National Defence Committee on Oct. 20th, 2016

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

Right.

Mr. Hansen, you spoke about the Arctic, and I found you very pessimistic. Yet, we announced investments for six Arctic patrol boats and new bases that will open in 2018. We spoke earlier about radar and satellites. We are also aware of the importance of the CF-18 surveillance missions.

Should Canadians be concerned, despite all these investments that we currently have in the Arctic?

[Ken Hansen]

I think the answer to that question is yes, unequivocally yes.

The distances to the High Arctic from our principal naval bases and Coast Guard bases, and the lack of facilities in the High Arctic to support and sustain operations are serious material deficiencies that would cripple any kind of Canadian response to an emergency. This could be a simple safety of life at sea issue, all the way up to law enforcement or to open conflict with a competitor nation, so I absolutely believe that the Arctic needs to have a much higher profile because of the logistical component.

This is an important issue with the United States as well. The Americans are also looking at how their very outdated and limited capacities are going to be augmented. When it comes to interoperability, this is an area of specific interest for the United States and they are looking to Canada for help and assistance in dealing with the future in the Arctic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Bezan, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank both our witnesses for being here, for your great advice and testimony today and for your service to Canada.

It's a very interesting conversation that we've had so far about the threat environment that we're in. I think this is critical to determining the type of navy that we need. We fully appreciate the shortfalls that we have right now in the Royal Canadian Navy. How do both of you feel about the navies of our NATO allies? I know they've gone through difficulties similar to those Canada faces and are now trying to reposition themselves with the growing threat from Russia and China. I would ask both of you if you could speak to that.

As well, you raised the interesting idea that we need to have that anti-missile air protection that the destroyer capability brings. It was interesting to see the Houthi firing upon U.S. warships, and the ability of the U.S. to bring down those missiles before they got to U.S. positions. If you could also speak to the fact that it's not just state actors we have to be concerned about now, it's also the non-state actors.

I'll start off with Professor Lerhe and then Professor Hansen could add on.

[Cmdre Eric Lerhe]

The Houthi one is a great example. I think caution is needed here as the U.S. is still trying to put together the picture.

What the Mason had to do to ensure they were defeated was fire. Medium-range cease barrel missiles, long-range standard missiles, and a spectacularly expensive Nulka deceptive jammer.... This is high level. It doesn't get any more sophisticated a response than that. As you say, it's against somebody, a rebel force in Yemen, not one of the leading lights of naval capability, that was able to fire this from the back of a truck.

Let's go look at some of our NATO allies, and what they are doing. Britain is probably going to hit the 2% target, but the way she got there is absolutely terrifying. Several years ago, she looked at the threat and said, “We don't need maritime patrol aircraft anymore” and they got rid of their Nimrods. Then the Russians started coming right up to their submarine base in Faslane, and guess what the U.K. is doing today? It's making a rush buy of P-8 Poseidon aircraft, the most expensive in the world today, and I'm sure they are paying panic prices for the lot.

You then see a drop-off in defence spending percentages the further from Russia you are, certainly in naval capabilities, with quite limited capabilities for all except France. Others are staying closer to home. The bottom line is, there's a real need to reassure places like Poland and the Baltics that the U.S. will be there, and that she's going to have some high-capacity help from us.

I'll turn it over to Ken Hansen.

[Ken Hansen]

I agree with practically everything Professor Lerhe said, but you asked about NATO navies, and I think they are busy bankrupting themselves at the moment.

One of the philosophies of modern naval force organization and structure is looking for a uniformity of capability across the structure. We see that in Canada with the frigates and the future warship that would be built at Irving. We're looking for a uniformly high level of capability, as high as we can possibly afford. The problem is, the costs for new technologies as we see them today is very high. The cost for technologies that are coming is going to be breathtakingly high.

We're talking about things now like charged particle laser weapons, robotic drone swarms, and anti-ballistic missile defence systems. The cost of these things is so prohibitively high that they cannot be afforded as a common standard of capability. There has to be a lot more discrimination about how much we need and where it needs to be.

The Danes are very smart when it comes to modularity, using best commercial practices and standards for engineering. They are able to cut costs quite significantly below that of any other NATO country, so I highly recommend the committee look at Danish shipbuilding and design practices, especially when it comes to those two issues of cost and flexibility achieved through modularity. I believe this is the future in warship construction. In fact it could get to the point of what a warship actually is if you can load capability in and out of a common frame.

Eric made some very important comments about the lethality of weapon systems. If weapon systems are that dangerous, and I truly believe they are, then we have to find a better way to manage the risk and be able to produce, at short notice, replacement platforms in which to put these modules. The modules are what's expensive and what is valuable. The hull of the ship itself is not.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Mr. Fisher, you have the floor.

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

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for being here. The amount of expertise you have shared with us today is truly incredible. I wish I had more time.

Both of you spoke at length about inadequate capital funding. In fact, it could probably be the central theme to many of your points.

From a force structure point of view, what type of equipment, infrastructure, and other capabilities would the RCN need today for future threats to Canada and the maritime domain? I guess I'm simplifying things. What would you have as a grocery list right now? If you had the capital funding, what would you start with short term, medium term, and long term? I would be interested, as well, in Mr. Hansen's point of view on this, to see how closely they compare.

Don't you have a grocery list for us?

[Cmdre Eric Lerhe]

The grocery list, for me, is that we need two joint support ships in whatever guise is reasonable. We need two HADR ships, as long as they have significant refuelling capacity to spell the JSS, the joint support ship, when it's in refit. It becomes a far more useful vessel if it has that kind of refuelling capability.

Admittedly, the national shipbuilding procurement strategy must live within its means, but we must look, probably in two years, when the final bill comes through for the Canadian surface combatant project, to make sure that we get something in the range of 15 ships, i.e., replacing basically what we have from an era where, I would argue, the threat was less than it is today.

Next, we currently have four submarines. One's in refit, one is in training, and one is available on each coast, maybe. This is so close to the bare bones that it would take only one small hiccup and a coast is left without a submarine. The bare minimum is six. You just have to ask how Australia figures they need 12.

Then, if you buy an HADR ship—and people always forget that it might cost $2.5 billion for each ship—what you also need is another billion dollars' worth of troop-carrying or load-carrying helos, at minimum, probably, of 10 per ship, and you need about half a million dollars' worth of hovercrafts for them. On the shopping list, then, is that each comes with a crew of 500, and an annual O and M bill of about $500 million for the two of them, i.e., operations and maintenance, gas, spare parts, and the like.

Finally, in my perfect world we would be deploying submarines to the Pacific from time to time. In fact, that would be a great way to be reassuring some allies if we can't get ships there, if we don't have a sufficient number of ships. In that case, perhaps, one of these HADRs also serving as a submarine tender would make sense.

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

So we don't need much, is what you're saying. Okay.

[Cmdre Eric Lerhe]

Oh, sorry, we haven't got to the MPAs.

Don't forget, we're building 16 Coast Guard vessels. There are currently 46 large vessels in their fleet. They are old. We are satisfying less than half the demand of what the Coast Guard requires. We have 10 MPAs. We originally bought 18, and we should have 18 maritime patrol aircraft.

Over to Ken.

[Ken Hansen]

The short term, for me, is one to two years. In that timeframe we should be looking to fill up the inventory of spare parts, supplies, ammunition, and information systems, so that what we have can be operated reliably and sustainably.

In the medium term, we should be looking at the logistical facilities we need to move the fleet wherever it's required, and be able to support it through the fleet maintenance facilities on either coast.

In the long term, we should be looking at the fleet balance. I recommend a fifty-fifty split between combat capability and logistical support capability because, if it's going to come to a shooting war, it's going to be at long range from those aforementioned bases of supply. For combat platforms, the submarine is the weapon system of the future. I don't believe that surface ships of the type that we can build and can afford will be able to survive in a high-threat environment. We need, as the Australians have done, to shift our focus over to the submarine fleet and use the surface fleet more or less in a support role.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for that.

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

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

We've been speaking at a very high strategic level, and I want to take us some place that may seem quite small in comparison.

We've just seen that the government has decided to decommission and perhaps divest the Canadian Forces auxiliary vessel Quest. The Canadian navy will no longer have its own research vessel to do acoustic and sonar research. I see this as a general decline in the capabilities of the navy.

I would like an opinion from each of you on whether the capacities to do this kind of research are central to the navy and how we can survive if we don't have our own research ship.

I'll start with Professor Lerhe.

[Cmdre Eric Lerhe]

That is but the tip of the iceberg of the problem. Our capital figures, which I have already outlined, are at a crisis level in the view of the experts. Our research and development funding about three years ago—and it's been downward ever since—was 1.4% of our total budget. The U.S. R and D budget is 26% of their budget.

We ask ourselves, how come we don't have modern kit? Quite candidly, at 1.4%, the minimum you can do is attempt to be a smart customer. You're not developing anything. You're just able to shop a bit smarter than your neighbour, and even that's in question at that level.

Quest is just a signal of a far wider problem in research and development in Canada.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Hansen.

[Ken Hansen]

One of the lesser known sideline capabilities of the Arctic and offshore patrol ships will be to host containerized research laboratories and all sorts of other facilities on board. The research community here in Halifax is quite excited about this prospect. Quest, of course, was unable to go into ice water, and so that'll be a new ability. They're not as quiet as Quest was. Quest was designed to do Cold War acoustics research, but I think we have higher priority needs at the moment.

I'm very worried about research and development, as well, but also about education, modelling, and simulation. The navy does not have its own education program. It does not have its doctrine development and warfare analysis skills. The program that I used to chair at the college in Toronto is gone. The defence fellowship at Dalhousie University is now shut down. There's really no place the navy goes anymore to give its people the professional acumen they need at their mid-career point. I think this is just as big a problem as science R and D issues that are related to technical issues.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Go ahead.

[Cmdre Eric Lerhe]

One qualifier I have—and I hope you'll be briefed on it, or ask to be briefed on it—is that Canada is basing a lot of the statement of requirements for its new ships on a superb modelling capability at the Maritime Warfare Centre in Halifax, where we do top-level work. It explains in arithmetic detail why you need a missile that goes so far against a threat. We do have a very strong capability there.

I'll also echo Ken's thoughts.

I hope you hear more on this, but four years ago, we killed the security and defence forum. This was a program that ran at about $2 million a year, it was run by DND, and it passed to 10 selected universities, which had to bid on this program. They each got about $200,000, but they had to say they were going to put at least x professors at work on defence issues, they were going to train at least 10 post-graduate students, they were going to have four conferences, and they were going to produce 20 books. This program was running for about 25 years. The auditor general examined it in spectacular detail, twice. It was discovered to be one of the best values for money in a department, and we killed it. Now, if there's a little lingering event and you put up your hand, then they'll throw you some popcorn money for your next conference.

David Perry was paid by them. He is the most prominent and knowledgeable defence critic in Canada. There was also David McDonough. One half of the policy analysts in DND all came out of the security and defence forum training.

What are you going to get? Very soon you're going to have people commenting on defence issues who, quite candidly, aren't fit to take out your garbage, because they don't know anything and they're not trained. Return the SDF.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for that.

We're done our formal questioning. Mr. Spengemann, you had a question. Ms. Romanado said she had one, too. So if you could split your time, we'll move to Mr. Bezan and then we'll go back to Mr. Garrison.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I wanted to take you up on your invitation to Commodore Lerhe to comment a little bit on the Canadian public. I wanted to ask about public understanding of the navy, its complexities, the capability gaps we heard about, which I'm assuming are relatively small, as well as the importance of elevating Canadian understanding and supporting a decision to do more. I'll leave it as general as that.

Please give us your comments. Commander Hansen, we would like to hear from you as well. In the last session, we had witnesses from the Navy League and the Naval Association, each of which has a public outreach mandate, but I don't think we were able to explore that question in as much depth as we would have liked. So if you give us your views, that would be greatly appreciated.

[Cmdre Eric Lerhe]

I had a three-level answer to that question in mind, all in rising cost. The first level is this committee. I left you a copy of my MA thesis on the role of the defence committee in 1994 in shaping defence policy. Most analysis will credit that as being the gold standard in defence reviews. Why was that? It was that for several reasons.

The Minister of National Defence and Prime Minister Chrétien said they would seriously listen to this committee's report, and they studiously kept quiet on defence issues for the seven months it was running, so they didn't lead the committee. That's point one.

Point two, it was a virtually unanimous response. The Liberals and the Reform signed off on the report. The NDP I don't think had party status at the time, and the Bloc was onside. Suddenly, out of Quebec City came this direction to dissent. People just knew they were forced into a corner. But that provided a very powerful role to the minister to say, when they started to make serious cuts in 1994, that they had consulted with Canadians and were listening to Parliament. These were painful cuts, but even defence didn't howl, because it was part of an honest process.

The next point about the committee is that they didn't go on a shopping trip or a cutting trip. Instead, they did analysis. They had serious discussions, and when they talked money, they were credible. When they talked about buying this or getting rid of that, it was based on strong logic.

Finally, there was a serious follow-up, because what this had created was a panel of parliamentarians who could go back to their constituents and talk credibly, using what they'd learned, to the public about why defence is needed and the like. This was a superb model. I was delighted that this committee and the Senate committee decided to return to their jobs in doing the defence review as the special panel did. You don't want to ask me my views on the special panel.

The next thing is to spend $2 million a year on the STF program, about which I will not run on any more.

The third thing is, how does Australia explain to its public it's going to spend $30 billion on 12 submarines when the previous $6 billion were a—can I use the word “disaster”?— as a procurement. They spent probably $2 million on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and the navy needed its Sea Power Centre. These are non-partisan, staffed by six or seven Ph.D. candidates who don't trot out the government line but do analysis. For example, if you want a detailed look at whether your country should build destroyers or not, you cannot do better than to look at the ASPI study. They have experts who say this is madness and experts who say this is the most brilliant program in history. However, there's a debate.

More importantly, what happens is their media responds, because they know that if a reporter makes an ill-considered comment on defence the odds are extremely good that one of 12 incredibly competent defence academics is going to rip his heart out. What does that result in? Before reporters open their mouths on a complex topic like shipbuilding, they check in with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute to ask whether they are on to something or not.

Those are my bullets for engaging and explaining to Canadians.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

That took the whole five minutes, but it was good, so thank you for that.

I'll circle back with you, Ms. Romanado, if we have the time.

Mr. Bezan, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Professor Lerhe, I agree with you 100% that we need to re-establish our academic capabilities on defence policy and military operations, so I appreciate those comments.

I want to talk about the submarines. You look at the shipbuilding capacity that is now greatly increased in Canada because of the national shipbuilding strategy. To do the things that both you and Professor Hansen were talking about today and making sure we hit the 15 surface combatants and we have submarines in the future, which I agree wholeheartedly with, do we have the capabilities within the current construct of shipbuilding in Canada to do it? Or do we need to outsource it?