National Defence Committee on April 19th, 2016

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

Absolutely. The art of command is something I want to mention. We are given the equipment we're given. So the commander is responsible to execute his mission, and his contingency plans—the way in which we execute the mission—will be highly dependent on the capabilities and the gaps that we have. Therefore, we have plans to mitigate whatever deficiencies we may have.

Of course, however, we are looking to the future and have tabled those capability requirements already with respect to what we see as an emerging or required system, a system that would take us through the next 50 years. That is being taken into consideration by authorities both in the United States and Canada with respect to buying something. And, of course, if we had a high altitude UAV for NORAD, we would be very interested in whatever intelligence surveillance or reconnaissance information we could get from it. That would be a platform that, if Canada decided to purchase in whatever form it would come in, would be of great benefit to us.

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

When you were talking about Russia and Syria, the one thing that they demonstrated there was their new cruise missiles and how they have not only range but accuracy, and we've talked about this today and at other meetings. I understand that they have some cruise missiles now that can fire over 3,000 miles. What do we need to put in place to do early detection on that, especially in the Arctic?

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

You've heard the expression “left of launch”. Admiral Gortney has talked about this quite a bit. So wherever we are now, we are looking with the current north warning system.... The [Inaudible--Editor], if you will, would have occurred a few hundred miles north of that north warning system.

In order to counter this new threat, which is not fully mature though they have declared some type of operational capability now, we have to push our ability to intercept even further north, which means that we have to invest heavily in our ability to look deep, to look north, and move our forces north, including our airborne sensors, ground-based sensors, and our fighters, which need to be air-to-air refuelled. We need to be able to command and control the north, so the communications aspect in the north is not a simple matter; it's very difficult. There is technology out there that we're looking at in order to make sure that our crews are able to communicate with whatever airborne sensors would be out there. Again, whatever is going to come out in the future, we'll be able to draft plans for and address this problem as required.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

We will move on to Mr. Fisher. You have the floor for five minutes.

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

Thank you very much for being here, sir. I apologize if there's any overlap because there seem to be a lot of people around the table with similar questions.

We've heard a lot of testimony that Canada and the U.S. are seamless when protecting North America. We've also heard that we are responsible for our own sovereignty. When we talk about participation in BMD, while we may risk protection, with potential BMD participation do we forfeit some of our sovereignty? Is that something that you wish to comment on? Do the benefits outweigh the negatives?

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

I'm not sure of that, in the sense that it seems to me this would be a policy matter as opposed to a military matter. The defence review, I am told now, will explore that subject, and there are good questions to ask, from my perspective from where I sit, and again, I only have a piece of the pie. The totality of the problem is way bigger than the NORAD requirements.

I don't know. I can't answer whether or not, but if the level of ambition for Canada, should we decide to opt in, is such that sovereignty is a concern, I would expect there would be discussions and negotiations that would mitigate as much as possible whatever those concerns would be.

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

This conversation about BMD has ramped up just recently. What's really changed to bring back this debate again? Is it because we're doing a review?

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

I think that militarily nothing has changed much from the last time we looked at things. Militarily I think the advice has been constant, or at least has been in the same direction. Again, the advice this time would be rendered by the Chief of the Defence Staff, not me. I only have a part of this. Other than North Korea, which has visibly progressed their own development of their own ballistic missiles, Iran has an intercontinental missile capability, not nuclear, but an ICBM, that can reach North America. I'm not sure if that was in place 10 years ago, but we have seen proliferation of those missiles. That probably is what has changed lately.

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

Do you feel that there's any pressure on us to participate in BMD?

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

No.

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

So you suggest that, if we continue not to participate, that's not going to affect any Canada-U.S. relations.

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

No, I'm not suggestion that, sir, at all.

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

Okay. So intercepting cruise missiles is certainly different than shooting down a ballistic missile, but to any extent can a BMD protect from cruise missiles as well? Is there any overlap there?

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

Right now there's none. They are two very different vehicles. One flies through space at a very high speed. The other one is an air-breathing type of vehicle, which means it needs oxygen to operate. The sensors are very much different; the speeds are different, and the weapons to counter these missiles are also very much different. So it's a different problem to prosecute.

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

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you said something along the lines of cruise missiles not going away. I read somewhere that our defence strategies for cruise missiles are lagging behind ballistic missile defence. Do you concur with that?

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

Yes, I concur with that. Just going back to the current configuration of our warning system, configured for first-generation cruise missiles, we're now facing the latest generation of cruise missiles with longer ranges and low observability. That is challenging us. We have to catch up.

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

Do I have a couple of seconds left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You have about 55 seconds for a question and an answer.

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

I'll ask you a really quick one that I had asked, and didn't really get an answer to, last week or the week before.

The Russian presence near North American airspace died out after the Cold War. It has ramped up again since 2007. I looked for a number in past weeks and I wasn't able to get it. How often do Russian aircraft come close to Canadian airspace?

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

On average, five times per year.

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

Five times per year.

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

It peaked at about 10 times in 2014.

The reason it's difficult is that some of that is classified. This is what is publicly available.

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

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You're right on time.

We'll go to a three-minute question.

Mr. Garrison, you have the floor.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

I want to return to the ABM question here. We seem to have the Conservative government moving toward a reconsideration, and now there's some reason to believe that the new Liberal government is doing that. We had a Senate committee, with a majority of Conservatives appointed, who actually recommended that we participate, and we have a former minister of defence who's part of the defence review expert panel that seems to favour participation. I think it's important that we look at the threats here and we distinguish, in that fuzzy language sometimes, about a threat to Canada and a threat to the United States.

I believe you and others have said that when it comes to ABMs and even cruise missiles, these are really beyond the capacity of anyone but state actors. What is the ABM threat to Canada, as opposed to the threat to North America or the United States, for ballistic missiles? Is there a realistic threat to Canada? We had an implication in one of the questions that we were somehow undefended, but we might be undefended against a non-threat.