National Defence Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2016

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

I don't want specific incidents. I'm just curious as to whether you can say—

[Stephen Burt]

We've had troops deployed into western Ukraine for some time now. We have had troops deployed in other areas where they are in proximity to Russian actors, so this isn't new.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Okay, thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thanks for that.

Mr. Rioux, you have the floor for five minutes.

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

We are very pleased to see you again.

I want to congratulate you on your introductory presentation; it was very clear. That has given us a lot of information. It was a good summary.

You talk about climate change that is happening. Most of the time, when we have talked about that in this committee, we have mainly talked about the effects on the Arctic. Environmentalists tell us there has been very obvious warming over a 30-year period. That means we should expect to see human migrations.

A little earlier, my colleague Mr. MacGregor talked about the fact that the largest portion of the world's population lives in coastal areas. If there is very obvious warming, that means there will be displaced populations.

Have the military authorities considered different possible scenarios, both both a humanitarian point of view and in terms of potential conflicts?

[Stephen Burt]

The various possible scenarios change considerably from region to region. My team is working on preparing possible scenarios. Ordinarily, we focus on things that are closer in time, things that should be happening within six months, for example. I agree that major changes should be anticipated because of climate change. However, the challenge is that those changes may take years to occur. Most of our resources are allocated to support current operations and operations that will take place in the next few months.

That being said, we also do larger studies, from time to time, to see what the consequences of climate change in Asia might be. We are particularly concerned about the possibility of storms, hurricanes, or other phenomena of that nature that could cause displacement of the population, but not necessarily migration, properly speaking.

We have also examined the migrations that are currently going on in Africa and the Middle East, but it is not always clear that those changes are caused by climate change. In fact, there are several other factors that have to be taken into account.

Does that answer your question?

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

More or less. I find your answer very disquieting. It must be noted that we are planning equipment purchases for a period of at least 30 years. Environmentalists tell us that by 30 years from now, there will be major upheavals caused by climate change.

I find it disquieting that we are not looking at the situation in terms of the next 30 years, to determine how we will have to act when it comes to humanitarian aid, and what conflicts are foreseeable for Canada. I find it disquieting that you have no response scenarios for protecting our security and our sovereignty, first, but also to make sure we have the capability to deal with these threats.

We know that climate warning will cause population displacements. In fact, you mentioned that the largest portion of the population lives along coastlines.

[Stephen Burt]

In a way, I agree with you. It is not that we are not working on those scenarios, but most of our resources are allocated to supporting current operations. We certainly have an idea of what might happen. We submit the results of our analyses to the people who are in charge of equipment purchases so they can take them into account when they make decisions.

I am not saying that we are not developing scenarios, but our level of effort is lower for something that might happen in 10 or 20 or 30 years. It is difficult to invest a lot of resources in that when there are many other things that need our support right now.

That is a question that touches on the way we use resources.

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

You say that...

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm going to have to give the floor to Ms. Gallant.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and to our witness, welcome back.

My first question has to do with how you sort out all the intelligence, from the various means, that is flowing into your command. Are you planning on using what's referred to as “cognitive technology” to help sort through some of this data that you're inundated with?

[Stephen Burt]

Without getting into the specific tools that we use, certainly the upkeep of our IT systems, the ability to integrate information from multiple sources and bring it into a single place where an analyst or a team of analysts can get access to everything they need, regardless of where it's coming from, and the ability to sort through big data and all these things to get at the bits and pieces that are of value or to put them together and see what kind of value you can get when you've agglomerated them into a mass, is something we pay a lot of attention to.

We have projects, more or less, on an ongoing basis to look at our IT to make sure we have the right level of integration for existing information feeds and to look at what might be coming in the future. It's a major area of work.

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

With respect to using cognitive technology or artificial intelligence, as it's also known, to sort through these vast amounts of information so that you can actually distill it into a recommendation or a briefing, do you see any concerns from the standpoint of security and confidentiality that might be a result of using that type of technology?

[Stephen Burt]

Talking about security of the individual, privacy concerns, and whatnot, first and foremost, we don't focus on individual Canadians within defence intelligence. We're much more interested in trends—political trends, global trends, and things that are going on—and while there's always the chance of running across information that you didn't intend to collect, we don't actually have a use for that.

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

I never thought you would do that. I just thought maybe there were some technological problems that might occur as a consequence of that, or security from the standpoint of people knowing what you are doing who you don't want knowing.

From the standpoint of being the functional authority for defence intelligence in Canada, how would a peacekeeping mission in a place like Mali, for example, be in Canada's national interest? That's from your standpoint of gathering information.

[Stephen Burt]

I can't speak to what's in Canada's national interest from my perspective. From an intelligence perspective, what we would want to be able to do when we look at a particular mission set of any kind is to look at the kinds of forces we might be deploying into that area. First and foremost, we would look at what is going on in that area and help National Defence and the government come to a decision about what kinds of forces are necessary to achieve what the government would like to achieve there, so to define the context for the government. Then, once those decisions have been made around wanting to deploy and what kinds of forces you want to deploy, as a force generator, what are the things we would want to put in there from an intelligence perspective to ensure force protection and to make sure that the commanders have the information they need to make the operational decisions to make the mission a success?

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

Now we're going to go to a little more along the maritime threat. How critical is it, from the standpoint of your command, for Canada to have a submarine fleet?

[Stephen Burt]

As I said in response to one of the questions earlier, my interests on the intelligence side are really in having the best possible sources of information. There's no question that the more of the geographic spectrum you can cover—space, air, surface, and subsurface—the more information you have available to you and the better your knowledge is of what's going on. I'm in favour of more information essentially, getting access to more information.

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

Still on submarines, from the standpoint of, as you just said, surface and below the surface, would you have access to better intelligence for the defence of North America were you to have access to data that would come in real time from an under-the-ice submarine?

[Stephen Burt]

What I would say is that I am platform agnostic. I don't really have a view on what device you are using to gather that information. If the information is accessible, then I would like to be able to have access to it. I'm not too fussed about what those sensors are actually sitting on in terms of the kind of vehicle or naval platform that might be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

That's your time, Ms. Gallant.

We're going to move over to Mr. Spengemann. You have four or five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Burt.

I want to pick up on some of the comments that Ms. Gallant made, but put them into a broader context.

What this committee is dealing with and has received testimony on are really three things: the changing nature of conflict, asymmetries that are developing, and a pressing need to invest, especially in this segment of our study on the Canadian navy. I also think the retention and the extension of the trust of the Canadian public in our armed forces, and specifically with respect to your field of intelligence, is an area that you may want to comment on.

I want to ask you this. If you cast, let's say, a 10-year shadow back, could you tell us how your business has changed, starting out, perhaps, with international operations? I want to take you to the domestic side as well, but with respect to increasingly complex coalitions—different cultures, different intelligence cultures, but also operational cultures—that the Canadian Forces is going to be part of and is part of, how has the strategic and operational setting changed for you in the last 10 years? What gaps are there that the government could help you close?

[Stephen Burt]

The major changes I've seen over the course of my career, which is about 20 years now, have to do with rising uncertainty in the global environment.

It's not always clear to me when we talk about how the world's more dangerous. I think in some areas that's true, but in other areas it's less so. I think the world is much less predictable now than it was 10 or 20 years ago. For an intelligence practitioner, I guess that's good for business in the sense that there is a need to, as much as possible, get out there and try to figure out what is happening and what is going to come at you and from where.

I think that in the last decade the mission in Afghanistan surfaced and then reinforced the need for good, tactical, and operational intelligence in support of decision-making. I think we haven't always had the culture around that, which some other countries do, but I think Afghanistan really made it clear how important that spectrum is, from the soldier on operations all the way up to the national decision-makers, and how important it is to have the best quality information on a day-to-day basis.

I think that those two things make for real growth, and I think there is a much greater understanding and perception of the importance of intelligence, and defence intelligence in particular, because of the profile of defence missions over the last decade, but intelligence more generally. I think there is a much greater understanding from the records previously than has ever been.

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

Let me take you over to the domestic side.

I also sit on the public safety committee. As you may know, there's a discussion under way on oversight in the committee of parliamentarians. This committee here has received evidence that—and I don't want to say it's the single biggest threat—a very prominent threat against Canada is that of domestic terrorism.

Taking my question to the domestic side, how has the operation changed here around the interaction with more civilian agencies? Maybe you can comment a bit about how open versus classified sources feed your business. If there are any gaps that we can assist in closing, then it would be helpful to this committee to know what they are.

[Stephen Burt]

On the domestic security side, with domestic national security terrorism and other threats, our specific interest in the Canadian Forces operations command and defence analysis more generally is really on the security of our personnel and our bases. That's really where we spend the bulk of our effort, in liaising with partners, whether they're municipal police forces or RCMP or CSIS and others, to make sure we have a good understanding of what the current threat picture looks like domestically and whether or not there are any issues that we're going to have to deal with in areas that we're responsible for, or people that we are responsible for.

It is, to use a metaphor that I think Admiral Lloyd used when he was here, very much a team sport. We contribute to that picture in terms of our operations overseas and what we see happening over there that may have implications, but we really do rely on a mandate for authorities and information flow domestically, since we don't operate in that sphere in the same way with our domestic partners.