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.