National Defence Committee on Nov. 1st, 2016

[Dr. Andrea Charron]

It used to be that when you talked about threats you would stovepipe them into: safety issues, that's for the Coast Guard to deal with; security issues, that's for the RCMP; and defence threats are for the navy to deal with.

We're finding now that this continuum is very blurred. If you start with a safety concern, any of these incidents can rapidly turn into a security...and turn into a defence threat.

The other thing we're seeing is not only are threats being able to morph quickly, but the roles of the various government departments are also changing. You see the navy taking on almost quasi-constabulary roles when we give them fisheries powers, for example.

It's very difficult to delineate and say this is this kind of threat and it only fits into this category. You're right t hat there is always a concern that we are going to overblow threats from China and Russia. I think especially the U.S. feels them far more acutely than we do. Whether or not we're underestimating or the U.S. is overestimating the threat is yet to be seen. When we talk about Canada's national interests, I tend to rank them maybe differently from some. Yes, defence of Canada and North America, but ultimately we found our security is tied intimately to the economy. Our September 11 was September 12. When the borders close, when the U.S. doesn't have confidence in us, when we cannot get trains, trucks, ships into Canada we are in trouble very quickly. One of the things that we define defence to be is also a healthy economy, and the navy certainly has a role to play in that.

Perhaps I'm not answering your question, but you're right: we can always put a skew on every threat. In Canada, we are learning that different government agencies are going to have to adapt their mandates as far as they can. I think a comment was made earlier about the Coast Guard, which is a safety organization. Perhaps that needs to be considered in the future because it is one of the agencies that houses about 80% of the maritime information we need about ships of interest approaching North America, but also because its mandate is limited in its ability to respond.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Mr. Paul-Hus.

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

Thank you.

That confirms what I'm thinking about the very important relationship with the Coast Guard. I know our special forces are currently trained to inspect civilian vessels, and not only Russian or Chinese naval ships. These vessels may come from other countries and represent different threats.

In terms of threats, we often look at the west coast and the Arctic, but there is also the Atlantic. I told the committee last week that, in Halifax, there is an enormous volume of traffic from the Atlantic. Could the different types of civilian threats be significant?

[Dr. Andrea Charron]

I think the reason the Atlantic is certainly favoured, especially when it comes to Canada's maritime structure.... The commander of maritime forces Atlantic is also the commander of maritime component, which means ultimately they are the ones for command and control of naval forces. Traditionally we have been more oriented towards the Atlantic because of our relationship with the U.K. and because we were trading with western Europe, and that's where you're going to see more of the traffic.

We now seem to be pivoting more to the Pacific, and so perhaps we need to think about how the navy is structured and how the Coast Guard is structured, etc. to respond to potentially more traffic coming from the Pacific.

To your other point, there is a reason China finally got a coast guard. They realized that by sending out their navy every time they had an issue, it tended to ratchet up the tension level a lot, and that's maybe something we need to think about. As much as threats are evolving and the mandates of government departments are expanding on the margins, when it comes to responding to an event, if you send the navy, it is a very different response from sending, for example, the coast guard. That applies to China; it applies to Canada, and it also applies to the U.S. Keeping that distinction is sometimes very helpful.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

Mr. Rioux.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for being here and for sharing their valuable knowledge again.

Mr. Huebert, you said at the beginning that we don't hear much discussion about the navy because it's centred in Vancouver and Halifax. We seem to make a distinction between saltwater and freshwater. I'm thinking mainly of the St. Lawrence River. Last year, two war vessels entered the St. Lawrence River, but their presence was noticed only when they were already close to Quebec City. That's when they were asked to identify themselves.

Is the navy monitoring and defending all waterways, both freshwater and saltwater?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

A challenge that always faces the Canadian navy is that they know they're going to have a limited number of hulls. We get back to hulls, of course, in this context.

Anyone who has lived in Victoria or Halifax will know the distinction between a brown-water navy and a green-water navy, which are supposed to have a little bit of a coastal ability, and a blue-water navy, which means dealing with the type of storms we have off of both sides. The distinction is substantial.

Your question, however, gets to the point that Dr. Charron was raising. How do you have that maritime awareness? How do you integrate a system of sensors that will allow you...? When I say sensors, I mean all the way from the individual person to the highest tech in terms of satellite surveillance, the satellite constellation system, and this integration.

I think in many ways the stuff that Dr. Charron was talking about in how to take the limited assets and make sure that you have complete capability of knowing who is in fact entering your waters is an ongoing requirement. Once again, we get into the unsatisfactory answer that, to have proper surveillance capability, it's not just that we've solved that problem and we know that everything is coming, because on the other side, the technology is always changing in that context, so it's a mindset.

I think a lot of the recommendations that Dr. Charron was saying about a creation of a maritime intelligence capability have to be something that we are thinking of. That then integrates into the actual assets that we have.

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

Ms. Charron, you started telling us about the Coast Guard. How do you view its role in Canada? Should it intervene more in economic or maritime trade situations? That's the approach the Chinese coast guard seems to want to take.

How would you assess the Canadian Coast Guard's current role?

[Dr. Andrea Charron]

The Coast Guard amazes me, given the amount that they are asked to do with so few funds and so few ships. I mean, they are instrumental. They have one fleet and sort of two seasons to deal with everything, such as making sure that resupply happens in the Arctic, making sure that commercial ships are able to make it down the St. Lawrence, and marine rescue. It's an unbelievable portfolio, so to consider adding more mandates makes me a little nervous because I think they're running full tilt, and I don't see them having much more room to add much more, but it's part of a conversation that maybe Canada needs to have, and everything is interconnected.

Our Coast Guard is different from the U.S. Coast Guard, which has what they call title 10 and title 14 capabilities. Under title 10 they actually come under the U.S. forces and become like a warship. Under title 14 they're under homeland defence, and they're doing more constabulary work. Our Coast Guard doesn't have that constabulary function, except for the Arctic Waters Pollution Prevention Act in the Arctic.

I think the time is now to have that conversation with the new commissioner about where she sees the Coast Guard in the future. I think a lot of people are surprised that our Coast Guard is limited to sort of the safety mandate, but given how important that is, given the environment, and given that commercial traffic is so vital to Canada, I would be very cautious about expanding their role precipitously, because I think that those other functions, which are vital, would be impacted.

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

The question is for Ms. Charron or Mr. Huebert.

I was told that all Canadian vessels on our oceans, including fishing boats, Coast Guard vessels, army vessels and ballistic missile launchers, can be quickly identified. Is that true?

[Dr. Andrea Charron]

Yes and no. We have vessel identification systems, and for ships that are compliant, that's very helpful. We're actually not so worried about the compliant ones, but about the ones that, for a variety of reasons, will often turn off their transponders, and sometimes they are very good reasons. For example, if you're a on a fishing boat, you often don't want to attract attention because then all the other fishing boats follow you, and you lose the best catch. There are also more nefarious reasons for turning off your transponders. We have vessel identification systems. We have radar. We have HUMINT. We have surveillance. We have regular patrols. All of this information is something that MSOCs look at on a regular basis and discuss among each other so that they can make the Canadian operating picture the best, most complete, most useful picture that we have.

One of the things we often wrestle with is that more information is sometimes not always helpful because it gets harder and harder to see the outliers in that big picture. It's also a constant challenge to look at the types of filters we have, the quality of the information that goes in, and then turning information into intelligence requires an assessment function. That's often the first thing that goes, especially when you want to save money on personnel and funding. That's a really difficult, challenging, and specialized work. So more information without have the ability to assess it is a problem; likewise, being able to warn of a situation but not being able to respond is also a problem. All along the way there are these points of failure.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Mr. Bezan.

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

I'll just follow up on Dr. Charron's comments right now about the Coast Guard and having the commissioner here. I think we should be encouraging the commissioner to show up. I hope she is on our witness list. We can have that discussion about whether she believes the Coast Guard should expand its constabulary responsibilities and duties under various pieces of legislation.

I want, first of all, to thank both of you for being here today and participating in this study we are doing.

Dr. Huebert, you mentioned the U.K., Japan, the United States, and how they are going about their shipbuilding and maritime assets that they've been able to employ. I'd like to ask you about Australia. They, too, seem to have a bipartisan approach to dealing with their white paper. They have a very ambitious shipbuilding program as well, including putting at least six submarines in the waters.

I wonder if you could talk to the Australian model and whether that should be something we're looking at here when it comes to the navy in Canada.

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

Absolutely.

In fact, it's even more ambitious. The open literature has said it's going to be 12 submarines. It's basically a conventional nuclear-powered French submarine that they're buying.

With the Australian model, part of the thing that always drives anybody when they are getting their defence procurement done right—and this is the one thing that comes out in the open literature—is that the more the decision-makers see and feel that there are real security threats, the more you have bipartisan agreement. It's not a criticism of our system, per se. However, if you look at the Australians, every time the Indonesians were becoming more of a threat—in any of the white papers from 1965 onward—the more you saw bipartisan agreement. In other words, the threat seemed to bring the ideas together. We can say the same thing about the Japanese with regard to North Korea and some of the issues. In other words, there seems to be a relationship between bipartisan and democratic states and the threat perception that exists in that particular context.

In terms of the model that the Australians are doing, the one piece I would say works the best, that we may want to take issue with, is that the Australians have an ongoing process of white papers, examinations, and other means of determining what the threat is. The Australians are a Commonwealth nation, just as we are. They take the practice of white papers just as we do, but it does not end with the white paper. You have this constant re-evaluation of what the threat is and then what they have to do.

The significance of that is twofold. First of all, it allows you to deal with the ongoing issues, so you can respond to changes much more rapidly than simply by doing the examination at the beginning of any government term in office. Second of all, I think the critical point is that it educates decision-makers.

In other words, if you are required to be constantly looking at that—you guys have such limited time to focus on any of these issues, as all of you are very well aware—so that you have to dedicate this amount of time and you have to rethink this, that has a means of educating any governance system. That is part of the reason we see countries like Australia, France, Japan, South Korea that are able to do this, because you have to bring in the decision-makers on a more regular basis.

I would say going beyond simply looking at the navy, you need to be able to deal with the threat environment around you on an ongoing basis. That then mixes the decision-makers with the threat perception.

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

To carry on with the threat discussion, Dr. Charron, you're the expert on NORAD, being first and foremost aerial threats, and dealing with Russian bombers coming across the Arctic.

How serious is the maritime threat—our naval approaches to Canada—by other state actors, and for that matter by non-state actors?

[Dr. Andrea Charron]

I think it's a growing concern.

Some of our detection systems are contingent on the size of the vessel, so one of the new areas of concern is what we call go-fast boats, the tiny little whalers that can be very destructive, but are not required by law to have a vessel identification system, nor do I think that's necessarily practical or possible to do. Maritime traffic is increasing generally. Whether this is a function of globalization and having more trading partners is all up for speculation.

As for nefarious warnings, if we go by how many NORAD advisories and warnings they have been giving out, it's on a downward trend, and that could be because either Canada, the U.S., or both are able to detect the threat early enough that they can neutralize it before it has to become an advisory or a warning.

At the same time, our definition of a threat is expanding and changing. For example, one of the big innovations of NORAD was to track vessels coming from western Africa because of the Ebola threat. Ten years ago, we would never think of NORAD having that kind of a role. What it did though is allow Canada and the U.S. preparation time to come up with a plan of what to do if somebody lands in North America having been exposed to that virus.

Do we have an increase in incursions by foreign vessels with nefarious intent? I don't know. Based on the NORAD warnings and advisories, we are on a downward trend, so you could infer perhaps not, or we are getting better at detecting these issues earlier and neutralizing them before we have to hit panic stations.

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

Okay, and that's based upon the non-state threat. What about the state threat coming from China, Russia, and other state players out there that want to either capitalize on resources in Canada's Arctic, or want to challenge us under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea as to passage through the Northwest Passage and other Arctic waters, or may have even more ambitious role ideas on how to challenge our maritime defences?

[Dr. Andrea Charron]

I am a little different from Rob Huebert when it comes to the Arctic in that I still see it as a region of co-operation. I think Russia and China know very well the maritime limits of Canada. They haven't pressed them. Nobody has more to lose in the Arctic than does Russia, and they prefer it to be an area of stability, because they are going to benefit most economically from that.

The same goes, so far, with China. That may not be the case in the future, but just as with our Atlantic and Pacific coasts, when we endeavour to make them zones of peace and allow for commercial traffic, the same probably should be said for the Arctic, and so there is an inconsistency that Canada has there, whereas we have the opinion that we prefer ships to stay out.

It will be very interesting to see what comes out of the reports from the Crystal Serenity and how much it costs Canada for that to go through without a hitch. It's something we have to keep tracking.

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

Professor Huebert.

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

I'm glad you've given me this opportunity because the issue when we raise maritime security in the Arctic—first of all, Dr. Charron and others are completely right when they say at the surface level there is co-operation. I agree with them. There's not going to be an issue of someone using military force to challenge over the extended continental shelf or resource grab. Absolutely there's co-operation.

The point where we differ very strongly is in my contention that we see a renewal of Arctic capabilities at the strategic level. This is the part we don't see. This is the part that's subsurface. It's aerospace threats. We see an increasing usage by the Russians, and I expect that we're going to see the Chinese starting to become involved, the so-called great games, where nuclear deterrence starts playing a more critical role.

It's not a question of fighting over Arctic resources, but the fact that the Russians are an Arctic power, that the Americans have Alaska. It's those strategic assets and the issues that then surface in the context of when relations go downhill, say over Syria, Georgia, Ukraine, that we start seeing this push and pull.

In other words, absolutely, we can pat ourselves on the back and say that things are going well at a co-operative level because they are at a superficial level, but in true naval power, the type of stuff that we traditionally use navies for, since 2008 we've seen an increase in use of maritime passages in the region by the Russians.

We also see the Americans doing it very quietly with their submarines, particularly their Virginia class, but they are doing it and this is the part that's under the surface. We as Canadians can say we're not seeing this, so that's not happening. The fact that we don't see it doesn't mean the issues aren't there, and when they do surface, they become so serious that they escalate quite quickly in that context.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Mr. Bezan, your 10 minutes are up.

Mr. Fisher has the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you both for being here today and sharing your expertise as well as your perspectives.

Professor Huebert, you spoke about the naval needs from your perspective, how we need a fighting capability, submarine maintenance, the impact of climate change, and your belief that we need a robust maritime strategy.

I've asked this question of other academics and also of some DND officials: a grocery list, a naval want, a sea power need based on your perspective. Can you give me your grocery list of what you would do starting today if I handed you the chequebook?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

If you were to hand me a chequebook, the first thing would be to institutionalize and systemize a naval political capability of an ongoing examination of the maritime issue.

In other words, the navy is very good at keeping this ongoing. They do their maritime strategy, their naval strategy, but there needs to be this ongoing process, maybe a committee system that's headed by the PMO, but something that keeps it at the high political level and is ongoing.

Without understanding what you are developing your capabilities for, why are we doing this? It's not just having the ships look nice and attractive, but ultimately understanding what Canadian sea power is required, not wished for and not what would be good, but what is required. That would be the first thing I would establish.

The second thing—and it goes back to one of your colleagues calling it a conveyor belt—is a recognition that the procurement has to be an ongoing response to this changing environment. The type of ship that we're saying we may need right now...Dr. Charron gave a whole bunch of wonderful examples of what we need to respond today, and what we're doing successfully. The question then becomes, 10 years from now, will we need the ships to do something extra? Once again, it is looking at flexibility in the capability.

In terms of the third aspect, and that gets into the mechanics, what do you need? We need something that allows us to have access both above and below in terms of all three of our oceans. We are a three ocean country, and we often forget that. We need to have something. If not the Arctic offshore patrol vessels, we'd have to have something that would be very similar.

We need to have the ability to go both under and above. That also means air assets. That's something we haven't talked about; for example, the replacement of the Auroras that are a critical part in all of this. They will eventually wear out, so you need to have that capability and flexibility.

The fourth aspect is that you need to be able to go worldwide. One of the ironies is that even though we don't think about it, we are a blue-water nation. Our interests rely on it. We need to have that replenishment capability that we are trying to rebuild now in the Vancouver shipyards. Ultimately, we need those types of assets.

If you want to drill down a bit further, the surface combatant has to be a critical element. The FELEX program, by the way, has been a major success. We always talk about procurement failures with Canada, but we often forget that the modernization of the frigates was done under budget and, in fact, ahead of schedule. That's a testament to good planning.

We need to be thinking about having these assets at the front end, and they need to be flexible. Once again, we're thinking of today's threats, and we need to do so. However, if we add in climate change, may I ask you this, how do we respond as a nation if, in fact, climate change means that 60% of Bangladesh ceases to exist because the sea level rises, say, 10 years from now, and that sparks a war between Bangladesh and India, and then Pakistan comes in?

You can create all sorts of scenarios. What do we do as a nation, particularly given our current demographics, alliances, and so forth, and what type of navy do you need? Then you start saying that maybe some of the Danish models could apply because they have war-fighting capabilities, but they also have emergency response capability on their Absalon-class frigates. We need to understand the constant change of it, but we need to have the assets.

The fourth wish is to be very sensitive, and make sure that we are slightly ahead of what the Americans want us to do. We never want to be in a situation.... It's not politically correct to say it, but we always have to be sensitive. It's called a defence against help. We want to be sure that the Americans never feel that we're letting them down. That sort of grazes us from a sovereignty perspective, but once again, getting into the North American perspective, that is a requirement.

Those would be the four things I would go for, if you were to give me the chequebook.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Time is up.

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

May I just ask him how many submarines he would want?