National Defence Committee on May 10th, 2016

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Did you see the Dartmouth side, where they're cutting the steel?

[LGen Stephen Bowes]

I'm from Bedford, by the way. I was born and raised in Bedford, so we're getting down close.

We didn't go over to the facility because of time and space constraints, but they had lots of graphics to show us how proud they were that the steel was cut and then transported across the bridge.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Very good.

Ms. Gallant, you have the floor for five minutes.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, could you tell us how you would coordinate with the Canadian Coast Guard should there be a situation? Do you have any control or interactions with the Coast Guard should it become necessary?

[LGen Stephen Bowes]

We have interaction with the Coast Guard every day, both here in Ottawa at higher headquarters level, and all the way down to our search and rescue coordination centres. The Coast Guard is responsible for maritime search and rescue, and we have the air component. Complex search and rescues, as an example, in Atlantic Canada involve assets from more than one government department from time to time. We have liaison staff embedded.

You see the CJOC here, the Joint Operations Command. It's at headquarters in Ottawa. We have a significant piece that is partially my component commander for the north, if you think of it that way, but I also have regional joint task forces right across the country. General Eyre is one of the commanders in Alberta, but we have two on each coast that are well integrated with the Coast Guard.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Now, we see cruise ships on our east coast. For instance, right now there's a cruise ship nearing Halifax harbour. While we don't have passage of cruise ships through the Arctic yet, we don't want to wait until something happens to have the necessary infrastructure in place.

At this point, if a vessel were going through the Northwest Passage and there was a need for some sort of evacuation, or making sure that people were not interfacing with others for whatever reason, but they needed health care, how would you conduct an operation in that set of circumstances?

[LGen Stephen Bowes]

Any operation in that scenario would be whole-of-government.

First off, we track cruise ships. Cruise ships don't enter the Arctic without our knowing about it. We know when cruise ships go in. There are cruise ships in and around Arctic waters in the summer. They have done so for a number of years, and we track them. We make a great deal of effort on it.

I'll give you an example of a success story developing what we call maritime domain awareness. We have three MSOCs across the country, one on the Great Lakes and one on each coast. Those operations centres bring in data from a variety of sources to help develop a picture for our admirals on each coast who are joint task force commanders and plugged into the CJOC. What they see, I see. So we develop that picture.

Maritime domain awareness refers to not just “there's a ship here”; it's understanding who's on board. It's a much more comprehensive concept of where they are coming from and where they are going. Depending on the nature of the vessel, I can declare it a vessel of interest and we can track it.

What's really interesting about this, though, is the five partners concept. Everything we see at DND is shared with the RCMP, Coast Guard, Department of Fisheries and Oceans, and Transport Canada. We work together, through our various operations centres, to track and understand the nature of the activity.

To get to the specifics of the question, it depends on the scenario. Some cruise ships entering pull a shadow ship, which is available to conduct its own rescue. Other ships perhaps don't, but it speaks to regulatory issues that are beyond the purview of the Department of National Defence.

If we had to, if a ship went aground.... We have conducted an exercise in the past. It's about time, space, distance, and the conditions. We're fortunate that it's the summer months for the cruise ships, and therefore it does give us a bit of an edge, but ultimately, because of the dispersal of air force, the only way to pull people off cruise ships is to bring in another ship, transfer people to that ship, and pull them out. That's unless we set up over time an air bridge and a helicopter, or use austere landing fields and our C-130 Hercules, if we were able to do that, depending on the scenario and the geography.

It's extremely complex, but we have contingency plans. We're prepared to react accordingly.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'll give the floor over to Mr. Miller for five minutes.

[Marc Miller, Liberal, Ville-Marie—Le Sud-Ouest—Île-des-Soeurs, QC]

General Bowes and General Nixon, I know it's been said twice, but I'll say it another time: thank you for your ongoing service.

General Bowes, you touched briefly on our relationship with the indigenous peoples in the north. Perhaps you could expand a little on that and where you see added value specifically with respect to our relationship with the Canadian Rangers. Is there value in deepening and strengthening that relationship, or broadening it with a view toward ensuring ongoing territorial sovereignty?

[LGen Stephen Bowes]

I'll turn it over to General Nixon in a second to give a more comprehensive answer.

I learned very early in my career the value of the Canadian Rangers. I was a lieutenant in 1987 on an exercise. The battle captain for our unit that was involved was a gentleman named Walt Natynczyk, who went on to do bigger and better things. We spent about three weeks up on Baffin Island working with Ranger patrols. I realized that I and the group of soldiers I had with me would have had difficulty surviving in that environment if we hadn't listened to and learned from our Rangers.

It's a huge contribution to what we do. They enable us to survive—to shoot, move, and communicate. It means we can go anywhere and dominate in the Arctic, on a ground basis, year-round, and be able to survive.

To bring it forward to the role they play in communities, I saw in my travels the positive role image. Young Rangers wanted to be just like their elders in a community. By and large, the health of the community was a reflection of just how healthy the Ranger patrol element was.

It's a great program, and one that we truly do rely on. I have challenged people who've sought to denigrate the importance of the Rangers in the north. It's off base. It's a very important part of what we do.

Mike.

[BGen Mike Nixon]

Yes, sir.

The 1 CRPG resides in the north—north of 60—with one exception. There's a patrol in northern B.C. that's only accessible from the Yukon. So there is one patrol from 1 CRPG that's actually in British Columbia—in Atlin, B.C. It is an army unit. 1 CRPG belongs to the Canadian Army. It's under OPCON of JTFN. It is the largest unit in the Canadian Armed Forces, by the way, numerically speaking, with about 1,750 rangers spread across those 60 communities that I mentioned.

We recently had a visit to Yellowknife by the Canadian Armed Forces ombudsman to look at the ranger program, specifically in the Arctic, to identify some challenges that they're facing. They do have challenges, as any organization does. I believe it was in the mandate letter of the Minister of National Defence to look at expanding the ranger program writ large, which is across all five ranger patrol groups.

The ability to do that would be predicated on expanding the ranger instructor pool first, the personnel who provide the military instruction to the rangers. When they're on the land with the ranger patrol, it's questionable who is actually instructing whom, because the rangers are the experts. I spent last weekend in the Baker Lake area with a patrol, and it was an eye-opening experience to see their abilities on the land. They are experts in that field, and that's what we need to promote and to harvest.

The ranger program has been around for almost 70 years. It's going to continue, and it can only get better. As General Bowes alluded to, paired with that is the junior ranger program, which is kind of like cadets, but it isn't. It's based on survival skills and the like. That is another success story, in the north in particular.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

In the interest of time, Mr. Bezan, you'll have the last question. Then we'll suspend very quickly to change to our second panel.

You have the floor for five minutes.

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

General Bowes, it's good to see you again. It's been a while since we've had you here.

General Nixon, thanks for joining us.

I'd like to express our gratitude to the two of you, and indeed all members of the Canadian Armed Forces, for the work that you do in protecting Canada.

General, you were recently down in Colorado Springs, as we were as a committee. We had some interesting conversations with Admiral Gortney, looking at the entire threat field that we're dealing with. You mentioned that a threat to the United States is also a threat to Canada, and vice versa is true as well. That's what we heard quite clearly from Admiral Gortney.

The last time we were down there as a committee, we were talking about NORAD Next. This time, we're talking about the evolution of NORAD. One of the areas that we started to touch upon was the expansion of the domains that NORAD has looked at.

Do you see any value in having a more integrated command and control of how the land base security operations should be coordinated?

[LGen Stephen Bowes]

I'll break out from the land first. I'll work backwards and then I can come back on the land side.

It's early days, but here's where we're at. The commander of NORAD, the NORTHCOM group, understands very well the development of capability that Russia has embarked on over the last 15 years and that dynamic. Concurrent with that, we follow very closely developments around the world, developments of extremist organizations and the like.

So the question that came with staff—whom I have going down there all the time, and likewise coming up here, who are involved in tri-command staff talks and who work in syndicates—is that we're a learning organization, to hark back to comments that I made very early in the meeting. We try to do this and are very sincere about doing it. As we run exercises towards continental defence—both on what you would view as traditional military threats but also other threat scenarios—we try to do things better and we postulate questions and challenge ourselves.

Admiral Gortney was championing a concept for the evolution of NORAD. I think it's early days and ultimately whether we do this is up to the Chief of the Defence Staff. I haven't formulated my recommendation to him, but, ultimately, it's his responsibility to provide that advice to the Government of Canada. I don't know where that will go, but I think there is great value in continuing to explore it, even if all that it ever does in the outcome is to make us better at doing what we do today. How can that be a losing proposition for Canadians? There are a lot of questions that need to be answered, a lot of things that need to be teased out.

On the land side, just to bring it down, it's not as clear as it is in the air piece. We have NORAD, we have well-defined terms of reference and we understand that. Even on the maritime side, perhaps work still needs to be done to ensure that the leadership understands what we have in place and how that values citizens across both sides of the border.

On the land side we have a different construct that is often very difficult for U.S. leadership to understand. We have a regional joint task forces. We're a thinly populated country along a border with the United States, and lines of communication on our continent run north-south. As a division commander down in Atlantic Canada, I knew very well all of the adjutants-general of all of the National Guard elements in the New England states. I had a great deal in common understanding, because the way of life in the Maritimes is very similar to that in the core New England states. I understand that concept. So it is all the way across the country.

So we have a regional task force where on any given incident, the land component commander whom we designate is also one of my regional joint task force commanders. We're very good at dealing with being double and triple-hatted in responsibilities, as long as we ourselves understand what we need to do.

General Eyre is the division commander out west for the army. He's a regional joint task force commander. He can also be a land component commander for a particular crisis, and we have other ways of tackling the problem. So I think we're in early days of trying to understand this. If it's to develop a model simply to make it easier for the United States folks to understand how we're organized, then I'm not sure where the value is in that. So we will really tease out what the value propositions are and show how these make Canadians more secure, how they make us safer, how they enable us to respond to crises. We have a lot of work to do on this one, but we are committed to looking at and making sure that we do business better.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you very much for your comments and for your presence here today at committee, and thank you for your service.

I'm going to have to suspend now for just a couple of minutes to switch the panels. Thank you, gentlemen.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Welcome back. I thank everybody for appearing today.

We don't have much time, given that we have four people speaking, and I would ask you to please be extremely disciplined with your 10 minutes so that we can ask some questions. It will be difficult for us if we're not. You'll probably see me weigh in at 10 minutes if we're not there and I would ask you to focus your comments on our topic of aerial readiness.

I'd like welcome to Michael Byers, Robert Huebert, Adam Lajeunesse, and James Ferguson. Thank you very much.

I'd like to open with James, because you're calling from a long way away, and in case I lose the feed, I'd like to hear from you upfront. You have the floor for a maximum of 10 minutes.

[Dr. James Fergusson, Professor, Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual]

Good morning.

I thought I would focus my brief on the issue of Canadian participation in the United States' ballistic missile defence program, specifically the ground-based midcourse defense system currently deployed in Alaska and California, given that this is one of the issues outlined in the defence review guidance.

To begin I want to emphasize three key points.

First, under current circumstances, whether Canada participates or not will have no significant impact upon the NORAD relationship, Canada-U.S. defence relations in general, and the Canada-U.S. relationship as a whole.

Second, if circumstances change and the United States comes to the conclusion that Canadian participation or, more accurately, Canadian territory becomes vital to the missile defence of the United States, a failure by Canada to participate will have a major impact on the relationship and the future of NORAD. This may result if the United States proceeds to establish a third interceptor site in the northeastern United States.

Currently, the United States is completing environmental studies for a possible third site in either upstate New York, Michigan, or Ohio. If this occurs, the United States may also conclude that to make the system effective, and thus ensure the defence of the eastern seaboard and the Great Lakes region, a forward-deployed X-band tracking radar in Canada may be essential as a result of the gap between the current X-band radar at Thule, Greenland, and U.S. territory. This, of course, would also significantly alter the negotiating dynamic concerning the meaning of participation, which I will clarify shortly.

Finally, under current circumstances, as well as changed ones, the real issue is whether the Canadian government and the Canadian public believe that it is essential that Canada be defended from a limited ballistic missile attack involving a nuclear warhead, by proliferating states such as North Korea. Canada cannot and should not expect the United States to defend Canada, for a variety of strategic and political reasons. Legally, U.S. Northern Command, responsible for the ground-based system, is only mandated to defend the United States and cannot be expected to expend one or more interceptors to save a Canadian city, unless its potential target may directly impact, via the blast or radiation effect, an American location, such as Detroit. In failing to defend ourselves, Canada places American decision-makers in a horrible moral dilemma of expending an interceptor to save Canadian lives, but in so doing potentially undermining the ability of the United States to defend itself.

Any decision regarding whether Canada should or should not acquire its own missile defence capability requires the government to obtain as much information as possible about the U.S. system. To do so will cause the Canadian government to publicly, and without reservation, endorse the U.S. missile defence effort as the first step into discussions and, possibly, negotiations with the United States. This has been partially done in the context of the NATO system. Even so, this fundamentally means that the government must reverse the 2005 decision, but not formally commit to participation, because no one actually knows what participation would really mean.

It is clear, however, from the failed negotiations in 2003 and 2004, that the United States will not provide a formal guarantee to defend Canadian cities, will not give command control to NORAD, and will not give Canada detailed access to operational planning under current circumstances. This has not changed, and will not change until Canada decides to invest capital and seeks to acquire and deploy some relevant missile defence system component on Canadian soil, which will enhance the defence of the United States as well as Canada, whether it be a tracking radar or a full-fledged interceptor site. In other words, Canada must contribute a meaningful capability of value in order to truly participate with the United States in the missile defence of North America, thus altering the negotiating conditions and reversing the above three noes, which in turn will provide assurances that Canadian cities and the population are defended.

A meaningful contribution, of course, requires that Canada first acquire detailed information from the United States about the system, additional valuable requirements of the system, the costs and, of course, whether the United States will agree to settle with the capabilities of Canada—which, I would add, Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense in 1967, offered to do with the ABM system. Perhaps the United States will decide that there's nothing for Canada to contribute for now. Even so, the government will have opened the door and acquired valuable information and knowledge for an unforeseeable future.

Regardless, it is time for the government, Global Affairs, National Defence, and the public to realize that we cannot free-ride on the American missile defence system, and we cannot expect that an asymmetric contribution, such as offering to pay for the modernization of the north warning system, will result in a U.S. missile defence guarantee.

In effect, the government must invest in a meaningful way in order to ensure the defence of Canada.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions regarding this issue or anything else concerning the defence of North America or global security politics.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you very much for your comments, and thank you for keeping it brief. We appreciate that.

I'm going to turn the floor over to Mr. Byers.

You have the floor for up to 10 minutes.

[Dr. Michael Byers, Professor and Canada Research Chair, Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

It's a great honour to be here. My comments are directed at all the members, but especially to the members of the new government, because you have some very difficult decisions to make.

I'm going to start by providing just a bit of context. Let me preface this by saying that I think you will have to recommend to substantially increase Canada's defence budget. We are currently drifting below 1% of GDP. I suspect that you will need to increase that to at least 1.5% and perhaps even 2% of GDP. This has an impact on the issues that you are discussing in this committee.

Just to flesh that out with a bit of context, the Canadian navy is in serious trouble. It has no supply ships. It has no air defence destroyers. Its marine coastal patrol vessels have been deemed unworthy of a mid-life refit. The submarines are close to 30 years old and have spent most of their lives in refit and maintenance. On the navy, I could go on.

The army is in serious trouble. The fleet of armoured trucks is for the most part undeployable and seriously in need of replacement. For example, if you are thinking about engaging in United Nations peacekeeping on any scale, you'll need to replace those trucks first.

The air force is in trouble. Canada's search and rescue fixed-wing planes are approaching half a century in age. Our fighter-jet fleet is 30 years old. There are serious concerns about metal fatigue. We have only 14 long-range search and research helicopters. In this, the second-largest country on earth, the Canadian Forces, the Royal Canadian Air Force, is on record as saying that they need at least 18 to do the job properly.

Again, I could go on. The north warning system needs to be upgraded.

This is all core context, because it amounts to tens of billions of dollars that you will need to spend.

Let's talk about the situation with regard to air warning and defence in the north. I want to deal first with the issue that has come before this committee in the past year or so, that of drones for Arctic surveillance.

The good news here is that the Canadian Forces and the Canadian government more generally are actually pretty well equipped right now in terms of Arctic surveillance. We have RADARSAT-2, which is the world's best synthetic aperture radar satellite built for the Arctic. We have funding committed for the first three satellites in the RADARSAT Constellation. You should think hard about increasing that to the proposed six.

We have the northern watch system, which is highly functional but needs to be upgraded in the next 5 to 10 years. We have the Aurora maritime patrol aircraft, 14 of which are going through a major refit process. There are four more for which the parts for the refits have been acquired. I would recommend that you refit all 18. They provide an excellent surveillance capacity. Transport Canada has two Dash 8s, and one Dash 7. They overfly every foreign vessel visiting Canada's Arctic.

There are other capabilities. There are RCMP officers in every single northern community. That's surveillance.

Do we actually need drones for the Arctic? Well, on my priority list of spending, they simply wouldn't be there. I would like to gently suggest that the reason they have been put forward in the context of the Arctic is that the previous government twice denied a request from the Canadian Forces to acquire drones for use in armed conflicts overseas. They didn't get it for those, and the Arctic may have been an additional argument that was introduced. Be careful about this.

In terms of fighter aircraft, I've already mentioned that the CF-18s are getting very old. They desperately need to be replaced. They need to be replaced within a reasonable budget, and the planes that replace them need to be not just capable of Arctic operations but suited for Arctic operations. Be very careful about costs here. Some of these planes are proven and have set costs. One of the planes that could be under consideration is not yet proven, is not yet complete, and has uncertain costs. Then you have other factors that come into play, like changes in the exchange rate between Canada and the United States.

The acquisition budget for the F-35s of $9 billion for 65 planes was set at an exchange rate of 92¢ on the U.S. dollar. At today's exchange rate, at 77¢ to the dollar, you can only buy 56 F-35s, so consider whether or not your government, within a set budget and a minimum number of planes, is going to be able to acquire some of the aircraft under consideration. That should be part of the actual statement of requirement, a minimum number of planes for the set budget.

Another issue concerning the F-35 that I just want to flag is the single engine. I know you've heard testimony on this, and you've been told that fighter jet aircraft engines are becoming progressively more reliable. That indeed is true, but twin engine jets are still more reliable than single engine jets. I would refer you simply to the U.S. Air Force safety center website, which actually has charts that show the reliability of different engines and different planes. The single engine planes like the F-16 are getting more reliable, but they are still not approaching the reliability of comparable twin engine planes.

I heard a very strange comment from one of your previous witnesses who was citing the fact that because trans-ocean civilian airlines are moving from four engine to two engine planes, somehow that makes the F-35 appropriate for the Arctic. I don't think anyone in this room would want to fly from Ottawa to London, England, on a single engine civilian aircraft.

I looked at the safety record of the Boeing 777, the world's safest twin engine civilian aircraft, and somewhere in the world, at least once a month—once a month—a Boeing 777 loses an engine. We never hear about it because they have a second engine that they can fly and land safely with, but be very careful about this.

Finally, on missile defence, I have heard previous witnesses being asked in this committee about the possible costs of Canada joining missile defence. There are actually numbers on this. We know how much the U.S. government has spent on its midcourse interceptor system here in North America: $40 billion U.S. We know how much they are spending per year to maintain and grow that system: $1 billion U.S.

You might imagine, and perhaps you might want to ask, whether the United States will let Canada join for free. I doubt it. If we say that perhaps they would want us to pay our share of the retrospective costs of building up the system, the Canadian population is one-tenth that of the United States, so that's $4 billion. If they say that they want us to pay one-tenth of the ongoing annual cost, that is $100 million. You can ask them, but it needs to be factored in, in terms of considering all of these different priorities, as do the risks that are being addressed. If you assume that North Korea is somewhat rational, and it has a choice between sending an intercontinental ballistic missile toward Canada or the United States that draws a bright red line back to North Korea and invites almost certain retaliation, it has a choice between doing that and putting its nuclear warhead on a small private yacht and sailing it into Seattle, Los Angeles, or Vancouver Harbour.

Again, I'm not saying that you shouldn't take risks seriously; I'm just saying that you need to consider costs, you need to consider the degree of risk, and you need to actually consider whether or not the money that is being asked for by some other experts, which they're asking you to spend, actually has gone through a careful risk analysis.

In my analysis, we're good on surveillance in the Arctic right now and we'll be so for the next 20 years. There's no need for drones. We do need long-range fighter aircraft for the Arctic, but they need to be twin engine planes and they need to fit within a reasonable budget. We don't need to join U.S. missile defence because the threat, relatively speaking, does not top out on that priority list, and the cost of joining is likely to be prohibitively high in a very stressed budget situation where you are already going to have to significantly raise Canadian defence spending.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to give the floor to Mr. Huebert.

You have 10 minutes.

[Dr. Robert Huebert, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Calgary, As an Individual]

I'd like to thank the members of the committee for giving us the opportunity to come before you to discuss one of the critical elements of Canadian security.

I would begin by pointing out that there is a tendency to view the Arctic as somehow a separate, peaceful component that does not have a bearing on overall Canadian security. This is completely wrong. The Arctic is as much a part of Canadian security as one can imagine any other component is, and for that matter the geopolitics of the Arctic have always been there. I remind the committee members that the reason the Americans in all probability got to buy Alaska from the Russians had everything to do with the first Crimean War, which is something that we often forget, to our peril.

What does the committee need to aware of in the changing elements of geopolitics of the north? We have the rhetoric of co-operation and, indeed, from the period of the end of the Cold War to the current period, we have seen tremendous co-operation between the Arctic states. Canada, the United States, and Norway spent billions helping the Russians decommission the preceding Soviet nuclear-powered submarine fleet, first through the AMEC program and subsequently through the G-8 program. There was significant co-operation in that period, and it will be remembered as a golden era.

We are now seeing at least three major geopolitical trends that are integrating Arctic security interests into all the larger interests. What are these three trends?

The first, and the one that most people pay the most attention to, is the development of new resources and resource opportunities in the Arctic. With the recognition of the impacts of climate change, people become aware that the Arctic does offer things such as transportation routes for cruise ships of a very large size. This is only one that people put at the forefront.

The second major component that has changed is the interest of other states in the Arctic. Back in 1998, anyone who suggested that China would be interested in the Arctic would have been laughed out of the room. The idea of the Arctic and China just simply wasn't going to be corrected. In 1999 we had the first visit of a Chinese vessel into Canadian waters when the Xue Long visited at Tuktoyaktuk. This has continued on a steady progression. The Saudis are also very interested in the Arctic. They have said openly that part of their rationale for allowing oil prices to collapse was to drive out both the shale producers and the Arctic producers. In other words, it's the outside interests.

But the biggest factor that I would bring to the attention of the committee that you have to bring forward into your considerations is the fact that there is a growing strategic imperative on both the part of Russia and the United States that is increasingly going to conflict. That will ultimately spill into the Arctic. Let me be clear. It is not about fighting over the extended continental shelf, fighting over diamond mines or oil or gas resources; it's about the necessity of both Russia and the United States pursuing core strategic requirements that will require us to be very cognizant of what is happening in this context.

What are some of these major factors?

First and foremost for Russia is the maintenance of nuclear stability or what we in the west refer to as “nuclear deterrence”. We tend to be focused on the realities of dealing with insurgencies and other aspects of conflict in Afghanistan and Syria and elsewhere. But the Russians have never wavered, from Yeltsin onward, that their core strategic requirement is nuclear stability. To maintain nuclear stability, they have put most of their funds in the rebuilding of the northern fleet. We have seen that they've had major failures in being able to do so, but they have stayed the course in rebuilding their nuclear missiles, nuclear-powered subs, and their attack subs, and are now in a very vigorous phase of rebuilding these forces. This also ties into why we have seen the Russians also rearming many of their northern bases. Publicly, they state that they are doing this in the context of an opening northern sea route, and that is part of the answer. But the other part is to provide protection of their northern fleet as part of their nuclear stability.

The second component of what the Russians have always told us they see as a major threat--and this is in all their documentation--is the expansion of NATO.

How does that spill over into the Arctic?

Yesterday, it was announced that, for the first time since polls have been maintained, a majority of Swedes are now in favour of joining NATO. One of the core issues that Canada will be facing is that if the two Arctic neutrals, Sweden and Finland, decide to join NATO—and there are growing indications, at least in the open literature, that they are moving towards this procedure—then we could see a major change in how the geopolitics of the Arctic will then transpire.

The third element we see within the American context is, of course, the interaction with the American ballistic missile defence system. Let's move to the Americans, for a moment, and see how this spills into the Arctic.

Two of their major elements have direct ramifications, as Dr. Fergusson has already made clear. A major element of the ABM system is their base in Fort Greely, Alaska. They currently have 26 interceptors. They're putting in another 14. This is where they have the bulk. Of course, they are looking to place them elsewhere. Now, this is not about defending the Arctic; this is about defending a North Korean launch, but the Russians, according to the literature, are starting to see it as something different.

The second factor for the Americans is their acceptance of an expansion of NATO. They were the ones who were pushing for an expansion of Georgia, which, of course, had ramifications in the 2008 Georgian-Russian war, and we suspect that the Americans are in favour of the Finns and the Swedes joining NATO. We see these factors all coming together.

Where does that leave Canada?

With regard to the two major defence alliances we have had, Dr. Fergusson has already very capably laid out the issue in terms of ABM and what it means for NORAD.

For Canada, the major security ramifications we have for NATO are coming up very quickly. Should Sweden and/or Finland ask to join NATO, we as a member will be participating in that decision. That will have ramifications. If we say no, we run the risk of encouraging Russian aggressive behaviour. If we say yes, there will be ramifications for us with regard to the type of co-operation that we have been able to build in other forums, such as the Arctic Council. There are real decisions; we can't sit on the sideline in this particular context.

What happens in the future with regard to our considerations for Arctic security?

First and foremost, it is not about who owns the North Pole or who gets to say where the continental shelf goes. These are all important issues from a foreign policy perspective, but they are not the core issues from a security perspective.

Rather, what is happening is that the Arctic will increasingly be one of the central geopolitical realities of the international system. Russia and the United States have core security issues. We can expect that China will increasingly start to have core strategic interests. We saw for the first time last September a Chinese naval task force coming into the Aleutian Islands. We've never seen that before.

The question for Canada, and the question that you have to face, looking into both the short term and medium term, is how does Canada then allocate the resources necessary to ensure that our northern security—not sovereignty, but security—is properly protected, given the fact that the Americans, the Russians, and the Chinese, regardless of how nice we may wish to think things are, will actually be seeing the area.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for your comments.

I'll turn the floor over to Mr. Lajeunesse.

You have the floor for 10 minutes.

[Adam Lajeunesse, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of History, St. Jerome's University, As an Individual]

Thank you very much. The committee has my speaking notes, so I will endeavour to be brief.

I will begin by stating the obvious, that geopolitical tensions have increased considerably in the Arctic over the past few years. The principal reason for this has been the renewal of Russian Cold War-era strategic bomber flights buzzing the North American air defence identification zone—both the Canadian and American side. To my knowledge, there has never been a violation of our airspace; however, I am sure you have received detailed knowledge on that from your visit to Colorado Springs.

I should point out that these activities are primarily political or, at the very least, as political as they are military. It is Russian posturing. It is an attempt by the Russians to use the Arctic in a very visible way to send a very visible message to Canada and our American allies.

This said, it is important not to overstate the military threat that these activities represent. Those Russian bombers are not an immediate military threat. They are large, slow planes that are very easily tracked. In fact, the Russians intentionally fly them at very high altitudes so that they are very easily tracked by our air defence radar.

Russian bases that have spread across the north have also received considerable attention, mostly in the popular media, and have been represented as a kind of threat to the North American Arctic. I would point out that this is probably an overestimation of that threat. Russian soldiers stationed in the Russian Arctic are not a particular threat to the North American Arctic.

Furthermore, Russia has also been rebuilding its navy, and most of that navy, of course, has been positioned in the Arctic. Again, this has often been misinterpreted as an attempt to remilitarize the Russian Arctic and the Arctic considered more broadly.

From a historical perspective, it is important to remember that, since at least the beginning of the Cold War, the Russians have kept the bulk of their most valuable naval assets in the Arctic, not because they intend to use those assets for Arctic purposes, but simply for geographic reasons. The Arctic is, ironically, the Russians' best port area. It is Russia's only ice-free port area and the only area with easy access to the world ocean. Russian assets based there are not necessarily meant for the Arctic.

The Russians have also been rebuilding their submarine capability. Now, these boats are intended largely for use in the Arctic. The Russians have historically had a very strong under-ice presence through most of the last decades of the Cold War.

Again, it is important to note that the Russians are not expanding into a vacuum. The Americans and perhaps the Brits—information on that is still classified—but the Americans at least have maintained an under-ice capability since the end of the Cold War. In fact, the Americans have sent an average of two nuclear attack submarines under the ice into the polar basin every year since 1990. The Russians are not expanding into a vacuum there, and our allies have a very strong competency in defending the Arctic Ocean at present.

The Russians also have a national interest in restraining military operations in the Arctic. Their strategic interests dictate co-operation rather than tension and competition. The reason for this is primarily economic. About 20% of the Russian GDP comes from the Arctic, and in fact developing the Arctic— primarily oil and gas, but also mineral resources—is one of Russia's most important tasks in the years ahead. Vladimir Putin has labelled the region a “strategic resource base”, and with good reason.

Russia's oil and gas deposits further south in its older fields, primarily in western Siberia, are depleting quickly. The costs of lifting oil from those regions are increasing very dramatically, which means that Russia will need to develop the Arctic. This is an existential requirement for the Russian state to maintain itself in its current state. For Russia to develop the Arctic, it needs foreign capital and foreign technology, and it is going to be hard to attract that capital and technology, be it from the west or from China or even India, if the region is perceived as one of competition.

This said, it is also important to recognize that Russian domestic politics are often at odds with its strategic requirements and its broader national interests. The creation of a siege mentality, which Vladimir Putin has succeeded in doing and which has kept his approval ratings so high, demands the kind of posturing that we have seen in the Arctic. It demands that Russia be seen messaging the west and demonstrating its strength in that region, which is, of course, emotionally very important to Russia. Russia is an Arctic country like Canada and, therefore, action in the Arctic has outsized importance and visibility.

Of note here is Russia's new cruise missile capability, which they demonstrated very recently in Syria. An attack on an ISIS position last November was carried out with the Russians' new Kh-101 cruise missile. Using this asset was entirely unnecessary. ISIS has no early detection capability, no air defence, and so the use of this very advanced cruise missile was, and can only be understood as, messaging to the west. It was a message that they have this new capability and, most importantly, that they have a very long reach.

This applies to the Arctic because it demonstrates Russia's ability to attack most crucial North American targets from areas just northwest of the Arctic archipelago, either from submarines or from bombers. As such, NORAD does need to look at an all-domain awareness, or at least a multi-domain awareness, moving forward, as you heard from Admiral Gortney. An attack on North America could come from either the maritime or the air domain. Russia is, of course, a threat in both of these areas. The threat is not probable, but it is possible, and it is our military's job to analyze the possible, with the probable ever in mind.

As such, Canada and the United States will need to further develop their maritime co-operation. We will need to enhance our understanding of one another in that region, and we are going to have to convey to our militaries that NORAD does have an existing maritime domain awareness mission, because, of course, that mission does exist. However, there is, let's say, a lack of understanding within both militaries that that mission exists.

Where does Canada go from here? There is probably no need at the present time for expanded maritime assets for surveillance. The assets we have, as Dr. Byers has mentioned, are suitable. What needs to be expanded is our co-operation and the forums through which we communicate with one another. Any type of further integration and co-operation with our American colleagues through NORAD or other means is, of course, desirable.

Canada is going to have to expand its air defence. We are going to need to continue to intercept Russian bombers as they buzz the North American air defence identification zone. However, this isn't going to be a combat mission, or at least it is highly unlikely that this would ever evolve into a combat mission. So I would advise, contrary to what Dr. Byers says, that we not put Arctic capabilities too high on our priority list. It is still a priority, but this is not something that we are going to need to devote too many resources to in the future.

The Arctic will not be, or will almost certainly not be, a combat theatre. We should view it as a region that needs to be watched, a region that needs to be guarded from Russian posturing. We need to watch for increased Russian posturing, both in the air and, potentially, moving forward, under the ice or on the sea.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for your comments.

We're going to open up with our usual seven-minute round of questions. I'm going to give the floor to Mr. Spengemann.