National Defence Committee on Sept. 14th, 2017

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

The way it works is that there are persons designated as weapons release authorities in the U.S., and there are no Canadians who have those authorities. There is always somebody who is able to make that decision on the U.S. side.

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

When you were last here, General, you said that with respect to an EMP, our detection and monitoring equipment would be good until 2025. Given the advances that North Korea has made with respect to EMP, would the current level of protection until 2025 still hold good?

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

What I was talking about until 2025 was the state of our north warning system. I don't recall it being related to EMP per se. What I can offer to you is that in the NORAD sense, in terms of continuity of operations, we have EMP protection where it counts.

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

NORAD is also responsible for maritime detection and monitoring. In November of 2015, two South Korean ships made it down the St. Lawrence undetected. Mind you, they are friendly and they were expected. Nevertheless, they did not check in, and warships don't have transponders. The protocol is that our pilots would take the ships in the rest of the way. Given that breach, the fact that the United States has now posted that it has looked for marine-borne nuclear threat-detection systems and is now at the testing and evaluation phase, and the fact that Canada—with 10 times more coastline—has nothing, do you think we have the proper safeguards in place and are protecting our people the way we should?

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

I recall this incident vaguely. Our mission is maritime warning, so it is largely an intelligence mission. There's quite a bit of analysis in order for us to declare something in our maritime lines of communication to be a matter for an advisory or warning. Whether those ships met that criteria or not, I don't recall.

When we talk under NORAD about the maritime domain, those would be the types of discussions I imagine we would have in due course, and this is what the commanders are doing. There is continuous concern, and continuous monitoring of what's happening outside. When we detect something that is not working well, we fix it.

That's the only thing I can offer to your question.

[MGen William Seymour]

I would supplement that. In terms of the NORAD maritime warning mission, we're missing an element of the whole-of-government role in all of this. We have the Maritime Security Operation Centres. There are three in Canada, one on each coast. They work with Transport Canada, the Coast Guard, the Canadian Forces, specifically the navy, and other government partners to fuse information not just from Canadian sources but from all sources, to detect anything like that. We have information on manifests, crew, cargo, and those kinds of things. All of those pieces combine to give us a sense of what's coming into Canada.

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

Since Canada does not have the systems in place for nuclear or radiation detection, is the United States monitoring our coastline for that particular threat vector?

[MGen William Seymour]

I'm not familiar with the specifics of what you're talking about, but I think the Coast Guard and Transport Canada would be better positioned to talk about it and answer your question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

That's the time we have for this particular panel. Gentlemen, I want to thank you for your time and your testimony here today. I'm going to suspend for about an hour to allow a break for everyone, and we'll resume at one o'clock. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I welcome the committee back to our discussion on North Korea as it relates to Canada. The next two panels will consist of academics and academic opinion on that topic.

Joining us on this one-hour panel we have Professor Michael Byers from the University of British Columbia; Danny Lam from Edmonton; Colin Robertson from the Canadian Global Affairs Institute; and Robert Huebert from the University of Calgary. I believe the order of operation in terms of speakers is exactly that. I know academics like to talk, and that's a good thing. However, we're restricting you to five minutes each, so please be mindful of that. Four people on a panel will really limit the number of questions we can get through if you guys blow outside the five minutes.

Thank you very much for coming.

Professor Byers, you have the floor.

[Dr. Michael Byers, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of British Columbia, As an Individual]

Thank you.

I'll jump right into it. You heard this morning that North Korea does not consider Canada a threat. I don't find that surprising. Canada does not have nuclear weapons; we do not have ICBMs; we do not have bombers, and we do not have aircraft carriers, so, no, we are not a threat to North Korea.

I want to also say from the beginning that what North Korea has accomplished so far is not particularly difficult. It has been seven decades since the first atomic bomb, six decades since the first hydrogen bomb, six decades since the first ICBMs. Of course, North Korea has had some help along the way, notably from Pakistan, and if you believe The New York Times, more recently from a Ukrainian company. What North Korea has done is not particularly challenging.

In terms of some other history, bear in mind that NORAD was established to address, first of all, the threat from Russian bombers. It was a surveillance capacity, coupled with the capacity to send fighter interceptor aircraft out to meet the bombers. When NORAD transitioned to aerospace, part of the mission changed. It remained that surveillance, that sensory function, but the response to ICBMs was not to send fighter jets; it would have been to send a retaliatory nuclear strike, and Canada was never going to be involved in that decision. Through the latter half of the Cold War, NORAD provided the sensory function, and the United States provided the strike response capability and decision-making.

When the United States renounced the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty under the George W. Bush administration and began to build its anti-ballistic missile system based, first and foremost, in Alaska, it saw this as a continuation of that situation, and in fact decided in 2004 that the decision-making function within missile defence would be within NORTHCOM. It wasn't until the following year that Prime Minister Paul Martin decided that Canada would not participate, so the U.S. decided before Canada's decision that we would not be part of the decision-making process with respect to the launch of interceptors.

That is not particularly surprising. Again, North Korea does not regard Canada as a threat. If it were to attempt a missile strike against North America, it would almost certainly be aiming for its enemy, the United States.

In 2004, Canada gave NORTHCOM approval to use NORAD's sensory information collected using Canadian assets, so they didn't need anything more than that.

Another really important point to make here is that the intercepts do not take place over Canadian territory. The missile defence interceptors in Alaska have to shoot forward as the North Korean warhead is coming towards North America. You can't catch up to an ICBM; you have to shoot it when it's coming towards you, so the intercepts would likely take place over the Bering Sea, not over Canada. The missiles themselves are not entering Canadian airspace; they're in space. Canadian airspace goes up around 120 to 130 kilometres, and then it's space. This is not in Canadian airspace, except perhaps in the final returning stage.

Another thing to say in that context—and this is very important—is that any strike on North America, regardless where a hydrogen bomb exploded, would impact all of North America. These are nuclear weapons. They create radiation, and radiation clouds drift. A strike on Seattle is a strike on Vancouver; a strike on Vancouver is a strike on Seattle. A strike on Calgary is a strike on the Midwest of the United States. You just look at the prevailing winds. This idea that somehow the United States would just sit back and say, “We've actually decided we're not going to take out this incoming missile because it's headed for Vancouver”, is implausible in the extreme. An attack on North America is an attack on North America.

Another thing to add here is that technology is improving so very quickly that I do believe it is possible for the United States to develop a pretty high-capability system for striking what North Korea has right now. SpaceX can launch the first stage of a rocket carrying a satellite into space and bring that first stage back and land it on lakes. They can do this, but can they keep up with the incredible rate of improvement of North Korea's technology? We are in that arms race—the U.S. now and North Korea. That itself is doubtful.

The final point I'll close on in my introductory statements is that I don't know—and you might know better than I—whether the United States has made a formal request that Canada join. We were asked in 2004; we said no in 2005. Have we been formally asked to join, and do you want to go as a supplicant asking to join in a situation where we're dealing with an administration that is a hardball negotiator, or do you want to wait for a request or perhaps seek other ways in which you can contribute to the U.S. mission?

I'm happy to talk about other ways to contribute to the U.S. mission in response to questions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for your testimony.

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

Go ahead, please.

[Danny Lam, As an Individual]

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be back in Ottawa where I received my Ph.D. from Carleton University 25 years ago, particularly because I'm not here because of a factory recall.

Carleton University's first Ph.D. in this field was my mentor, Professor Ashok Kapur, the renowned expert on India's nuclear program, so I'm kind of still following in his footsteps.

I come before you today with grave concerns. North Korea's thermonuclear ICBMs are an imminent existential threat to this country. Australia and the U.K., which are very similar to us, were threatened by North Korea August 20 for participating in military exercises in South Korea, so I don't think we're exempt.

Kim Jong-un's nuclear arsenal is different from those of other nuclear powers. We live with other nuclear powers, and they're different. He will use his nuclear weapons offensively to win wars. That's my conclusion, and I came to this conclusion after studying his intentions and motives, not just his capability. North Korea is driven by a race-based nationalism, rage, and a profit motive. Kim Jong-un, the leader, is young, aggressive, savvy, and worldly, with boundless ambitions, an appetite for risk, and a drive to win.

What does he want? North Korea's goals are, first, expelling the United States from South Korea; second, ending the hostile policy against North Korea; and third, unification of Korea on their terms. Finally, they're looking for a peace treaty with the United States, and they are expecting substantial war indemnities and compensation in the trillions of dollars. They've made that public.

There are ample published documents no less dramatic than Mein Kampf that document their goals. They haven't changed in 70 years. There must be something to it. North Korea are not deterred from using their nuclear weapons just because the United States has more of them. Kim Jong-un thinks they can win a nuclear war with the United States, and I sat down and ran through kind of mental war games, and I agree with him. I think he could win.

If DPRK united Korea, let's look at what would happen. You're going to have a formidable military and economic powerhouse in Asia, a nuclear-armed, ambitious Japan without pacifism. What will they do next then?

North Korea will soon be able to enforce their demands with a thermonuclear arsenal with global reach. We as Canadians think we are peaceful and harmless. We are not; we're still at war legally. We have a ceasefire with a nuclear-armed state that wants a war for profit and tribute like Genghis Khan, the Manchus, and Imperial Japan before they were stopped.

We are weak and undefended. We see ourselves as neutral. We do not expect an unprovoked attack. We are the ideal target for a bully looking for someone to make an example of. Unless our nuclear allies—and I'm talking about the U.S., U.K., and France—decide to risk their cities to retaliate for an unprovoked strike on Canada, we don't even have a deterrent today.

We cannot be indifferent and stand idly by. The window of opportunity to stop North Korea is one to two years. If not stopped, the threat is going to spread to other causes as North Korea exports the means to other states such as Iran or Pakistan. Who knows who they'll sell to? Imagine a nuclear war over religion, nationalism, race, ethnicity, ideology, empire, or garden variety territorial disputes. Past world wars will look civil and restrained.

We cannot acquiesce to this. The crown has the responsibility to protect Canadians on Canadian soil. We are a democracy, and we need to sit down, get an all-party consensus on the threat posed by North Korea, and build on that consensus. We have to both build a credible defence with our allies, and failing that, prepare for war, and also try every diplomatic means possible to avert this problem. Let us not only bet on appeasement. Let posterity not remember with shame how we failed to prevent a nuclear attack on our soil.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

That was right on time. Thank you for that.

Mr. Robertson, you have the floor.

[Colin Robertson, Vice-President and Fellow, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, As an Individual]

Thank you. My remarks draw on 33 years of experience in the Canadian foreign service and, since then, my work with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

I spent a week earlier this year in Seoul as a guest of the Korea Foundation, meeting with Korean scholars and senior Korean defence officials and senior officials.

Let me address three questions: first, Canadian participation in BMD; second, our policy toward North Korea; and third, how Canada can contribute to nuclear non-proliferation.

On ballistic missile defence, I believe it is now time for Canada to participate in BMD as an insurance policy to shield Canadians should missiles come our way. Our European allies and Pacific partners employ it. So should we.

The government dodged consideration of BMD in the recent defence policy review. When I asked at the technical briefing, at the launch of the DPR last May, I was told that the government was staying with the policy adopted by the Martin government and then Harper government that we will not participate in BMD but that the government was discussing defending North America against “all threats” with the U.S. government. That would have to include BMD.

From discussions around the 2005 decision, I understand that at that time the government could not get adequate answers to three questions: first, whether BMD works and how BMD would protect Canada; second, how much participation Canada would have in what is essentially a U.S.-managed system; and third, how much it would cost.

These are still good questions, and the current government should get these answers and share them with Canadians.

That said, based on the evidence presented to it, the Senate national defence committee unanimously recommended in June 2014 that Canada participate in BMD. I think that is the course we should take.

Since then there has been abundant evidence of North Korea’s improved capacity to both miniaturize a nuclear warhead and then project it by ballistic missile across continents. As then President George W. Bush reportedly asked then Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2006: what happens if a North Korean missile aimed at Los Angeles or Seattle winds up heading towards Calgary or Vancouver? Don’t we want protection?

While the U.S. may protect a Canadian target near to a U.S. city, there can be no guarantee, since the U.S. system is limited in size and the North Korean ICBM force is of uncertain number and capacity. Unless we are inside the system and making a contribution, we have no assurances, even if the U.S. commander would wish to protect a Canadian target that is remote from a U.S. asset—think, in particular, of Edmonton or Calgary.

Consideration of Canadian engagement on BMD should cover all possible initiatives beyond the simple positioning of anti-missiles in Canada. These would range from a government declaration that we acknowledge the missile threat to North America, to allocating additional Canadian Forces resources to NORAD, to equipping our naval assets with appropriate gear to detect missiles, to radar arrays in Canada, to writing a cheque to support research.

In each case, it would require more attention to security in Canada’s north. Joining BMD would likely bring the continental BMD defence function under NORAD and NORTHCOM. Canada has participated in NORAD’s missile warning function for many years, and bringing BMD into it would strengthen the binational institution at the heart of Canada-U.S. relations, and the defence relationship in particular.

On North Korea, I believe that the government, as part of its commitment to active internationalism, needs to reconsider its current policy approach to North Korea. Diplomatic relations are not a seal of good housekeeping but rather the means by which we advance Canadian interests and protect Canadians. Relations also allow us to bring insight, intelligence, and a Canadian perspective to the diplomatic table.

The current policy of controlled engagement was adopted by the Harper government in 2010 after a North Korean submarine torpedoed a South Korean warship in blatant disregard of its international obligations.

The current policy limits engagement to discussion of, one, regional security concerns; two, the human rights and humanitarian situation in North Korea; three, inter-Korean relations; and four, consular issues. This last provision was how national security advisor Daniel Jean negotiated the recent exit from North Korea of Pastor Lim. The Lim episode aside, it has meant we have virtually no contact with the Kim regime.

There has not been an ambassadorial visit to North Korea since 2010. In fact, no Canadian ambassador has been accredited to North Korea since 2011. This contrasts with like-minded embassies in Seoul whose ambassadors have regularly travelled to North Korea in the last seven years. Seven EU countries also have resident embassies in North Korea.

Our current policy helps no one, hinders communication, particularly at a time when we most need it, and puts us at an information disadvantage, which lessens our value to our closest allies.

The authoritarian regime of Kim Jong-un continues to break international nuclear non-proliferation norms, despite repeated Security Council resolutions. My view is that, while any role for Canada would likely be limited, it would serve our interests to engage the North Koreans, thus enabling us to bring some intelligence or niche capacity to the table.

My former foreign service colleague James Trottier, who made four official visits to North Korea in 2015 and 2016, recently wrote an informed and useful piece in The Ottawa Citizen, arguing for a combination of negotiations, incentives, sanctions, and strengthened missile defence.

Here are some observations. First, South Korea is our friend, a fellow middle power, and the only nation in Asia with which we have a free trade agreement. It's a country that we should cultivate, keeping in mind that it respects and understand toughness in trade negotiations.

South Korea has lived under the threat of bombardment by North Korea since the armistice in 1953. Seoul, a city of 10 million people, is 60 kilometres from the border and within easy range of conventional bombardment. After I met with a very senior official in March, he walked me to the elevator, where I saw what I thought were a bunch of goggles. He looked at me and said, “That’s for a chemical or biological gas attack. I don’t fear a nuclear bomb, because what we have created in South Korea is just too valuable for Kim Jong-un to destroy. He’d rather eliminate us so he can put his own people here.”

Second, Kim Jong-un is ruthless—

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Mr. Robertson, with respect, can I get you to wrap up in 25 seconds or less? You are a couple of minutes over your five.

[Colin Robertson]

Sure.

Second, he acts like something out of Game of Thrones, but his behaviour is rational and based on self-preservation. For him and the 200,000 or so senior officials who benefit from his autocracy, a nuclear bomb is their insurance policy.

Third, we will have to live with a nuclear North Korea. We need to establish a new equilibrium and accept the least offensive outcome if we are to realize objectives under what I would call the failed “strategic patience”.

The time for a military intervention, if it ever existed, has probably passed, short of some sort of revolutionary, extraordinary intervention by the Chinese, the only power with real leverage in this situation. But for now China does not want a failed regime and the migrants it would bring.

We must live with the situation. I will conclude by saying that we need to reconsider ballistic missile defence for Canada and we should find some way to engage North Korea by changing our current policy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for your testimony.

We'll go via VTC to Calgary.

Professor Huebert, you have the floor—or screen, in this case.

[Dr. Robert Huebert, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Calgary, As an Individual]

Thank you very much.

It's a pleasure to appear before the committee again, among such an esteemed set of colleagues as well.

I have two points that I want to make in the five minutes I have before me. First is the nature of the problem, and second is what Canada should be doing.

The nature of the problem is relatively straightforward: we have an authoritative, absolute monarchy, whose major and only foreign and defence policy is the maintenance of that monarchy, and which has nuclear weapons. Within the context of that particular reality, we have a direct and indirect threat to Canadian security.

I'm often told, “Don't worry about the North Koreans. If they fire a missile at North America, the Americans will make sure they shoot down that missile.” The problem with the pretense of that assumption is that the North Koreans will fire only one missile.

It's safe to say we've seen that this is a long-term problem. This is not something that has just appeared in the last couple of days; it is something that the North Koreans are doing, and continue to do. The problem that we face, in terms of not being an integral part of the American ABM system, is that the Americans may have only a limited number of interceptors, and the North Koreans may have more missiles than we were expecting. At that point it is entirely conceivable, if we are not within the system, that the Americans or an American commander may in fact make the decision that he will be reserving his ABMs.

The second part of the issue that is often overlooked is that the North Koreans have a habit of not directly confronting the Americans, but trying to pick off the American allies. We see this in terms of the activity against the South Koreans and against the Japanese. It is not improbable to suggest that in the long term, as the North Koreans develop longer ICBM capabilities, as they can start looking towards reaching North America, we could also become subject to the type of bullying that South Korea and Japan have suffered under. Therefore, that's the most direct threat to Canada.

The second indirect threat that we do not talk about, but we need to, is that even a conventional or chemical war on the Korean Peninsula is an indirect and major threat to Canadian security, even if ICBMs are not ultimately utilized.

What do we do to resolve this? First and foremost, I will echo my colleagues who have called for Canadian participation on ABM. We need to ensure that we are part of the system, even if we're a junior partner as we are within NORAD. At the very least, if we are facing an unknown situation where the North Koreans are firing multiple ICBMs, we need to ensure that the Americans are not thinking only about saving their cities in that context. That may not be the situation, but it's something we have to be very cognizant of.

Second of all, the time has come for us to consider in much more serious terms how we can participate with the key members among the democratic friends we have within that region. Particularly, I'm referring to an improved security relationship with the Japanese, South Koreans, Australians, and New Zealanders. Obviously, we cannot create a NATO within that region. But given the fact that we are dealing with an individual who seems to understand only the utilization of military force, the more we can act in terms of reassuring our friends—we can't officially say allies, but our friends within that region—the more it goes to addressing the longer-term problem we have with the authoritative regime of North Korea.

The third part we may want to consider is looking once again, as Dr. Byers has suggested, at the fact that if it was relatively easy for the North Koreans to get an ICBM and nuclear weapons, we can expect that we are going to be seeing this particular threat going beyond simply North Korea, so that we may also want to start thinking about building up an indigenous capability.

Substantially smaller countries such as Norway are beginning to think about giving their Aegis frigates an ABM capability when they go into refit. Whether or not they do it, we do not know. We are, of course, about to engage in construction of a very large-scale rebuilding of our next surface combatant. We may want to give some consideration to the possibility of some of the capability being given to a maritime ABM capability. At this point in time, only the Americans and the Japanese seem to truly have this capability, but given the type of trajectory we are seeing, this may be something that we ultimately want to consider.

I will conclude by saying I strongly agree with those individuals who see the North Koreans as a growing threat, but that has been not only within the last two months. This has been in place since the regime came to power and developed nuclear weapons.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for your testimony.

We'll go to seven-minute questions, and the first question will go to Mark Gerretsen.

You have the floor.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of you.

Wow, what a different perspective from what we heard this morning.

Mr. Lam, who are you? A lot of the witnesses who come before this committee we interact with regularly so we get to know them. Can you give us a sense of your background and how you came to formulate the opinions you have?

[Danny Lam]

I've been involved with East Asia on and off in different capacities for 25 years. I did my Ph.D. at Carleton University, and I was supervised by Professor Kenneth D. McRae. I've been an academic, in business, and in the high tech industry. From there, I woke up one day and said that I wanted to do something different, so I went back to school and did an engineering degree in energy.

I've been involved in the defence business on and off for decades, as I said. It's very much like Hotel California in that you can come in but you cannot leave.

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

Thank you for that.

Dr. Byers, do you agree with Mr. Lam's suggestion that the United States could be eliminated by nuclear threats from North Korea, if I'm paraphrasing what he said correctly?

[Dr. Michael Byers]

The power of disparity between the United States and North Korea at the present moment is overwhelming. This is a tyrannosaurus rex versus a very loud and angry mouse. The thing we need to remember is that if it chose to, the United States could crush North Korea using conventional weapons. It doesn't need to go nuclear.

The concern for the United States and other countries is the safety and well-being of all the people in South Korea, who are extremely vulnerable, even to a ground attack. You could imagine a nightmare scenario where, with the willingness to lose 100,000 troops, North Korea could get to the centre of Seoul and announce they had a nuclear warhead with them, and had therefore essentially captured the peninsula.

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

Based on what you're saying, we understand that North Korea is a threat. To what extent would you say that Canada should prioritize expenditures specifically on something like BMD versus the other priorities we might have for defence?