National Defence Committee on Nov. 6th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I would like to welcome everybody to the defence committee today to talk about Canada and its relationship with NATO.

I'd like to welcome our witnesses. In person, we have Robert Baines, president and chief executive officer of the NATO Association of Canada. We have Alexander Moens, chair of the political science department at Simon Fraser University, via VTC, with some people in the background. Someone who hasn't been fed in via VTC yet, but we may see as we progress, is Robert Huebert. When he shows up, I'll bring him into the conversation, but right now he is lost in cyberspace.

Having said all that, welcome to everybody.

I'm going to give the floor to Mr. Baines for his opening remarks.

[Robert Baines, President and Chief Executive Officer, NATO Association of Canada]

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members. It is an absolute pleasure to be here to address the Standing Committee on National Defence, specifically on Canada's involvement in NATO. This is what I deal with on a day-to-day basis and it is something I am very concerned with.

The NATO Association of Canada is a charitable organization. It is non-partisan, an NGO. It was founded in 1966 to explain to Canadians the value of security and Canada's role as a member of NATO.

In order to achieve this goal, the NATO association hosts about 20 events every year. We are national. Our events are in Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Calgary, and all over the country. We put on a slew of events—student events, receptions, dinners, conferences, and round tables—but the real impact we have is through social media. This is something I'm going to be talking a bit about today.

We publish about 1,200 short journalistic articles. They reach through all the different social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. We try to have a short, punchy article that will get average Canadians interested in what is going on internationally. Of course, once they are, it is much easier for them to see the value of NATO and international security. On the content side, what we produce creates approximately 180,000 social media impressions every month.

Finally, we also have a high school program, which is extremely valuable, bringing in students and making sure they have a model NATO kit and other information to support teachers to design lessons for Canadian classrooms.

We are part of a NATO-wide NGO network called the Atlantic Treaty Association. Essentially, NATO, very early in its life, decided that in order to ensure that the citizens of NATO countries understand the alliance, each member should create an NGO that would be arm's-length and grassroots, through civil society, to support NATO on the ground in each of those countries. Because of the importance of sovereignty, this was very much a hands-off affair. It's a hugely valuable network, active in both NATO member and partner countries, and it has very often been the first step in creating greater networks through NATO and non-NATO members. I must also say that the secretary general of the Atlantic Treaty Association is a Canadian and a former intern from the NATO Association of Canada.

Our most prominent sister organization, which you will have heard of, is the Atlantic Council of the United States, based in Washington, D.C. We are all in this together. Every single NATO nation has something like the NATO Association of Canada.

I began leading the organization seven months ago. I'm a baby in this, but I have been involved in the organization for seven years, so I have good information on the issues facing the alliance. I have reviewed the presentations by other witnesses and note that we have a lot of experts here. A lot of them have been involved with the NATO association before. Rather than retreading some of the ground you've already heard about, especially Ukraine and some of the other issues regarding cyber, I want to discuss the communication of ideas generally.

Canada—and I include the NATO Association of Canada in this—must do more to make sure that NATO, one of the greatest ideas in the history of international peace and security, is understood by the citizens of this country. I have a very simple message, because I want you to hear it. The next generation of Canadians do not know what NATO is. They have no idea. We've seen this in many different situations.

Then again, why would they? Perhaps it's a flash of recollection from a single civics class, grade 10 or grade 12, or a line referring to NATO in a war movie they may have seen. Perhaps if they pick up a newspaper they might see NATO; otherwise, they will be taking a look at their own newsfeeds, and unless they are already interested in it, they are not going to see it. We have a serious problem here, where the next generation is not going to know anything about NATO.

Throughout your previous committee meetings, you have been presented with many reasons why NATO is important. It's one of the greatest and most successful ideas in the long history of international relations. NATO has helped to provide one of the longest periods of general global peace in the history of the world. It sounds trite but it's just true, and nobody really gives it its due in this case.

It was formed, of course, in a flurry of activity resulting from the masterful resolutions of Churchill and Roosevelt in the Atlantic Charter, a well from which NATO, the United Nations, the World Bank, the Marshall plan, and so many other international initiatives sprung. These ideas were founded upon the refrain, “Never again”. Never again will we, the Allied powers, let the world slip into global conflict and total war. It's just not acceptable. The latticework of organizations and institutions that was designed and has succeeded in creating an international rules-based order is now backed up by mutual agreements and the willingness to enforce them. That is quite new in the history of the world.

Under this order, the globe has witnessed greater prosperity and development than ever in the history of our species. The condition has allowed for the lifting up of billions of people out of poverty. It has allowed for the spread of medicine, and it has given opportunity to billions. Just look at the UN development goals. It's no small achievement.

The connection between security, peace, and prosperity is clear. Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier, this is not seen by the next generation. We've forgotten to tell the millennials how all of this came to be. The past three generations of Canadians had direct or second-hand experience of total war. They had either lived through the horrors and hardships, or heard of them from their parents or grandparents.

Now, through the natural course of time, the rising generation born in Canada has no knowledge of war, not through personal experience, nor through their parents or grandparents who lived it. This is a blessed state of affairs, obviously—I think everybody will agree—but it's one which also holds great danger.

The danger lies in not appreciating the Herculean efforts undertaken to provide global peace and security, and then, obviously, taking it for granted. It's a vicious cycle. For many reasons we have failed to teach this narrative to the next generation. Members of my team based in Toronto recently went out to the University of Toronto to do some sampling of what U of T students knew about NATO. We've done this a few times. Within one or two points, it has always been that one out of 25 people knows what NATO is. Very often, “North American”, “Treaty”, or “Trade” is all that they get through. To actually identify what NATO is...it's unbelievable. This is U of T as well, not the general population.

This in itself would be bad enough, but since 2014, and the annexation of Crimea by Russia, the destabilization of the value of our institutions has been unrelenting. We've been under attack constantly. There have been two major fronts here, of course. All of our allies in eastern Europe have had a lot of social media barrages thrown at them, and on the home front, that has created an amazing amount of questioning about the value of our institutions and what they're for.

Questioning is good. It's a good thing. First principles should always be addressed and should be gone back to again and again, but the answers to the questions are being supplied by those who do not believe in our international rules-based order. The answers to these questions are being given by Russia Today, and bot factories in Russia.

A recent report from the NATO centre of excellence stated that 70% of Russian-language activity about NATO is automated—it was about 26% for the English language—i.e. they are bots. This just came out in September. We're now finding out that Russia backed $1 billion of Facebook funding, and $191 million on Twitter. They're successfully creating wedges in the rules-based international community by spending billions of dollars on the narrative counter to ours. Ideas of course are powerful. Narrative cannot be an afterthought. We have to be unafraid of telling our story of what has created NATO and our international institutions.

It's not only an alliance of boots on the ground. It's an alliance of ideas and ideals. It's unique. It has the commitment to back those ideals with action. You can reach 2% of GDP defence spending. You can purchase all the fabulous kit that DND wants. You're still going to fail if you can't convince your own people of why you're doing what you're doing.

Minister Freeland's speech was an excellent articulation of our ideals. I think everybody agrees on that. It was an admirable narrative, highlighting Canada's role in the creation of the current global framework of peace and security, a story that Canadians would want to be a part of, but nobody's going to spend 35 minutes watching the speech on YouTube. It has been watched 3,282 times since June. A Canadian heritage minute, posted a week later in June, has 164,000 views.

This is the kind of initiative I'm suggesting. We need to make the message tighter and push it through social media. In short, we have to make sure the new generation sees themselves as part of the story, because the only way they're going to see the story is if it is bite-sized, in a moment, as they're scrolling through their social media feed.

NATO's public diplomacy division conducted research polls this spring, just before the NATO leaders meeting in May. A Pew research poll that was undertaken found that NATO support was certainly increasing in almost every country, which is terrific.

However, it also found that people under 30, women, and those without a university education were most ignorant of NATO. As a result, NATO public diplomacy is conducting a new campaign to get to the Canadian public as one of five countries where it's rolling the campaign out to experiment on, and it has enlisted the aid of the NATO Association of Canada, Global Affairs, and the Department of National Defence. The campaign is called #WeAreNATO. Please write it down. Do take a look at it on social media if you haven't already.

It's a platform that this government must seize. It's not, strictly speaking, NATO's job to convince the citizens of its members that membership is good. We have to show our own value. We are, after all, sovereign nations. That's why I want to ensure that you're all aware of this campaign as it begins to roll out, and that Canada makes it its own.

The NATO Association of Canada is well placed to make the most of the campaign because we can be most creative. Without the hindrances necessary in large departments and ministries, we can be a force multiplier, and we are. We intend to utilize memes and short videos, non-traditional ways of getting to millennials, because that's how to do it and the status quo is not acceptable.

Let me be clear. All of the alliance members have been bad at this. NATO makes this point quite well. Canada was chosen to take part in this because we are relatively good, but compared with Russia, we're missing in action. We're not even on the field of battle, and we must be.

Our ideals deserve it, our history demands it, and the memories of those who came before us to create the greatest stretch of peace, prosperity, and security in the history of the world require it. It's a story that needs to be told, and it's a story that millennials need to know they're a part of.

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Moens from SFU, sir, you have the floor.

[Dr. Alexander Moens, Chair, Political Science Department, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

Some of the things I hope to say very much follow up on what Robert Baines has just said, but at a specific new university initiative level. I also want to use this time to speak about the great question before you of Canada's involvement in NATO. It's not only a millennial problem. It's more widespread across different generations.

I would like to state my four conclusions up front, then elaborate a little on them. The first is that NATO is still Canada's premier international military security vehicle to support our values and interests abroad. Secondly, Canada's operational participation in NATO is of high value to the functioning of NATO, but our influence goes down quickly if we only talk. The third point I want to make is that Canada must be a key player in defending the approaches and access to the Arctic and securing the North Atlantic. We will not be able to do this if we continue our lack of military reinvestment. In the fourth place, in a strategic contest of more and more Sino-Russian co-operation, the power gap between the U.S. and the NATO allies endangers our political security interests. It feeds American unilateralism and blurs democratic solidarity.

As you know, Mr. Chairman and members, Canada's third defence task is contributing to a stable and more peaceful world, but it does not highlight that Canada is a signatory to a collective defence organization. As a result, Canadians underestimate NATO.

In the late 1940s, the Soviet Union used its veto in the UN Security Council to immobilize any response to Soviet-backed communist governments conquering nearly all of eastern Europe. As a result, NATO was formed. In the last 65 years, NATO has been the most important international instrument for democratic peace. NATO means that liberal democracies have the political and military capacity, the military training, the standardization, the command and control framework, and thus the readiness to co-operate in military operations.

A lot of people were surprised that NATO continued after the fall of the Soviet Union, but why would it not? Why are people surprised? The price of military capacity continues to go up. The liberal democracies of NATO end up working together one way or another, so why would they re-nationalize their defence and throw away years of shared practice?

Moreover, there's more to NATO than national interests and military power. NATO's preamble states, “The Parties to this Treaty...are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilization of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law.” Are the eastern European states to blame for wanting to join this military co-operation and the prosperity of the EU? Would eastern Europeans really have democratic independence if they were left on their own?

The Russian government is not threatened by Bulgarian, Romanian, or Latvian NATO membership. What threatens Moscow is the spreading practice of liberal democracy. If democratic rights were all around Russia, more Russian people would ask, “Why not us?”

It was NATO that successfully addressed the conflicts in the Balkans. Canada took a major role then, and we must now invest more political, diplomatic, and economic resources in helping the Balkan area—all of it, in addition to Slovenia, Croatia, and Montenegro—to come into this community of democratic states.

Is NATO relevant today?

As Canadians, I want to underline that we depend for our freedom to trade, our freedom to resist dictatorship, and our freedom in global communications on the political-military co-operation of liberal democracies. NATO is just one part of that. We do not depend on the United Nations to the same extent, and we do not want to depend merely on the United States. It is crucial for Canada to have a strong international coalition of democracies with military capability.

The alternative is to only depend on our own bilateral relations with the United States. Now, we love our American friends, most of them, but we want our independence. That means we need a military that matters, not a niche force, not a humanitarian force.

Soon Canada will have 40 million people with a $2 trillion GDP. We are a very big country geographically. We have to step up. We need to build ties with our democratic friends in Asia who link us into a global framework as well.

I want to remind everyone that NATO never was a regional arrangement under the United Nations per article 53. However, after 1990, NATO undertook its crisis resolution tasks, except for one, only under direct UNSC mandate, showing that it is a power multiplier for the UN if and when the United Nations Security Council functions. In the current security environment, the UN Security Council will not function to advance democratic peace. It will not. Therefore, NATO's importance is up.

Canada needs to be a significant participant in securing the water and air approaches and access to the Arctic area as well as in securing the North Atlantic area. We need to be able to have follow-on capacity for what we do in NATO, including supplying our troops deployed in NATO. The navy and air investments for these two tasks are very demanding, and our current plans are so delayed or modest as to be nearly discredited.

I want to come back to the earlier point about a new initiative. I have started a NATO field school and simulation program at my university, and it is now inviting students from all over Canada. We engage with the Canadian Armed Forces in Canada, then we go to Brussels to the NATO headquarters at SHAPE, then we go to Latvia to watch our battle group, and then we end up with a one-week long NMDX simulation at the Naval Defense College in Rome.

It is a program whereby we're bringing Canadian university students back to this alliance, and that's where the connection is that Mr. Baines was talking about. The students see and experience the quality of our military and our diplomatic personnel, but they also see that there is really no plan B for the lack of resources and capacity.

Of all the public policy files that students learn about in our country in Canadian universities, for example, infrastructure building, food safety, environmental standards, and health care, there is nothing so dysfunctional and mind-bogglingly disheartening as reinvesting in Canadian defence capacity.

The stark reality appears to be that, short of war, Canada does not have a domestic, political bureaucratic course available to it to implement its strategic needs. Of course, the real problem is political will, and, therefore, I suggest Parliament must take a greater role in finding a multi-partisan, multi-year, financially locked-in approach to securing military priorities.

My final point is about inequality inside the alliance and the danger it poses to Canadian foreign policy. The inequality in capacity in NATO is often disguised and exploited by many allies, but a NATO undermined from within leaves Canada with poor international security options. For example, it may lead to a spokes-and-hub set of alliances between the United States and east European allies. Other nations inside NATO may be tempted to make their own bilateral political deals with Moscow, or in anticipation of the growing role of China, they may do so with Beijing.

The relative power of the United States is down, and with it, the influence and strength of liberal democracies, unless these latter help to compensate for this power. The forces against democratic legitimacy now have two superpowers behind them: China and Russia. It is NATO's task to signal to Russia, by means of capable and credible operations, that the independence and territory of the democracies are not negotiable, and that democratic development in Europe will continue.

I think millennials need to be educated through an entirely new initiative in our university whereby NATO is not only known in the sense that they can spell it out, and they can tell you what it does, but whereby students have an opportunity to experience what it is to be involved in a multilateral organization that does political-military affairs.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you very much, Professor Moens. It looks like you brought some millennials with you today, so welcome to the conversation. Perhaps there will be an opportunity for you to wade into the conversation a little later on.

We have Professor Huebert who has emerged from cyberspace—I see you in the corner of the screen—from Calgary.

Welcome aboard. You have the floor.

[Dr. Robert Huebert, Fellow, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, As an Individual]

Thank you very much. It's indeed a pleasure to again be invited to testify before this very important committee that's examining a very important issue.

I would also like to say thanks to both Alex and Robert for their initiative, because our students at the University of Calgary have participated at one point or another in various such undertakings, and we very much appreciate it.

I have three major comments I wish to share with the committee that ultimately lead to the core issue of my talk, which of a course is Canada, NATO, and pax Atlantic. The fact that we have been going through one of the most successful, peaceful eras that we've seen, along with countries of like-minded institutions, from an international perspective, is a thought that is both mind-boggling in its understanding and also mind-boggling in the fact that so few people seem to fully appreciate and understand it.

The three points that I want to address within my time are, first and foremost, why NATO is of central importance to Canadian security, not sort of a byline, not sort of a third issue on our defence policy, but why it is probably one of the central elements of our defence and international security.

The second point I wish to address is the evolving nature of NATO in the Arctic, and why this is going to become one of the most critical elements that Canada is going to be facing very soon, rather than in the medium or long term.

The third point I wish to address and conclude on is the very significant dangers we now face because of changes within Russian policy and why in fact that is probably a much more dangerous international system than I think is properly appreciated.

Let's begin with what I see as the major importance of NATO.

First and foremost, of course, NATO acts as a deterrent. We see the manner in which collective security has been very successfully utilized, and I think to a very large degree our understanding of the ultimate successful outcome and completion of the Cold War in fact was of course at the very heart of the success of NATO.

There's a second element that has also been completely missed by many Canadians. NATO has also been a major success story in the Canadian efforts to ensure that when the alliance was being formed it was also creating a new security community. We often forget that it was Canadian insistence and Canadian diplomats and policy leaders who insisted that NATO not only be formed as a military alliance against the rising threat of the Soviet Union, but it also be created as a means to ensure that only liberal democracies were welcomed into its auspices. I think this is a thought that is often forgotten; many of these states, which had been former enemies for so long, now in fact have their institutions protected by the fact that they are members of NATO.

I think the fact that we're seeing in many parts of southeastern Europe former belligerents, former locations where Canadian troops had to be deployed,now reforming their entire governance system along with their defensive system is a major testament to how successful NATO is about resolving the various conflicts that had existed within Europe.

The third element, and this is part of our own narrative, which I think is widely misunderstood in Canada, is Canada's role within NATO has also been a major part of ensuring that our allies, through NATO, actually keep good relations. We've used the peacekeeping mythology that is one of the core narratives of Canadian international relations to say that it's all about peacekeeping, but if we're being honest with ourselves when we look back to our really significant efforts in peacekeeping—the Suez Crisis, Cyprus—often these are much more. They have a humanitarian element, but they are much more about keeping the alliance members functioning on a co-operative basis. In many ways it's much more about keeping the Americans, French, and British together, keeping the Turks and the Greeks together, and focused on the common challenge and adversary.

Let me turn to NATO in the Arctic.

One of the things that has often made many observers of NATO in the Arctic quite curious is the way that Canada, for the longest time, has had opposition to any involvement or expansion of NATO duties into the Arctic region.

Often these reasons are not understood. However, whatever they have happened to be in the past, one of the clear indications that has emerged from the current Liberal defence policy—recently announced—is that we are now ready to start talking to NATO about precisely the point that Alex touched upon in his third point. That is, of course, the protection of the Arctic approaches and the North Atlantic approaches. I think this is entirely something that we need to be looking at very seriously.

Canada and Norway should be working as closely as possible to ensure that this somewhat open flank is in fact closed. Canada, for its core security interests, has to be a major participant. It can't simply be, “Yes, Norway, whatever you do, we think is great.” Canada must be actively working within the NATO alliance to ensure, first and foremost, that this increasingly dangerous theatre is covered and that Canada is at the forefront.

Within the context of NATO in the Arctic, though, Canadian officials also have to be aware that we are heading into an increasingly complex, and I would argue, dangerous environment. Open literature and open discussions within Sweden and Finland suggest that both countries are seriously looking at whether they should continue their association with NATO through the partnership for peace program, or seek full membership. We should be prepared, should one or both countries opt for joining NATO, to accept these countries as quickly as possible, but we need to recognize that this will have obvious push-back from the Russians, and it will have obvious impacts on some of our other multilateral efforts in regard to the Arctic.

I seriously doubt that should either country decide to try to pursue membership within NATO that the current success rate within the Arctic Council can be sustained. This may be an unfortunate casualty. I would very much regret seeing the many successes scaled back, but we need to be preparing for this eventuality.

The third and final point, which I want to conclude on, is the great danger that we now face with a very changing international system. At the heart is the classic security dilemma. The Russians, even prior to the arrival of Putin, have always said a major security requirement was their fear of the expansion of NATO. However, by the same token, the reason NATO has expanded, as Alex very eloquently brought forward, is that the former Warsaw Pact members, the other former parts of the Soviet Union, and the southern European states, all see joining NATO as intrinsic to their own security.

We can see and understand as academics, of course, the security dilemma. As partners in the pursuit of international peace and security, from a liberal institutional perspective, we can also understand why so many countries, such as Poland, Bulgaria, and others, saw in the long term that NATO was their security. Where the true security dilemma has arisen, and now faces Canada, is that starting in 2008, Russia was able to make the policy decision that it was going to begin to use military force to stop NATO expansion. Remember that in the Russian intervention in Georgia in 2008, to a very large degree, we can time it to the Bush administration's suggestion that perhaps Georgia should join NATO. Remember that in 2014, prior to the Crimean intervention, one of the few public statements that Putin made was that the Crimea would never be a NATO military base.

I think we've moved into a very dangerous environment, in which following 2008, the Russians have discovered that they will in fact use military force as a push-back for those countries that wish to join NATO. To make this even more complicated, we have the election of an American president who, quite frankly, does not seem to understand the long-term impacts and benefits that NATO has provided for pax Atlantic. The fact that there are suggestions that there might be obvious Russian intervention in terms of the election and that we have seen him musing whether or not NATO should subsume are very troubling, when we take into consideration what the Russians have started doing vis-à-vis NATO.

In conclusion, I would argue that we are indeed in a very dangerous environment. The Russian change of policy in 2008 to meet NATO expansion with military force, combined with the fact that we have an American president who does not seem to fully understand and appreciate the true linchpin that NATO has been for our peace and security, is very troubling.

I think Canadians need to understand that we must maintain this security, and NATO is at the heart of it.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you, Professor Huebert.

The first formal seven-minute question will go to Mark Gerretsen.

You have the floor.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I have a question for each witness, so I apologize in advance if I cut someone off. I'm just trying to get my questions out there.

First, Mr. Moens, I have a question for you about the 2% GDP that the Americans and NATO seem to be focusing on in terms of national spending on military. It seems to miss a couple of things. For starters, Canada always shows up. We might not be spending the most, but we always show up when NATO is looking for allies.

Another example is that of the four brigades currently deployed by NATO, one is being led by Canada, and it's the brigade that has the most other nations that are signing up with it. When we were in Latvia to talk about NATO, one of the responses we got from an official was that when Canada shows up, other countries show up. It seems as though the 2% thing doesn't really include those other values that Canada might be contributing. Can you comment on that and on whether you think the formula that NATO is using to come to the 2% is adequate?

[Dr. Alexander Moens]

I think we first have to recognize the two extremes, the two easiest positions in this debate. On the one hand there is NATO, which is trying to set the benchmark, so it has decided to say 2% of GDP. On the other hand there is the Canadian government, which has often said, “Look at all we are contributing. Look at all we can do.”

We know that our actual defence expenditure is about 1%. I would say that if you look at the current large equipment we have in the Canadian military—ships and planes—and if you study the procurement history of those, those procurements, those investments, constituted at the time about 1.6% or 1.7% of GDP. You have to think about that amount of equipment.

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

I was trying to focus more on whether you think there is value in those other contributions that Canada is making.

[Dr. Alexander Moens]

There is great value in there, but all of us, including those in NATO, know that every year we stretch our equipment just a little bit further because we are so imaginative and flexible in how we use it, but what cannot go on eventually doesn't go on.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Baines, I think your discussion was extremely timely given that Remembrance Day is only a few days away. I'm reminded of an example from when I had just become a city councillor and in the district that I represented those from the military base in Kingston were performing an exercise, and it had not been properly discussed through the media. A number of constituents called me, irate, saying, “How dare they do this? I don't want my kids to be exposed to these guns and to see these men running around in military gear.”

I don't know if the problem is just millennials. As Mr. Moens said, I think the problem might be bigger than that. It's this idea—and I think you hit the nail on the head—that my generation and a few generations before haven't seen war first-hand as my father did as a child in Holland. Are you sure that what you're suggesting as a strategy is going to accomplish what you're looking for? Is the problem not bigger than that?

[Robert Baines]

Sure it is, of course. I think there are many different ways to solve the problem, but the fundamental point that Canadians have to understand is how foundational NATO and international security are to our own peace and prosperity. It's a multi-planed battlefield here. The reserves have always tried to show the Canadian Forces in urban centres. It's one of their main goals now.

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

Is there value in there being more to the story about NATO, such as, for example, preserving our economic interests? Should we be focusing on more than just why it's great for Canada to be part of NATO?

[Robert Baines]

The economic aspect obviously is in our favour, and article 2, of course, has always been about building the economic security that we allow in terms of being able to traverse the seas, of goods and peoples, and of freedom of movement. That is a huge boon for Canada in itself.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Huebert, you've said that NATO is central to our defence. Would you say that NATO is a requirement for our sovereignty? To say that it's central for our defence implies that it is what our sovereignty rests on. Would you agree with that?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

You need the sovereignty to have the defence, because you have to recognize what sovereignty ultimately is—the right to govern yourself. You want to do that for a purpose—

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

I guess what I'm getting at is that countries like.... I wouldn't say that NATO is essential for U.S. sovereignty. I wouldn't say that for Russia and I wouldn't say that for the U.K, but I'm curious to know if you think that having NATO is central to our ability to remain a sovereign nation.

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

It remains a sovereign nation in that the truest threats to the existence of the Canadian state are being deterred by NATO and by Canadian participation. By extension, our sovereignty is defended by being a member of NATO.

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

Okay.

Am I out of time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You have 30 seconds for a question and a response.

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

I would like to go further, but it will take longer than that. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Mr. Bezan.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank Professor Moens, Professor Huebert, and Mr. Baines for joining us. It's great to see all three of you again. Your testimony was very interesting.

The same as Mr. Gerretsen, I have one question for each of you that I want to concentrate on.

First of all, Professor Huebert, you talked about Arctic specialization, something that Canada and Norway could do and something that I've heard from other people over the years as well. With our new capabilities with Arctic offshore patrol vessels and what we have as a training centre up at Resolute Bay, are you envisioning that those types of facilities and kit provide us with that opportunity to work with countries like Norway?

Also, what about the other NATO members that have Arctic capabilities, such as the United States and Denmark?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

Absolutely, and in terms of the AOPS, of course, they're being designed more for a constabulatory role, which is something that I confess I've been critical of, but for the next surface combatant, one of the major things they will need to do is to have an anti-submarine capability, an area capability. Also, we can take certain lessons from both the Norwegians and the Danes about possibly giving some form of Arctic capability to these vessels, so that in fact we can push them further north.

In terms of other co-operation with the Danes, the Icelanders, and the Norwegians—and, I would suspect, the Swedes and the Finns in the long term—we can also talk about improved co-operation in aerospace. Keep in mind that the Norwegians yesterday took ownership of their first three F-35s, so once again, it illustrates part of the dilemma we have in Canada in being so far behind in our decision. Nevertheless, with them, we have in fact participated already in the defence of Iceland's aerospace when the Americans pulled out.

You have the operational side, of course, but I also think that NATO has announced that it is going to look at the possibility of a new command for the northern region. In terms of the strategic perspective, it's critical that Canada be at the front with the type of knowledge we have, so that if NATO makes a decision to go in that direction, that is Canadian leadership. I suspect the Norwegians will be there in spades. It's critical that we are there so that as a new policy is designed we're the ones who are sharing our expertise in terms of how to do it.