but perhaps from our perspective considering vulnerability and somehow rolling that in. I don't know that we've taken that to the level where it's useful yet.
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
It's an interesting proposition because the old axiom is that we're already well prepared to fight the last war, and this is a whole new dimension.
There's a lot of conversation right now about Bill C-51 and all of that terrorist thing. Would Bill C-51 have any impact on your daily business, in effect, because part of the strength of it is more interoperable coordination among the various assessments—
Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Do you think that you're moving more towards that ability to generate assessments in a timely fashion?
Deputy Commander (Continental), Canadian Joint Operations Command, Department of National Defence
Sir, I only have a cursory knowledge of Bill C-51—
Deputy Commander (Continental), Canadian Joint Operations Command, Department of National Defence
—and it's my sense that it would be the chief of defence intelligence who would be the recipient of any benefits that would come from that. I understand there may also be an operational element to Bill C-51 and maybe that would have an effect on us as we work with our other government department partners in addressing certain scenarios. But I'm not at the point where I could answer better than that.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Peter Kent
Thank you, Major General Coates and Brigadier-General Loos.
Thank you for your time with us this afternoon and the contribution that your testimony has made to our study of the defence of North America.
We will suspend, colleagues, while the room is cleared and then resume for committee business.
[Proceedings continue in camera]