National Defence Committee on Feb. 14th, 2017

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Peter Jennings]

I'm encouraged to hear that.

However, we are now locked into future shipbuilding being centred on South Australia, with a little bit in the west, and that's going to be very hard for any future government to reverse.

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

Don't worry. We are facing the same situation, but instead of states, we have to deal with the provinces.

As to the work of the Royal Australian Navy, at the tactical level, as regards weapon systems, do you work a lot with the United States? Canadians work a lot with NATO. On the tactical level, does Australia work more with the British navy or with the United States? Who is your main partner?

[Peter Jennings]

We have quite a diverse range of partners in shipbuilding construction in particular. The French company DCNS has won the design contract for our future submarine. The government has already stated that we will use an American combat system with that, the AN/BYG-1 combat system, which is a U.S. design. We will—

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

My question pertains more to operations, to the operational and tactical levels.

As regards strategic communication, your ships have to be in contact with certain countries. Who do you work with primarily, the United States or Britain?

[Peter Jennings]

The Americans would certainly be our closest ally in terms of operational activities. We have an incredibly close relationship with them.

We also work very closely with your navy, the British navy, the Singaporeans, and, increasingly, the Japanese. We have a navy that is actually very interoperable with navies in the region, but the U.S. is by far the largest and closest of our allies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm sorry, Mr. Paul-Hus, but I'm going to have to cut you off there and give the floor to Mr. Garrison.

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

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

Thanks very much, Mr. Jennings, for being with us today.

Part of my background is work in Asia-Pacific areas. I think there are some interesting parallels, as you say, in size of military and the way we operate.

I'm from the west coast, and I think one of the problems we always have in Canada is people's Atlantic focus. One of the interesting things in your written remarks is pointing out that Canada is as close to most of the Asia-Pacific as Australia is. I'd like you to talk a bit more about the strategic challenges in the Asia-Pacific region right now for both Canada and Australia.

[Peter Jennings]

That's a big canvas, of course, Mr. Garrison, but I think we're going through a period of rapid and fundamental strategic change in the Asia-Pacific region.

People are very credibly claiming that there is an arms race under way in north Asia in conventional weapons systems. I don't think that is an exaggeration.

Of course, the lead in that race is China, with a most remarkably fast and sophisticated expansion of all of its military capabilities, but particularly its maritime capabilities. What I would say to the committee in that regard is, don't worry too much about the Chinese aircraft carrier. The things to be focusing on are the developments around missiles, around supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles and all of that technology that is designed to push the U.S. and the allied navies as far away from the Chinese mainland as they possibly can.

This is a dynamic and changing region and one where there is increasing risk for all countries, but particularly for countries such as Canada, which has a significant borderline on the Pacific Ocean. It would be probably rude of me to come here to this committee to talk about Canadian strategic perceptions, but I think inevitably Canada's interests will draw it more into engagement in the Pacific with its military, which is something Australia would welcome.

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

I guess most people from the west coast would point out that as much of our trade goes across the Pacific as it does across the Atlantic, so we have an interest in stability in that region.

Can you talk a bit about submarines? You raised the question of submarines as part of that arms race that's going on in the Asia-Pacific or Indo-Pacific region.

[Peter Jennings]

I think the most significant thing that's happening in terms of the Asian arms race is the growth of submarine capability, with a massive expansion on the part of the Chinese.

It's almost easier to list the countries that are not developing submarines than countries that are. They include new and unlikely players such as Bangladesh. You have a number of the southeast Asian countries deciding to double down on their own submarine capabilities, with Vietnam, for example, acquiring more submarines from Russia, and Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and Indonesia all either getting into the submarine business for the first time or renewing their fleets.

Then there are all of the things associated with submarines, including underwater drones and listening devices implanted in the seabed. The next war in the Asia-Pacific will be a war primarily around anti-submarine warfare, and the country that is best able to do that will be the winner.

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

I know you've already indicated you think it might be somewhat rude to talk about Canadian capabilities, but let's talk about Canadian submarines. Would you have any comment on the current submarine fleet versus what's going on in the Asia-Pacific and the need for replacement?

[Peter Jennings]

The first thing to say is that Australia is becoming an extremely competent manufacturer of submarines, and I would commend that to Canada when it thinks about where its next submarines should come from. I really don't mean that flippantly. I think the more we could achieve in terms of commonality of design around sensors and weapons, the better that would be.

There are many people who would say that the future of navies is all going to be underwater. There's the odd joke that “There's submarines and there's targets”. I don't completely subscribe to that view, but I have to say that I think submarine capability is an essential part of a mature first-world navy.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Moving along, I am going to give the floor to Mr. Spengemann.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Jennings, thank you for being here.

I want to pick up on the exchange you had with Mr. Garrison. How do you see the Chinese strategy? Is this a long-term strategy? Is this catching up and quickly getting out front? How sustainable is it? How do you place it into the context of China's equally growing commercial interests and maintaining commercial shipping access to its territory and from its territory?

[Peter Jennings]

Thank you.

There is, I think, a publicly well-articulated expression of China's long-term strategy and that's the one belt, one road strategy that is about building infrastructure by road, rail, and pipeline across to central Asia and then down south by building port infrastructure in a range of countries all the way up through to Pakistan and the gulf.

I think it's important not to see this just as a commercial play, because with it comes a sense of stronger Chinese strategic, political, and military influence. There's a lot of writing in the Chinese press about how the People's Liberation Army will become the underwriter of the success of the one belt, one road strategy, and with commerce follows military.

I do think that in the grandest sense, that is the Chinese strategy. My own view is that this is also something that can't easily be seen as complementary to the current international order, if I could put it that way, and that in many ways China sees this development as its replacement for that order. It rather regards the order as something that's been designed to keep it down and put it in its place. Increasingly, it sells the one belt, one road strategy as the alternative to how China can realize its international position.

I think this is something to track very carefully. My message to the committee would be to say there is no such thing as a purely commercial arrangement when it comes to China. There is always a strategic concept behind that arrangement.

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

That's extremely helpful.

To go to a slightly more fine-grained level than you had the opportunity to in the exchange with Mr. Garrison, what is the real race? Is it hulls in the water, hulls under water, or is it weapons systems? How do we get out in front of the largely Chinese-based sea denial that you spoke of in your written submissions?

[Peter Jennings]

The real race is that China, based on generations of its strategic thinking, is looking for ways it can exploit weaknesses and vulnerabilities in western capabilities. This is the idea of asymmetry, that it hits at our weakest points. I think hulls in the water are less important than the missile and cruise missile capabilities it's developing, and then very closely behind that is the immense investment it's putting into cyber capability.

You can think of cyber as really being the first punch that will come in a conflict, and it is not necessarily designed to be aimed at armed forces. It could just as easily be designed to take down your electricity grid or your health system, and I think that's very much a part of Chinese strategic thinking. Clearly, they're not the only ones doing it, but they are actually perfecting these skills.

As I say, things like aircraft carriers are enormously politically important. They carry weight in terms of domestic opinion in China, but they're less militarily significant than some of these other developments that I've mentioned.

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

Again, that's very helpful.

Would you agree, then, with the proposition that for Canadian domestic defence purposes, both physical domain awareness and cyber domain awareness would be of paramount importance for our study?

[Peter Jennings]

Yes, I would, sir. That's critical for all modern forces. It's actually the ability to get these platforms talking to each other, sharing the same threat picture, and being able to use one platform as a way of firing and aiming weapons that might be on a second platform altogether.

On the cyber front, we're in a constantly accelerating race here to invest more into that capability, because what looks adequate one year turns out to be woefully inadequate 18 months later. You just have to stay on top of this particular challenge.

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

Thank you for that.

Switching to Australia's domestic setting, how important is Australia's commercial shipbuilding strategy—non-defence, non-public, private sector—as a synergy for keeping overheads low, but also keeping a labour force employed, sharp, and active, and making sure that you don't go through boom and bust cycles?

[Peter Jennings]

I'm afraid it's not really existent in terms of any significant capability at all for large-scale vessels. It's there for extremely small-scale commercial-type fishery vessels, pleasure craft, and things of that nature, but all of the large-scale construction is really now around naval construction, military construction. There is almost no cost-effective argument for civil construction in an economy the size of Australia's.

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

Do you have challenges with respect to the labour force, or do you have a labour force that will meet your increasing demand as projected in your—

[Peter Jennings]

No, there are some serious challenges, certainly, to ramp up to the anticipated construction that we'll have in four or five years' time with the multiple projects under way.

The government has a good development plan around how we can build those skills through training and education across the Australian tertiary education sector, which is very necessary. It's a tough fight for skilled labour, because things like the mining and extractive industries are highly competitive in taking people with those types of—