Thank you very much for inviting me. I will address maritime readiness from my point of view as one of the last commodores who, in 2002, took a full task group to sea. I will also address it as a doctoral researcher in international relations.
My thesis is simple. The world situation has gotten worse, and one of the tools the Canadian government has relied on for decades, a full task group, is no longer available. That will cause us and international order long-term problems.
Let me start by explaining what I was able to do with the full task group in the Strait of Hormuz. I had a missile-armed, anti-air warfare destroyer, two frigates, four helicopters, a supply ship, and two maritime patrol aircraft operating under the UAE. I had total sea control over the Strait of Hormuz. I was able to stay at sea longer than the other coalition and fly my helicopters further than the others because I had an AOR. I also was beholden to no one for a capability I did not have.
There, navies did not just do the traditional sea control warfare role. We served a constabulary function, providing search and rescue and anti-terrorism. We served the important diplomatic function of sending signals to the U.S., which was closing down its borders, that Canada was onside and supporting; sending signals to the regional powers that the U.S. was not operating alone and co-operation would be pretty smart; and sending signals to the world's economic markets. Some 30% of the world's oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Within one week oil prices had shot up 60%, but when the world market realized that sea power was going to be able to maintain the flow, oil prices fell down to their normal $30 a barrel.
From 2001 to 2004, 16 of 18 major Canadian warships rotated through five task group rotations in the Gulf. Today—and Ken has made this very clear—we are capable of sending only two frigates for a much shorter period, and they will go out the door more slowly because we'll have to line up tanker support and, in some areas, anti-air warfare support. Further, there are no plans and no funding to replace the maritime patrol aircraft or our submarines. Even the bright promise of the national shipbuilding strategy must be qualified by the fact that it is unlikely to replace all 15 of our current frigates and destroyers.
Ten years after those rotations, the world situation has gotten worse. We have conflict in Iraq and Syria. Africa cries out for attention. There will be massive migration displacement as a result of global warming. But I would direct you to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service's strategic outlook 2018, which places the major threat as issuing from Russia and China.
The Russian case is the more extreme. In 1994, Russia signed the Budapest agreement with the other Security Council members, which guaranteed Ukraine's borders for the Ukraine giving up her 1,700 nuclear weapons. In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine in the Crimea and almost certainly in the Donbass region.
Other countries with large numbers of Russian citizens, like the Baltics, are being regularly probed by Russian aircraft and are under cyber-attack from the same source. Even Canada has been probed, and just this spring, one of our submarines was tasked by NATO to track a large Russian submarine movement into the Atlantic.
China presents similar security challenges. On the good side, it's critical to maintaining control of North Korea. It's probably the only state with influence. However, this is offset by the One China policy and regular threats to Taiwan. A recent Canadian defence research report by Ben Lombardi argues, “The PLA continues to develop and deploy military capabilities intended to coerce Taiwan or to attempt an invasion”.
China's reactions in the East and South China seas are equally problematic, but probably more so is the problem in the South China Sea, and very recently, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague completely rejected the Chinese claim to virtually all of the South China Sea by virtue of a nine-dash line.
Further, it has also seized much of the Second Thomas Shoal from the Philippines, even though it is clearly within the Philippines' 200-mile economic zone mandated by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. China has also enlarged and fortified many of these former rocks. Again, the Permanent Court of Arbitration called China to account. China, in turn, rejected the court's findings outright and lashed out at any state that supported the arbitration.
Last week, New Zealand's defence minister was “berated” by the Chinese foreign ministry for opining that:
As a small maritime trading nation, international law and, in particular, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is important for New Zealand. We support the arbitral process and believe that countries have the right to seek that international resolution.
That should be Canada's position.
Finally, China has its eyes on the Arctic, primarily because of the recent report that up to 20% of the world's remaining hydrocarbon assets are in the Arctic. China has claimed—this is the position of one of its admirals—that “the North Pole and surrounding area are the common wealth of the world’s people and do not belong to any one country”, irrespective of the fact that almost all of those oil reserves are within the exclusive economic zone of the five Arctic powers, as UNCLOS, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, mandates.
There is a broad range of future directions. At the very low end, we will just see Russia and China posturing as they seek to regain elements of their former higher status.
At the high end, there are increasing concerns that these two states' actions will lead to interstate war. The most recent U.S. military strategy states that there is a “low but growing” probability of the U.S. fighting a major war “with a major power”. The 2018 CSIS document I just outlined argues that Russia “is modernising conventional military capability on a large scale; the state is mobilising for war.” The U.S. Pacific Command's intelligence chief was recently fired for publicly declaring that recent exercises indicate that China is preparing for a “short, sharp war” with Japan.
One will not know whether any of these states has actually committed to war, but we do know that the chances of conflict will rise. I suspect—and many others do—that the immediate strategic direction for both countries will be to aggressively pursue their international interests irrespective of the risk and international law. David Mulroney, a potential superb witness for you as our former ambassador to China, says China shows an unpleasant readiness to either ignore international norms or, at best, use them in “cafeteria style”, where it picks those elements useful to it while ignoring the rest.
In picking their crises, they avoid direct challenge with the U.S. Again, Ambassador Mulroney noted that China has a particularly disagreeable habit of instead picking fights with smaller states that are the least able to defend themselves, like the Philippines.
What is the Canadian response? In the short term, Canada has responded well, although there are gaps. We have recently committed to a greater multilateral effort to engage these states. This is critical. China, more than Russia, by its engagement in counter-piracy operations and operations of peacekeeping in Africa, allows Canada a direct means of engaging with it in a positive sense.
Our hard responses are also well timed, if limited: 850 in the Middle East fighting ISIS, 200 training the Ukrainian forces, 350 supporting NATO in eastern Europe, and potentially 450 in Latvia and 650 in Africa. Two things are missing. We are doing nothing in the Pacific to reassure the U.S., Japan, Korea, and the other democracies. We now have plans for 2,500 people deployed. If you check in with the parliamentary budget officer, you'll see that this will generate $1.8 billion in additional costs for DND. Currently, the government has promised only $550 million. There is a shortage.
If the short term is responding reasonably well, my assessment is that the long term is more problematic.
I'll provide some brief recommendations for the future.
One, the defence of North America and the maintenance of Canadian sovereignty relies on surveillance on, above, and beneath the seas. This requires an investment in space, maritime patrol aircraft, and icebreakers. I agree completely with Ken Hansen on the future utility of the Arctic and offshore patrol ships.
Two, maritime surveillance via NORAD must be expanded and accelerated, especially in the Arctic.
Three, our NATO allies are feeling the most direct threat. They deserve from Canada, as an ally, rapidly deployable combat-capable land, air, and sea forces. The lead democracies in Asia are under threat. The ASEAN organization has proven useless. When crisis breaks out, just as in Korea, we'll be called. It would be wise to start deploying now both to show deterrents and to be prepared if things go terribly wrong.
Any large deployment of the Canadian Forces should go to Parliament. More importantly, it has been called for long-standingly by the experts that when something goes to Parliament via deployment, it should be accompanied by a forecast of the specific cost and the source of the funding. I can go into that in quite some length.
The national shipbuilding strategy is starting to deliver, however I note it's only recapitalized one-half of the minimum Coast Guard need—and I've already outlined the problems with the Canadian surface combatant numbers—however, outside the national shipbuilding strategy our future prospects are worse. David Perry has stated this simply, “The single biggest policy problem facing the Canadian military is an inadequate supply of funding to recapitalize”. The DND capital plan has over $55 billion in unmet capital demand and only $11 billion to pay for it.
The previous September, the Canadian government, with the rest of its NATO allies, committed to a defence spending target of 2% of GDP. We are at I%. This committee must now weigh that target against our future capital needs and the world security environment. It must address personnel and excessive base infrastructure if there's any hope of getting this into line. The Economist gave us perhaps the best warning; it's warned that with China's and Russia's actions, if a state does not stand up for international norms “it will inherit a world that is less to its liking”.
That's all I have to say. Thank you very much.
