National Defence Committee on Oct. 18th, 2016

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to start off by thanking the three of you for your service and for appearing before the committee today and for the very frank and open opinions and discussion on what you think our navy needs.

I hail from a riding on Vancouver Island, which neighbours Mr. Garrison's, who is the regular member of this committee and his riding is home to CFB Esquimalt.

My riding includes the city of Langford. A lot of people there are either directly or indirectly employed at CFB Esquimalt, and I can tell you that when I was out knocking on doors I certainly heard an earful about the state of our navy, a lot of opinions on what we needed, and a lot of those opinions closely mirrored the testimony you've given today.

Admiral Robertson, you did appear last month before the standing Senate committee and I'm guessing that your testimony from that period has not changed much to date. You're still very much of the same opinions.

[VAdm Drew Robertson]

Yes.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

With respect to all of the questions that have already been asked, I'm curious about the dollar figure that you see between our current budget and what you think needs to be spent in order to make sure that we have a balanced, multi-purpose, and combat-capable maritime force, because in your testimony you did mention that current budget levels are not sustainable for our future needs. I'm just curious as to whether you've arrived at some sort of a dollar figure on that front.

[VAdm Drew Robertson]

I would defer to the parliamentary budget officer's analysis of the full structure of the Canadian Forces and the dollar cost of maintaining that over time. That study had a variety of caveats in it, which means it's indicative rather than precise. Dave Perry has done similar work. It's about the Canadian Forces as a whole, though, and not about any one part of it.

I think fundamentally the answer is this. As less than 1% of GDP is being spent on a force that was purchased during a time when defence money was much higher, we shouldn't be surprised about the decline over time. How could we be surprised about an imbalance going forward given that the budget was effectively set in 1996? That's the low point, 1996-97, the point at which the international environment was the quietest it's been for our entire lives. It was set then. How could that budget be sufficient to provide the desired outcomes of several governments given the change in the international circumstances? For instance, neither China nor Russia were on the long-term radar for most folks despite the fact that they were then already building the capabilities they would be using a decade later. There's also the fact that Canada is gaining a new ocean. It's hard to imagine that a budget set in 1996 would be sufficient.

Don't get me wrong. I know that the budget has changed with inflation over time. But it's still pretty clear why the parliamentary budget officer and folks like Dave Perry are talking about the figures they're talking about.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you.

Our defence procurement process has made the news on multiple occasions over previous years. There's a variety of opinions out there on how the process needs to be fixed and what's wrong with it in the first place. I'd be curious to hear individual testimony from the three of you on some of the key issues and challenges facing our defence procurement process, specifically in regard to the acquisition of major naval platforms.

[VAdm Drew Robertson]

I'll start by saying that the fundamental issue is political will, and the understanding by folks like you that the country actually needs military capability, that Canada's contribution internationally matters, and that you'll be held to account in a decade's time for the state of what you have bequeathed your successors. That political will actually requires not only money but also policy.

I'll give you one example: the Canada First defence policy. When it was published I got more traction in Ottawa, because I could roll the document up and hit people with it. It said what the government said it was going to do. An accumulation of government speeches is a start toward policy. A document actually makes a difference in motivating the people around town who need to be motivated. You'll understand that the people who don't have the ships aren't the ones who can do anything about getting the ships. It's really the political direction that motivates this town.

The only other part to the process that's lower is execution. Execution had, for some period of time, suffered from paralysis...well, delay due to risk as people tried to deal with the fact that acquiring warships is inherently the most complex undertaking a country will pursue. There is risk at every stage of designing and building warships, and yet we've done it successfully in the past for decades. There has to be some trade-off between the political, the reputational, the financial, and all of the various risks that people in this town are paid to deal with. If they don't deal with them expeditiously, the operational risk for the country and for the governments to follow rises.

The fact that the navy doesn't have ships is not the problem. The problem is that the government doesn't have maritime security. We need people to make decisions and mitigate risk quickly and get on with reducing the operational risks that will come a decade hence.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Gentlemen, very quickly, if you each want to make a comment, we're running out of time on this one.

[Cmdre Daniel Sing]

Defence procurement is not easy. I don't care which political party you come from and your best desires and intent, it is not easy. It is especially not easy in the Canadian parliamentary system of government. In the end, and Admiral Robertson alluded to it, it is about political will, and it is about political leadership.

As a former military man, I have always been of the opinion that where there is a will, there is a way; if you want something badly, you can get it. I take solace in the apparent recent decision to elevate defence procurement issues to a special or cabinet committee level endeavour. I think that's a very good first step in moving a lot of the procurement issues along.

Part of the problem stems from our typically Canadian desire to want to do things perfectly, and to be guided by reasonable, understandable principles, including value for money. However, I am not sure we collectively share the same understanding of what value for money truly means. We often get into situations and circumstances where in our search for ideal value for money, we are actually wasting money.

The last point I will make is that many other western governments make the necessary difficult decisions and often don't bat an eyelash about upsetting this concept of free, fair, open, industrial competition. If you look at some of the defence procurement activities that people like to hold out as being examples of how we can do things, many of them have been sole sourced.

I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong, but it goes against the underlying desires to want to be open, free, transparent, and to seek the ultimate value for taxpayers' dollars. In these instances, you get push-back that it wasn't free, open, and transparent, but in my opinion, you're getting bang for buck much more quickly.

I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm going to have to move on to the next questioner, but perhaps we could circle back to that at the end.

Mr. Spengemann, you have the floor.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for being here, for your service to our nation, and for sharing your expertise. It's much appreciated.

I'd like to start with the dichotomy, if there is one, between domestic and international operations. You made a very compelling argument that, in light of our coastline and the complexity of our threat environment, we need to do more to defend Canada here at home. However, then we have international operations, and many Canadians may see that as something that detracts from our ability to do sovereignty assertion or defence at home.

I'm wondering if you could give us a bit of a flavour of what international naval operations are about, what our allies are thinking about our navy, what they say we should do more of or less of, and highlight the complementarity between international operations and good domestic security and defence.

That's the first sort of category, and then I'm hoping to get to some human resource-related questions.

[VAdm Drew Robertson]

I'll quickly tackle the home and abroad piece. Let me take Russia as a practical example, because it's doing things that are most noticed by Canadians, although one could also look at what China is doing and make the same kind of case.

Russia fired cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea across Iran and across Iraq into Syria from frigates; and it also fired cruise missiles from the Mediterranean into Syria from submarines. Those capabilities are exactly the kinds of things that were spoken about when people were commenting on submarine- and ship-launched capabilities back in the spring in the context of the air defence of North America.

The time to deter Russia is now, not at some later date, although we want the capabilities to be able to deal with Russian platforms when they do show up off our coast. That is why we've had a ship with NATO forces doing reassurance or deterrence and why we also contributed to a major NATO exercise called Trident Juncture a year ago. I think you would know that the submarine that was on that exercise was turned after the exercise to operational employment. The same thing happened again this year when a submarine was in European waters for exercises in the Baltic. It got turned to operational purposes.

So it all adds up to a series of efforts to show military capability from an alliance nation, driven by the fact that it's the Government of Canada that deploys those forces. Once they turn operational, it's the Government of Canada that makes those decisions, and those are being made in European waters and supporting European allies. So you have both military capability and political will being deployed to European waters, rather than waiting for those platforms to show up off our coasts and deal with them here.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Admiral, briefly, what's the perception among our allies—not just NATO, but maybe a bit more broadly—about the state of the Canadian Navy? What are they telling us that we need to do more of?

[VAdm Drew Robertson]

I am too dated to give you that which is current. I will merely tell you that when I retired back in 2009, the navy's contributions were highly valued by allies, including the United States Navy, for what we are able to do, the manner in which our navy is able to work seamlessly with their and other NATO navies. That's, of course, the benefit of the alliance.

I'll leave it to the others.

[Capt(N) Harry Harsch]

To pick up on the admiral's point, certainly my experience with NATO, which again is a bit dated, is that when we send ships to a variety of missions, either NATO or multinational, or whatever, we matter. We do very well. We have first-class ships—world-class ships—and we have world-class crews. However, as I mentioned in my remarks, that only counts when you actually show up. As Jim Boutilier said, if you want to be seen, you need to be seen. So you need to have the mass, and you need to have the capacity at the right level of readiness to be able to actually deploy.

I'll give you some practical examples to answer your first question as to why it's important, or how the away game affects the home game.

One was the campaign against terrorism immediately in the wake of 9/11. It was a long distance away, and in fact, we were part of that. We believed very strongly that it made a difference with respect to the defence of Canada.

More specifically, our recent intervention in counter-piracy off the coast of Somalia is another example where the away game affected the home game. At the time, before the piracy became under control, very large ships were being routinely attacked, routinely captured, and the down-range effect in North America was an immediate spike in the price of fuel simply because of the fact that tankers, to avoid the threat, had to go the long way around and avoid the Suez Canal.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

I only have a minute left. Let me turn, if may, to the second area that I wanted to ask about.

Each of your organizations, the Navy League and the Naval Association, has the mandate of interacting with the Canadian public and educating the Canadian public about our navy. What is your assessment of the general state of awareness of the Canadian public about our navy ? Then what I want to get into is, how can your organizations help to generate recruitment interest in the Canadian Navy? What is your assessment of that state of interest at the moment?

I don't have a lot time, but with the indulgence of the chair, maybe we can get some quick answers on that.

[Cmdre Daniel Sing]

Thank you.

I would say that unfortunately the general public awareness about the navy is relatively low in general terms. Of course, everyone reads the newspaper headlines, and in the last year and a half to two years, there regrettably has been no lack of senior correspondents writing about the rusting out of the navy and so on and so forth. But the underlying principles about the need for the navy and how the navy contributes to the defence of Canada, the defence of North America, and international peace and security are, generally speaking, not well known by the public.

That said, both of our organizations endeavour on a daily basis to try to improve that. That's one of our principal reasons for being here.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thanks very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you very much.

We're going to move on to five-minute questions now.

Mr. Jean Rioux, you have the floor.

[Jean Rioux, Liberal, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Gentlemen, Canada has three seas. That's important, and I liked one of your previous remarks to the effect that Canada had to be seen to assert its role.

I would really like to talk about the Arctic. We have a significant surveillance role to play, especially since we know that Russia is now much more aggressive. We have a monitoring obligation and have to be able to respond. That's also a waterway that will become more navigable.

What kind of control do we have over the Arctic? It is being said that new Arctic/offshore patrol vessels should be delivered between 2018 and 2024. In the meantime, can we ensure our sovereignty, defence and surveillance?

I was surprised to read in the notes that there have apparently been no ice-breaking vessels since 1950. Is that a significant shortcoming?

[Cmdre Daniel Sing]

Thank you, Mr. Rioux.

Surveillance of our coasts is provided in all three oceans. Let's not forget that a lot more activities are currently taking place on the Atlantic the Pacific coasts than in the Arctic. Of course, that should change, as there will be as many activities in the Arctic as on the two shores in the future.

The Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Armed Forces are involved in the monitoring of that entire territory. There are certainly technological challenges to overcome to ensure the same level of surveillance as what we are currently providing on the two coasts, but some progress is being made. The RADARSAT system is a very useful tool, among others. The Americans are very interested in that technology that largely contributes to the image they have of what is happening in the north.

The Royal Canadian Navy used to have an ice-breaking vessel and divested itself of that capacity when it transferred it to the Canadian Coast Guard. As you know, Arctic/offshore patrol vessels are not meant to be used as ice breakers. They are rather designed to navigate when necessary through ice that is several years old and up to one metre thick where it is more difficult to navigate.

From the perspective of the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Armed Forces, only large vessels—mostly Russian and sometimes nuclear—have the capacity to venture into the northern ice cap. Once they are in the ice, those vessels advance at a very low speed of two to three knots. When necessary, should those large vessels enter our waters without our permission, it would not be difficult for the Canadian Armed Forces to keep things under control. If the situation got more serious, an F-18 with a bomb would be entirely capable of targeting such a vessel.

I feel that it is important to acquire a patrol vessel. I believe that the vessel's capacities would be adequate for the current situation.

As Vice-Admiral Robertson mentioned, once the ice melts, there will be a lot more people up there, including the Royal Canadian Navy with its vessels that, although they are not designed specifically to navigate through ice, will be able to do so. Exercising our sovereignty in waters where ice is retreating will essentially be the same as the exercise of our sovereignty in the current waters of the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

That's your time on that one.

We'll move on to Mr. Paul-Hus. You have the floor.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Commodore Sing, my question ties in with the answer you just provided.

Let's look at the situation from strategic, operational and tactical standpoints. Last week, my colleague Cheryl Galland and I had an opportunity to spend 24 hours on a mission in a Canadian submarine. We carried out an intervention and procedures by attacking one of our frigates. We also spent two days obtaining information on the various systems. I also saw our future offshore vessels currently being built in the Irving shipyard. I understand that those vessels will not really be armed, that they will rather be used to patrol, to exercise an influence over the territory and to ensure Canada's presence in the Arctic waters.

For naval forces, I think the most formidable weapon is the submarine because it is difficult to detect. In addition, a torpedo will sink anything you want. Should we not be thinking more about increasing our submarine capacity? It's a fact that frigates have Sparrow missiles, but a Canadian frigate is not difficult to destroy, and a foreign aircraft can easily bomb it. However, the submarine is truly a formidable weapon.

From a strategic point of view, for Canada's defence, do you think that we should rather invest in submarines? If so, how many of them?

[VAdm Drew Robertson]

Indeed, submarines are fundamental to the effectiveness of the Canadian navy and the Canadian Forces, and they're essential for sovereignty. There are are couple of reasons for that. If you've been on board I'm sure they gave you a lecture about all of these aspects.

There's a reason that countries, large and small, throughout the Asia-Pacific region are all investing in significant submarine capability. That's in part because the platforms are exceptionally capable at looking after the defence of territorial waters and because China now owns the second largest submarine fleet in the world. More broadly, it's their stealth and lethality that make them the dominant platform at sea for deterrence, for war fighting, and for independent operations, whether that's for intelligence collection or war fighting by themselves.

When I talk about war fighting, you'll remember that the key to this is that it's the deterrence that come with owning those platforms that hopefully means they don't wind up having to be used. But that capability is there, and the key to that capability under stealth is simply that the mere presence or belief that a submarine is in a region is enough to change the operational thinking of adversaries and make them reconsider their plans.

To get to the bottom line of all of this, it's because—and we've all been commanding officers—there is no platform at sea that so worries or creates fear in an adversary's mind as submarines. Now, as to how many, that's an issue of consideration of what the government wishes to accomplish in the future and at what cost. All I will say is that Australia, with a population of two-thirds of ours, currently owns six submarines and is going to replace them with 12 French and Australian-built French submarines. That gives you an indication of how much Australia values the capability. It's partly because of the neighbourhood they live in.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You have another minute.