National Defence Committee on Oct. 25th, 2017

[Col Viktor Siromakha]

Yes, of course. I can provide you with some assessment.

In my personal opinion, Russia is like a mother-in-law. Once Russia sees that Ukraine is going to the European Union, to NATO, Russia becomes mad. Not only Russia, but Mr. Putin becomes mad.

For me, the brightest example of this madness was the Ukrainian success in 2012 when they had this incredible football championship in Ukraine in Kharkiv, Donetsk, Kiev, Dnipropetrovsk, and Lviv. Together with Poland, we organized and had an incredible football competition. Please, have a look at the stage there in Donetsk. Yellow and blue in Donetsk, no Russian colours. This is the central stadium of Donetsk. That's the brightest example of our success. We've been moving there. High-speed trains have been travelling from Kiev to Donetsk in four hours.

Then they saw what was going on and they decided they had to do something. They started this political assault of Ukraine, undermining our movement to the European Union.

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

I'll give my remaining time to Mr. Gerretsen.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

If you had any, I'm sure he'd appreciate it. Unfortunately, you don't.

Mr. Bezan.

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

Mr. Chair, I'll pass my time to Ms. Gallant.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Ms. Gallant.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Over the years, there had been quite a resistance to acknowledging that cyber is a domain that they should be paying attention to, but even recently, they don't want to coordinate efforts among member countries. They say, “Well, politics has their own kind of system, and in other parts of Europe they've got their own. They're different people.” There are all these reasons we shouldn't be coordinating. They have a response centre where they'll help, central response.

Do you think that NATO should have a nexus or some centralized centre where they can share what's going on in terms of attacks, or is this done somehow already?

[Alan W. Bell]

One of the big issues from my perspective is.... I had a section called “Canada's Response to Hybrid Warfare”, and I was talking about the whole country. I asked why we didn't deal with this that way. I used the words “whole-of-government”. I think everyone I've listened to talk tonight is asking, “Whose responsibility is it, DND? Is it the government's responsibility? Is it somebody else's responsibility? Where is the money coming from?”

If we adopted a whole-of-government approach to this, maybe we would get somewhere, because at the moment everyone is thinking in silos, and that's not going to work with cyber. It works with lots of other things. Our approach to terrorism and putting organizations in silos that are supposed to communicate between each other, we know sometimes it's successful and other times it fails because people just don't talk.

It's the same with NATO. Every country in Europe is entitled to join NATO if the government of that country decides to do that. It's the same with the EU. The former Baltic countries are now saying they will have more success if they're in the EU financially, economically, and everything else. Also, if they're a member of NATO, they join a group of people, which as I said is now 29, and if something happens, and Russia tries to do something like this, there are 29 countries that are going to bite back. Unfortunately, we did not bite back. I'm not saying we invade them just because of what happened in the Ukraine or in Crimea, but we weren't strong enough to say, “Wind your neck in”. There are 29 countries, and most of them are on the Russian border.

Consequently, he is not being slapped on his wrist for what he's done. He'll do a little more, a little more, and a little more until one day NATO has to turn around and say, “Enough is enough”. When do we say that? When does NATO say that? Is it going to be this year, next year, the year after?

Russia is moving forward. They're getting better at cyber. They're getting better at all the other things. They have a huge standing army that is trained to fight in Europe, nowhere else, just in Europe. What is going to happen if we don't do something about it?

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

Cyberwarfare in effect neutralizes article 5 because of lack of attribution. What they tell us is that they're not going to have a coordinated effort on this because our individual countries don't even have our own cyber-doctrine in place. We were told in the defence review that yes, we have a whole-of-government approach, but when asked about a Canadian cyber-command, like what the United States has, “We don't need it. Everybody we need is in Ottawa. They're just a phone call away or a short cab ride away."

[Alan W. Bell]

In 2016, NATO said they would regard that a cyber-attack against a member state will result in article 5 being activated. Crimea and Ukraine are not included in that. If he had attacked a country that was a member of NATO, would we have activated article 5? We don't know because he didn't do it, and he didn't do it because he's not stupid. That's where we stand.

If in a year's time he does attack one of the NATO countries, what's going to happen? I don't think we've even planned that far. I don't know what NATO is doing, obviously, because I'm just a normal individual, but he didn't attack a NATO country so article 5 was not activated.

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

If there was a cyber-attack, for instance....

Actually there were some NATO parliamentarians meeting this May when Heathrow airport went down because of an IT outage and resurge. We all still wonder whether it was really that, or whether, for whatever reason, they didn't want to have fear up in the air and it was a cyber-attack but they weren't going to admit to it.

[Alan W. Bell]

If we look at the last 12 months of the Trump administration, they're still trying to figure it out and they have the resources and the budget to be able to go and look for who did this. They've come to the opinion that it was Russia that compromised the elections and they have proof of that. We haven't that proof in the Ukraine simply because we haven't had time, because there are not enough cyber-experts in there checking all the various different things that happened.

One of the things that Canada is not providing to the Ukraine is cyber-expertise. We're not participating in that, but we need to, because we need to find out what people who are participating found out about it so that we can learn from it for ourselves. By not being there, we're relying on them to tell us.

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

You answered the question—

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm sorry. We're out of time for this particular question.

I'm going to give the floor to Mark Gerretsen.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Bell, you talked earlier about Russia's involvement in the Donbas, the area they currently occupy. You said we don't know if Russia will go to the next level. What is the next level?

[Alan W. Bell]

The next level is pushing forward, going in with cyber, doing a cyber-attack for whatever reason, and then continuing to move forward, or to move to another country that isn't in NATO.

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

We heard from a witness in our last meeting, a former diplomat to Russia and the Ukraine, that in his opinion Russia's interest in occupying the area they're in is that they were—I'm paraphrasing here—almost invited into the area because the Ukrainians in that area were pro-Russia and wanted their presence there to be protected.

Would you agree with that?

[Alan W. Bell]

No, because I don't know. However, why did Russian special forces take all their uniforms off, and then when they put the flag up over Crimea, it was Crimean citizens who were seen to raise the flag of Russia?

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

Right.

[Alan W. Bell]

Was that contrived? Was it prepared in advance? We don't know who those people were.

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

Then you disagree with that notion.

[Alan W. Bell]

No, I don't disagree. I just don't know.

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

You just don't know. Okay, fair enough.

You said the response from the allies or NATO is negligible. Why do you say that?

[Alan W. Bell]

They haven't done anything about it. All they've done is just diplomatic means and all the other various—

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

What about the response of.... You're talking about, full on, being part of the conflict.

[Alan W. Bell]

No, definitely not.