Evidence of meeting #49 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 ships.
A recording is available from Parliament.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
All right. Please keep your answers a little short, because I only have five minutes here, and I have a few other questions. Thank you.
You talked about the MSOC operations as being very important for domain awareness. Is it the operation that provides domain awareness to NORAD, or is that a different operation?
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
This defence committee, in the last Parliament, visited Halifax and went to an operations centre through a locked door and vacuum lock and all sorts of security to get into the main operations centre, where a lot of that activity took place. I can't recall whether that was the MSOC area, but I know it was the biggest and most elaborate domain awareness—
RAdm John Newton
Yes, we will take the military element of the overall picture and provide it to NORAD. NORAD is always vacuuming up the picture through the United States Navy, through the U.S. Coast Guard, and through an agency called MIFC LANT. We contribute to that continental picture. We certainly don't give away RCMP, CBSA, and Transport Canada confidential information.
NDP
RAdm John Newton
Yes, sir. It's a combination of two centres. It's the MSOC paired with the joint operations centre which is my headquarters' watch floor.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
So you're the liaison with NORAD with respect to that part of NORAD's activities.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
But this is purely domain awareness. There is no operational side to that?
RAdm John Newton
Well, there's the whole-of-government. There's the Canadian sovereignty piece—
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
No, no, I understand that. But in terms of the NORAD central command, you're not a part of that. You're feeding into NORAD, the domain awareness piece—
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
—if I can use that inelegant term. But that part goes off to NORAD.
In terms of operations from NORAD, you're part of the Canadian command. Whatever response there might be, that comes from somewhere else.
RAdm John Newton
Yes, sir. I am taking several million data points of information and resolving them down to about 2,000 ships on the sea, and then I give that shipping plot to NORAD. Do I know if somebody at the other end is looking at the shipping plot or do they actually wake up when there's an incident? I think it's more the latter. But I'm feeding the shipping plot into the United States Coast Guard, the United States Navy, and Homeland Security-type enterprise.
NDP
Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL
Okay, thank you.
If I may go back to some questions that Ms. Murray was alluding to, we've got a recorded statement from Vice-Admiral Norman back in December 2013 regarding the 2014-2017 business plans and concerns about competing priorities testing the ability to do your mandate. Also, the chief of review services in what I would consider strong language for an internal document, stating that the navy would be obliged to do less with less.
I'm wondering if you could tell us what less have you ended up doing as a result of the lesser amount of resources available to the navy?
RAdm John Newton
Just for a way of a reference point, the sea days of the navy have not decreased, but sea days are only one measure of our readiness. I have reduced the number of major ship exercises down to two major ship exercises every year instead of three. But in doing that, I make the major multi-ship exercises better exercises. I put more resources into those events. That's one thing I've done, if there was ever a translation from going to something less. I can't deny again that I do not have a replenishment ship and I do not have one of the command platforms, HMCSIroquois. I continue to operate HMCSAthabascan until 2017 to help generate helicopter pilots for the air force, to do the continental and homeland mission, and to do patrols like the fisheries patrols or a counter-drug intercept, if required.
So sea days have stayed the same. I've taken the number of major multi-ship exercises and I've reduced them to two but I've made them bigger. I go looking much more assertively for big exercises with allies around the world to get the missing pieces that I could have generated had I had Preserver still operating. That's why I'm in Virginia operating—and commanding—we are commanding an American naval force to help them generate their readiness as all navies look to a smart defence with their allies to generate more in a period of less.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Peter Kent
It's time, Mr. Harris. We were generous.
Yes, it did fly by.
Mr. Opitz, please.
Conservative
Ted Opitz Conservative Etobicoke Centre, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In fairness to what Mr. Harris said, Admiral, I'm finding it hard that we don't have enough resources to do what we're doing because we have, I think, committed a significant amount of resources and dollars in the fact that we've been upgrading our ships, upgrading our platforms, and getting a lot of new capability on the Halifax. Of course, we're working on the Cyclones and will be coming online.
All those new capabilities obviously cost a lot of money and take a lot of time and effort to put in place. From my perspective I think we have done a great deal in making sure that our readiness and our capabilities are there. Just like any navy, just like any piece of equipment, whether it's a lab, ship or an airplane, they eventually do wear out. And our supply ships clearly have had some issues, and we're working on that.
Can you make some comment on the resources that you have received from this government to be able to keep you at a readiness state?
RAdm John Newton
Oh, we're thrilled to death with the Halifax class modernization. It is moving very quickly toward full-up success in so many different ways. The capacities of new technology undoubtedly give you more capability than you had in older systems.
The number of ships is a quality in its own right, and we will see the number of our ships repair fairly quickly with the delivery of a whole new class of ships called the arctic offshore patrol ships or the Harry DeWolf class. This is going to push the Canadian navy fully as a partner into the Arctic domain.
We've come through a period of difficult sailing with our submarine fleet, and we are well on our way to operating three submarines, because we've committed the resources, talent, and intellect in our training with allies to generate them to high readiness.
Regrettably, we've laid up three of our ships which thrilled the heck out of us in our operational life over 40-plus years, and we couldn't have asked them to do more. We are sad for the sailors who put so much into them, but our navy is transitioning very quickly to the modernized Halifax class, working with a modernized air force. We can see in the front windshield the Cyclone coming at us. We believe in our submarines like nobody else, and we are being asked to participate in international operations because we still have effect and relevance.
I would say, sir, that we've taken the back end of the business and given it a strong shaking. We call it “evolving the business of our business”. We've emptied out all the ways we've done business. We've thrown all the Scrabble pieces on the floor, and we've rewritten doctrine, policy, and planning in the Royal Canadian Navy to always prioritize the generation of the fleet. Maybe we've kicked ourselves about the way we used to do things in our schoolhouses, the way we ran our governance, and how we had different people doing the same thing, and we got it down to as lean as we can to bridge to this period of the modernized fleet.
Conservative
Ted Opitz Conservative Etobicoke Centre, ON
Now, in Operation Nanook, the JTF commander was saying that the Fleet Diving Unit Atlantic and the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre were the overall participants. Can you describe how these elements interacted with one another overall, and how successful it was, in particular the lessons learned that were gained as a result?
RAdm John Newton
Sir, the navy is pretty proud of the fact that it has a long heritage operating in the north and leading the rest of government to solve Arctic problems.
HMCS Labrador was a navy ship in 1954. It cruised the Northwest Passage, helped build the DEW line, and put Canada in the north in a particular period in time when sovereignty was in our highest demand, and there was a full-blown Cold War. All through the seventies and eighties we led science missions and universities to the north on our ships. We returned to the north with a vengeance after a 10-year gap in 2001, the year of 9/11. We are the ones who put joint task force exercises on the map in the north with Operation Narwhal, or Exercise Narwhal at the time, which has evolved into Nanook.
To us, the Arctic is a maritime domain. It's an archipelago, an inland sea, the Arctic Ocean, Baffin Bay, Davis Strait, and the Beaufort Sea. We have been a good partner there. We just need to expand the period of time when we can be the partner in that maritime domain, and that's what AOPS is going to give us.
If it comes down to search and rescue, you are probably going to have a maritime component, because the aboriginal peoples use the water to move in the Arctic. If it's going to be a loss of a helicopter or an airline crash in the north, dime to dozen it's going to find water and it's going to have a diving component. If it's increased shipping, there could be an accident. There could be casualties and evacuees, and that was the scenario of Nanook last year. Also, there could be an environmental element in our pristine north, which is something the coast guard and Transport Canada are focusing on.
The navy is well situated. It was well situated. It will be exceptionally well situated with the arctic offshore patrol ship. It's a big ship, long-range, high-volume, and multi-purpose. It's the perfect element of support—arms support, constabulary support—toward the other federal departments. We've already built the teamwork to be a whole-of-government presence in the north.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Peter Kent
Thank you, Admiral. You're out of time, Mr. Opitz.
Ms. Murray, please. You have the final five minutes.
Liberal
Joyce Murray Liberal Vancouver Quadra, BC
Thank you, and thank you for your frank answer to the question that my colleague, Jack Harris, asked.
I think it's important for the listeners and the viewers of this committee to know that there are members of Parliament who are holding the government to account for having said one thing and done another and that we are asking how this actually affects the Canadian Armed Forces. And, frankly, I think that it's fine for the government-side members to preen their feathers about how great the government is doing, but the reality is that there have been significant budget cuts and somebody called it, “...a snarled, impossible mess, riven with intra-governmental factionalism and disputes, with no relief in sight...”, in terms of procurement. That does affect the operations of the forces, so I think these are fair questions, and Canadians deserve to ask them, so thank you for your respectful answers.
I've got four quick questions, and we only have time for quick answers.
One is, when you talked about “we've laid up three of our ships”, from your perspective, if you were involved with this decision at all, was it about the reductions of Royal Canadian Navy personnel, or was it the reductions in the budget that caused them to be laid up so much earlier than planned?
Two, with respect to the Cyclone, we're celebrating the idea of them, but they were claimed to be delivered in 2009 by this government, and there are still none. So my question is, how have these massive delays actually affected the Maritime Atlantic operations and joint task force operations from Atlantic?
Three is the Auroras, one of the many failures to deliver. They were to be replaced by 2020. According to Professor Sloan, the delays up to 2035 appeared to be monetary—in other words, budget cutting for the election. So my question is, if only 10 Auroras from the original 18 are being modernized, is that sufficient for surveillance and reconnaissance over Canada's vast maritime areas?
Lastly, a briefing note talks about hundreds of arrangements the military has with allies to share facilities, and services are being called into question because of a whole layer of bureaucracy that the government has put into place. Has that affected any of your sharing arrangements with your allies in terms of joint operations or joint facilities?