National Defence Committee on April 19th, 2016

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

There's nothing specific that I can talk about. However, when you take a look at the behaviour of nation-states, and when you take a look at great power competition, we are part of an alliance. You can envisage a scenario where, for example, one of our allies would intervene in Europe, and then we have....

I'm not sure if you have seen or read about the doctrine of escalating to de-escalate. From that point of view, all the allies are subject to some type of threat from ballistic missiles in order to affect the decision of another great power with whom we could be allied. It's very indirect. It's very soft. But the fact that we have signed up to a certain alliance, to NATO for example, and we are closely aligned with the United States, means that we are in a sphere where we could be targeted.

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

We talk about state actors like North Korea. Has North Korea threatened Canada? Not to my knowledge. They're threatening the United States.

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

That's right. None of them were—

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

So in terms of finding any direct threat, other than just saying everybody is threatened by ballistic missiles, which I appreciate and to some extent agree with, there doesn't seem to be a credible threat on the list to Canada for ballistic missiles.

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

Nothing declared that I would be aware of, sir.

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

When it comes to the delineation of responsibilities, it seems again we're getting into a fuzzy area when it comes to ABMs with NORAD and the U.S. capabilities. Can you comment a little bit on the challenges that presents with the United States having a separate capacity from NORAD?

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

Right. It makes the chain of command....

In military terms, if you're going to prosecute a mission, you like to have the same chain of command responsible for all aspects of the mission. When you talk about a single vehicle or a single ballistic missile coming in, NORAD would have a portion of that mission—detection and attack characterization. USNORTHCOM would have the defence part. Then, if anything was to land in North America, NORAD would pick up the assessment and the detection of a nuclear detonation if there was anything happening.

That describes the complexity when you go from one command to the other, and go back to a command, in order to prosecute the same vehicle that is now flying through space and approaching North America. That gives a sense of the complexity.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

That's your time. Thanks for the question and answer.

We have kind of free questioning now.

Mr. McKay, did you have a question you wanted to ask?

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I'm looking at a paper by—

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

Allowing the department's parliamentary secretary to ask a question would require the consent of the committee—

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

Oh, yes.

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

—which I am prepared to give.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

All right. Let's do that, then.

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

But it would require consent.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Do we have the consent of the committee to allow the parliamentary secretary to ask a question?

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

This one time, he could ask.

[Voices]

Yes.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I'll try to ask a nice question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for the correction.

Mr. McKay, you have the floor.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

I'm reading from a paper “NORAD does not need saving” by Joseph Jockel and Joel Sokolsky. A couple of questions arise as I'm reading this paper. The first one is this. He's talking about whether NORAD needs saving versus what's in Canada's interest. It feeds off Mr. Garrison's question. He says—and I'll try to be as succinct as possible—

Moreover, there are plenty of screens in the NORAD/USNORTHCOM operations centre that the Americans keep the Canadians, even in their privileged position, from viewing.

Can you give an example of that, or several examples?

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

There's only one screen that we're not allowed to see, and it's the BMD screen. That's it.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

When he says “screens”, as far as you're concerned, he means “screen”, singular.

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

I would say so.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you.

The other question arises out of this strange position that we're in, the ballistic missile defence versus the cruise missile defence. If, in fact—and we'll use Russia as an example—Russia wants to hit Vancouver or Seattle with a ballistic missile, there is a choice to be made. If Russia wants to hit Vancouver or Seattle with a cruise missile that's launched from a jet, there's no choice to be made. In other words, we are at one with the U.S. on a cruise missile, but we are, in theory at least, differentiating ourselves when a ballistic missile is launched.

[LGen Pierre St-Amand]

That's accurate. Yes, sir.