National Defence Committee on Feb. 6th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Actually, no. We're going to move on. I'm going to have to give the floor over to the next person with a question.

Mr. Fisher.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Lieutenant-General Hainse, Lieutenant-General Whitecross, and Ambassador Buck, welcome. Thank you very much.

I guess, Ambassador Buck, I'll be seeing you in a couple of weeks in Brussels. I'm looking forward to seeing you.

I want to touch a little bit on what Mr. Robillard started off with. As you can tell, the committee is quite interested in the whole 2% issue and the whole burden-sharing discussion. I understand that there is a standardization within NATO, an audit process, on how member countries contribute through GDP. I'm interested in that process. Until this morning, I wasn't even aware of this internal process, despite the fact that we on this committee always talk about and hear a lot about how different countries calculate their spending differently.

Are you able to fill me in a little bit on this standardization, this internal audit, within the NATO headquarters and how this occurs?

[Kerry Buck]

I'll start.

There's an agreed methodology to report defence expenditures. Those agreed definitions have remained largely unchanged since 1950. Overall defence expenditures are defined by NATO as payments made by national governments specifically to meet the needs of its armed forces, those of allies, or of the alliance. They're very detailed instructions, which have been agreed by the alliance underneath that broad rubric, and include the following categories: military personnel, civilian personnel, pensions, operations and maintenance. I won't go through the whole list.

There are some, I won't call them, “different” interpretations, but allies will at times structure their armed forces differently to meet their own security and defence needs. For instance, in some countries a border or coast guard would be an integral part of the armed forces. It makes defence sense for some allies to do it that way. It doesn't for Canada.

Someone said that defence expenditure is a case of apples and oranges, that there are a lot of variations, but that's not quite true. There are agreed definitions, and we use that methodology pretty consistently, and there is a push-back function too. There are conversations between the NATO international military staff, international staff, and ours to make sure that what we're all reporting on defence spending is within those guidelines. It's a very structured process with a whole lot of due diligence included.

Canada, as we went into the defence policy review and from having done many internal reviews, discovered that we had been under-reporting to NATO, so there was an increase entirely consistent with the NATO guidelines, but we sought to capture more of the Canadian defence spending at the time. That's legitimate defence spending according to NATO's definitions.

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

Thank you for that. I appreciate it.

Coming back to the burden-sharing question, the 2%, it's easy to tell how cash and contributions can be factored into that 2%, but what about capability?

[LGen Marquis Hainse]

I can take this one, Mr. Chairman.

Capability is directly related to the NATO defence planning process that I explained earlier. NATO defends the planning process. As I said, it's a four-year process and it starts with five steps. The first step is talking about the environment, understanding what the environment is all about. Once that step is done, then we look at the various requirements that NATO needs to face that environment; that's step two. Then step three is the apportionment of some of those capabilities toward a nation, and this is based on the wealth, structure of its forces, and many factors. Before this capability is apportioned to various nations, a lot of dialogue happens. It does not takes place in weeks, but over years, to make sure that we are apportioning the right capabilities to the right nation. Canada is subject to this like any other nation.

Last year we were doing step three, the apportionment for the 2015 process, which will allow us to able to cover the next 10 years over the medium term, up to the next 20 years. In 2019, we'll start a new process. What was very specific or important to understand in the 2015 process is that it incorporated the renewed focus on collective defence. As a result of this, a lot of nations have been given more targets, Canada included. Canada was given something like 40 more targets than in the previous process. That's how the process works.

The other step is that we make sure that we implement the medium-term targets and then the long-term targets. Then we review the results. What has also changed this year is that all nations have to do a national report. This process is a bit beside the NATO defence planning process. A national report needs to talk about the cash, capabilities, and also the contribution that is made to NATO and to other commitments outside NATO.

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

It's indispensable as Ambassador Buck said.

I just got cut off.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You may have more time at the end.

I'm going to the first question of the five-minute round.

Mr. Spengemann, you have the floor.

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

Chair, thank you very much.

Thank you, to all our witnesses, and good afternoon.

My question is for Ambassador Buck and Lieutenant-General Whitecross. I'd like to thank you both for raising the issue of gender equality and particularly the UN Security Council Resolution 1325, on women, peace, and security. Lieutenant-General Whitecross especially, I'd like to thank you for acknowledging the non-binary meaning of gender.

I'm wondering if I could ask both of you to drill down a bit more and give us an appreciation of the challenges, but not so much in terms of attendance numbers. I think it's a combination, of course, of the net contribution at the military level of women numerically in the armed forces of each of the allies, and also the different cultures that exist within the NATO membership on gender equality.

If one were to go into the halls of NATO headquarters and into the field missions at the moment, what appreciation would one get of an effort being under way to change the status quo? Are there any awareness campaigns that are NATO-driven or NATO-directed? Are there any budgets on gender equality or gender equity within the NATO machinery?

Lastly, what support politically, if any, could we give you to make sure that happens more expeditiously?

[Kerry Buck]

Maybe I'll start, and Lieutenant-General Whitecross will come in for the NDC's perspective.

There's currently a NATO action plan on women, peace, and security. It's pretty comprehensive, but going into the summit this spring, we want to increase our level of ambition. NATO has done a pretty good job on a few things. It's actually done a pretty good job on awareness raising outside of NATO, with the NATO allied publics, on the women, peace, and security agenda as well as through conversations targeted at women populations to show what NATO does and to present all the work that NATO has done on inclusion, or inclusive security as I call it.

NATO has also done pretty well in integrating a gender perspective into operations. There's mandatory pre-deployment training for instance for deployment to NATO operations. The Supreme Allied Commander Europe issued a directive for all NATO operations to integrate gender perspectives up and down the command chain. NATO has done pretty well on that front, but there's still more to do. There's also been integration of gender into NATO policies.

There are still gaps. There's more to be done on integration of gender into NATO policies. As I explained at the North Atlantic Council, Canada takes a very pragmatic approach to ensure, for instance, when an operation is in the field, that it understands the place of women in the community within which it is operating and that it understands, as NATO is doing defence capacity building, that it's in everyone's security interests to have more women trained in partner nations' armed forces. That's an area where we want to do a bit more.

Finally, there's the percentage of women both inside NATO and inside alliance militaries. Inside NATO, there's both good news and bad news. There's been a bit of backsliding in terms of the number of women in the institution, but there have been some really important senior nominations or senior appointments. General Whitecross is the first female commander of NATO Defense College. The deputy secretary general is a woman. I am Canada's first woman ambassador to NATO after 66 years.

Some improvements have been made in allied militaries. We're doing better than almost any other grouping in the world, but it's still not good enough. For instance, since 1999, there's been only a 4% increase in the number of women in allied militaries averaging up to about just under 11% in 2016. So there's more to do.

[LGen Christine Whitecross]

Do I have time to add a few things?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Absolutely.

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

I'd like to hear your views as well, please, General.

[LGen Christine Whitecross]

Thanks very much.

First of all, I think we need to thank Ambassador Buck for her leadership on this because there's not a day that goes by when I don't talk to her and hear about the great things she's doing on behalf of Canada and NATO. That extends to the dialogue that we're using now in the NATO Defense College, which, to be completely honest, hasn't necessarily been the case in the past. I think we can underestimate the impact the dialogue has, because in this particular case Canada also sent some very influential leaders to the NATO Defense College. I'm not talking about myself, but some of my staff. We're very thankful for that. To our NATO allies and to our partner nations, it's showing the capabilities we can add.

We're also bringing GBA, which, of course, is one of the Canadian means, to help out with the policy to ensure that there is no gender bias in their analysis. We're working on that within the NATO Defense College to make sure that its taken into account. We have our very first gender adviser, which is a long time coming to be particularly honest. We're also working with Norfolk, Allied Command Transformation on some courses that we hope to instill within the college, whether it's in-house or online via distance learning.

If I could just add one more thing, obviously the new special representative for women, peace and Security here in NATO is a Canadian, Clare Hutchinson, and between her and Ambassador Buck, I think we're well suited going into the future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you very much.

Mr. O'Toole.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's nice to see you again.

Thank you very much. I think all Canadians can be very proud of the exceptional leadership that we have in Europe. Thank you for joining us this morning, or this afternoon, for you. It's nice to see my old director of cadets, from RMC, General Hainse. It's nice to see you.

I have a couple of questions. One relates to Minister Freeland's comments in November that Canada was exploring the option of a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, and that she had spoken to the U.S. special representative for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, and the UN Secretary-General about that. I'm just wondering, as we're exploring that option—and I think all sides support it, and certainly the Conservatives do—Ambassador, how might that impact, if at all, an enhanced forward presence in the various NATO operations that have been stood up with respect to Russian aggression in Ukraine?

[Kerry Buck]

First, on the peacekeeping proposals, any United Nations peacekeeping mission in Ukraine would have to respect that country's territorial integrity. Canada is very supportive of international efforts by Mr. Volker and others to develop a broad agreement regarding the potential establishment of a UN peacekeeping mission, provided that the mandate of such a mission recognizes Ukraine's capacity to exercise full sovereignty over its territory. In shorthand, having something along the line of contact that effectively freezes the conflict in the Donbass is not something that would achieve Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. That Russian proposal isn't acceptable to us or anyone else who's trying to work on the peacekeeping mandate. Reaching agreement on such a mandate remains challenging and I might hazard a guess that it will be challenging until at least after the Russian election. The U.S. and others are working to try to bring folks together to see if an agreement can be reached.

You asked about the impact on the forward presence in the Baltics and Poland. I don't want to engage in hypotheticals about the security impact, but NATO moved into that area because of a need. It's about deterrence and projecting the political commitment of the alliance to defend all allies. Deterrence is both a political message of unity and a message of unity that is projected through four battle groups in the Baltics and Poland. That was a decision taken and we've got a mandate for those battle groups to be part of deterrence for the next couple of years at least. Those two aren't related and I don't see NATO pulling back at all from its presence in the Baltics and Poland for the time being. Unless there's a radical shift in the security situation, I don't foresee that.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Thank you very much.

In your remarks, a few of you mentioned the 2016 Warsaw summit and the need for enhanced presence in the North Atlantic.

Building upon that, we have recently seen China express its desire to use trade routes through the Arctic, as part of its positioning as a near Arctic state. With respect to the Northwest Passage and the North Atlantic extending into the Arctic and our domestic waters, is that going to be part of an enhanced NATO presence?

General Hainse mentioned the one frigate that we generally have with the standing NATO fleet, but are there going to be air or sea assets dedicated to more polar waters, given not only the enhanced Russian military presence in their Arctic region, but certainly also the desire of the Chinese to demonstrate their presence and develop trade routes through our sovereign Arctic waters?

[Kerry Buck]

Maybe I will start on this. NATO has been focusing on areas of heightened threat and risk. Where we see the heightened risk is in the North Atlantic, particularly the North Atlantic in the European space. Some of that goes into the European Arctic, but we don't see an active military threat in our own Arctic that requires any NATO approach for that region. While NATO has eyes wide open on the entire space, we're focusing very much on the North Atlantic and primarily on the Greenland-Iceland-UK corridor, where we see Russia starting to project its forces from its own Arctic.

There will definitely be more maritime presence in the North Atlantic. That's an ongoing issue and an ongoing strand of work of NATO to enhance our maritime posture in a comprehensive situational awareness in the North Atlantic, but again, we're not talking about a military threat in our own Arctic right now. That's actually an area of co-operation. We and our Arctic Council allies at the table here—our NATO allies, who are members of the Arctic Council—see our optic with that same optic, as an area of relative co-operation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm going to have to stop there and move over to Ms. Alleslev.

You have the floor.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much. What a pleasure to have you guys here today.

I would like to focus on the NATO Defence College. Over the last five years, can you give us an idea about how many Canadians have attended the NATO Defence College, out of the total population of attendees?

[LGen Christine Whitecross]

Just so we're aware of the way that the NATO Defence College is populated, the number of seats given is based on the military contribution of the nations. Canada has six seats per year, so three on each of the senior courses. This is the long six-month course.

Canada has been averaging about six per year in the last 10 years, but I am pleased to say that, on the next course, we're going to have five. We had two in the last. We will have five on the course that starts in two weeks. Canada has been providing their maximum number of Canadian seats. That isn't necessarily the case with the other nations.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Excellent. About how many of those are female, just for interest's sake?

[LGen Christine Whitecross]

I have that as well. Over the last five years, about one-third of them were women from Canada.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Perfect. How does that compare to other nations' contribution?

[LGen Christine Whitecross]

To be frank, it's a lot higher. In the last two courses, we're running at about 6% to 11% of women on the course, but generally, Canada is one of the few nations that is providing women.