National Defence Committee on Feb. 8th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'd like to welcome everyone to the defence committee this morning. Happy 80th meeting of the defence committee in the 42nd Parliament. It's hard to believe that it's been 80 meetings so far, but that's where we're at.

I'd like to welcome our guests today as we continue our ongoing discussion of Canada and NATO. Appearing today, we have David Hobbs, secretary general of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly; Professor James Fergusson from the Centre for Defence and Security Studies, Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, as an individual; and the Honourable Joseph A. Day

Gentlemen, thank you very much for appearing today. My understanding is that Mr. Fergusson will open it up with his remarks. Sir, you have the floor.

[Dr. James Fergusson, Professor, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Before I begin commenting on Canada, NATO, the Arctic, and the missile defence programs, as I was instructed, I just want to put a plug in to the committee. On May 24, the centre is hosting the 60th anniversary of the NORAD conference. I believe that the clerk has distributed the basic information and agenda. We have already confirmed that commander of NORAD, General Robinson, will be there. It also looks like the deputy commander will be there, pending, of course, events in the world. We are bringing in all the former commanders and deputy commanders of NORAD, since 9/11, to discuss their experiences and thoughts about the future. Let me extend an open invitation to all members of the committee to attend the conference in Winnipeg. Due to security concerns, the registration will come up in about two or three weeks and I will forward the website address to the clerk to distribute to committee members. We look forward to seeing most of you there. I think it will be a wonderful event.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for that.

[Dr. James Fergusson]

Now, to turn to the Arctic, I want to raise three quick points about the Arctic before I turn briefly to missile defence.

One needs to distinguish between rhetoric and reality, or what's written on paper in the North Atlantic Treaty, signed in Washington in 1949, and what the actual practices of the alliance have been relative to North America. As you probably know, throughout the Cold War, even though there was a NATO Canada-U.S. regional planning group, North America was not a place for NATO. NATO was about European defence and security and, effectively, Canada and the United States' guarantee to support the defence of western Europe—and now this is extended further to the east, with the expansion of NATO.

I believe you all have copies of three overhead maps that I forwarded. The key point is that when you look at North America with regard to the Arctic, if you look at everything west of Greenland, this is an issue for Canada and the United States. Its central defence institution, as you know, is NORAD. It is not a place for NATO.

The second point I want to raise with the committee is that when you look at the current international system and the changes that have occurred, which most academics talk about as the return of “great power politics”, we need to be careful—and this fits into the first point—to think back in Cold War terms to when the west's relationship, including Canada, the United States, and NATO with the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, was clearly adversarial across all issue areas. We were adversaries politically, militarily, strategically, socially, and economically.

In the world we live in today, which is going to continue, we have to recognize that in certain areas with great powers—in this particular case, Russia—we are adversaries or we are in conflict. This, of course, is in eastern Europe with the issues surrounding Crimea and the Ukraine, as well as, of course, the Baltics and with our eastern European allies.

However, that doesn't mean that this conflict, this adversarial element, should be transferred across the board. There are areas where we will compete with a great power like Russia—you may look and think in terms of Syria—and there are areas where we will co-operate with the Russians. The Arctic is an area of co-operation with the Russians, particularly when we recognize the economic interest and vital importance of the Arctic to the Russians themselves, and Russian capabilities in the Arctic, including civilian capabilities, particularly their icebreaker fleet, and our common interests as transportation opens up further with climate change. We need to recognize the real passage of vessels transporting goods from east to west will not be the Northwest Passage, but the Russian route, because it's simply easier to go that way.

From Russian behaviour with regard to the Law of the Sea and the extension of the continental shelf, which has followed the legal process, I think it's very clear that when we look at Russia and Canada, as well as the United States, with regard to the Arctic west of Greenland, it is an area for co-operation among the three, and other members of the Arctic Council.

Entering NATO here through whatever specific means is likely going to be perceived as provocative to the Russians, and this is not going to be helpful to our interests and requirements of future needs as the Arctic expands, both for population centres and social and economic questions as they emerge.

The third point is that where there is an issue relative to North America and NATO, notwithstanding the issues of our presence in eastern Europe supporting our allies, is east of Greenland. This is what was loosely called the “North Atlantic seam”. This is the Greenland-Iceland-U.K. gap and further north to Norway. The issues, as you see in the second graph, include the increasing threat posed by Russian long-range cruise missile capabilities.

Cruise missile defence is a NORAD mission. A variety of issues need to be worked out in the absence of the old Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, to ensure the defence of North America. This is new in the context of NATO from the Cold War, because with the Atlantic at that time, the issue was largely about keeping open the sea lines of communication to support or reinforce forces, if necessary, in case of war. That is the area where attention needs to be paid in Canada because a variety of issues related to U.S. Northern Command are involved here, including the U.S. European Command, NATO, and how we're going to develop command structures and how we are going to ensure effective air defence of North America.

Those are my three basic points about the Arctic.

Turning to missile defence, I know that members of the committee have received a very good report from the parliamentary assembly on the European phased adaptive approach. I certainly can answer questions with regard to its evolution, where you want to start dating it back to—I usually date it back to 1999 and the Washington summit, which set in motion the first study by NATO on theatre ballistic missile defence—where we stand today, and the details of where it might go. That has now expanded to Lisbon and Chicago.

There are two points I want to make about the missile defence program. The first is that, despite what the Russians say, the missile defence system deployed in the Mediterranean and Romania, and that is about to be deployed in Poland, does not threaten Russian strategic forces with regard to North America. The system does not have the capability. The angles of any attempt to intercept a warhead or a missile in mid-course phase from a launch transiting northwards, with us coming at it from behind—basically it's a trailing shot—simply can't be done. The interceptors of standard missile-3 and the variants of it do not have the speed to catch up to that missile.

One area where there is potentially an issue with regard to Russian strategic forces—particularly in the context of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prohibits intermediate nuclear forces and ground-launched cruise missiles between a range of 500 and 5,500 kilometres—is the potential use by the Russians of their ICBM fleet in an alternative trajectory to be able to threaten western Europe, our European allies. Even so, unless you go to a much faster interceptor, the system will not really be able to intercept that—but you could take shots at it.

The second issue is one that I think is very important for Canada. If you go back to the Bush administration's plan, which was to put mid-course phase interceptors—i.e., the interceptors that are located in Alaska—in Poland and a phased array guiding radar in the Czech Republic was, by and large, as a layer of the defence of North America. The layer right now cannot defend North America, but Canada has to be interested in the potential requirement against Middle East threats. As you see in the third overhead, which provides a threat fan of ICBM tracking from launch points in Iran or elsewhere in the Middle East, you certainly would need to upgrade it.

At some point in the future, however, the issue concerning proliferation will whether we need another site somewhere to defend the east coast from attacks from the Middle East. As I and most people predict, the Iranian program, at least in its ballistic missile form, will continue to be able to bring North America under threat. The Fort Greely, Alaska, site is not appropriately placed to deal with those threats. It can take a shot, but it would be a trailing shot, and from what I've been told, it would be very difficult for it to be able to intercept a missile from the Middle East.

The United States is looking at, and I think completed, a review of that, but we're waiting for the 2018 ballistic missile defence review report from the U.S. regarding the future prospect of a third site in northern United States, either in New York, Ohio, or Michigan.

There are other issues involved here, but if the United States feels that its site in Europe cannot defend the continental United States from a long-range ICBM from the Middle East, then these are direct issues for Canada in the long-standing question about whether we should or should not participate in the U.S. program.

I shall leave it there. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for your opening remarks.

I'll yield the floor to Mr. David Hobbs.

[David Hobbs, Secretary General, NATO Parliamentary Assembly]

Thank you very much indeed, Mr. Chairman. I will do my utmost to be as succinct as James was.

I would like to talk about the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, because it's a dimension of NATO membership that has, obviously, from the name, a very specific benefit to parliamentarians, and it's directly relevant to that. During the Qs and As I'd be very happy to go into the sort of substantive issues the assembly deals with, but if I could, I'd like to talk about the value, if you like, of the organization within the NATO framework, with just a minimal bit of history.

When NATO was created in 1949, of course it was a very different world. Nobody thought in those days of adding a parliamentary dimension. It's not in the treaty at all. After 1949 the initiative to create some form of parliamentary organization for NATO came from parliamentarians themselves—led, incidentally, by the Canadian Senate. By 1955 there was enough momentum for the parliaments of the NATO countries to say, “We should be meeting. We should be discussing NATO issues.” There was enough value in that, it was felt, for NATO itself to support the creation of the forerunner of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

So it wasn't part of the treaty, but was created by parliamentarians themselves and is gradually become very much a part of the NATO family of organizations.

It's instructive to look at what motivated the founding fathers. I say “fathers”, because of course in those days they were all fathers. They looked at the treaty incredibly creatively, in a good way, bearing in mind that in 1955 the Cold War was in full sway. They looked at the treaty itself. I'm sure you're familiar with the treaty. It's a nice succinct document. In the preamble there's the crucial phrasing that the allies are “determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law”. Then there's article 2, which is actually often referred to as the “Canadian” article, which says that NATO effectively is much more than simply a military alliance. It talks about promoting the further development of peaceful and friendly international organizations, strengthening free institutions, and bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which our free institutions were founded.

The parliamentarians who founded the assembly wanted the assembly to look at the issues that affected the community of NATO nations, not just the narrow security issues, which was incredibly broad-minded. Bear in mind, this was the height of the Cold War, so built into the organization's DNA is looking at issues that now are mainstream, even in a security context, such as environmental issues, human rights, rule of law, and all those things. It's been interesting that since the end of the Cold War, the NATO agenda has become more like the assembly's agenda, but as a concept, it also explains why the assembly is so enduring, as is the alliance.

When people ask, “What is the alliance for?”, as they often do, it is in fact a remarkably appropriate question, because the alliance fundamentally is for those values, not against something. The “against” can change, of course, as the threat environment changes, as there are different threats and challenges, but what the alliance stands for remains enduring. That's very much at the heart of the assembly.

The goals were to provide a direct link between NATO authorities and the parliaments. National parliamentarians' defence committees, of course, play a crucial role in oversight in many of our countries and in determining the use of their forces in operations. Indeed, parliaments also ratify treaty changes. If there's a new member to the alliance, that has to go through parliaments. The idea was that creating a cadre of MPs in each NATO nation who were really familiar with NATO thinking was of benefit of them in their national work, and also to the alliance as a whole. The idea was also that we would broaden the crucial trans-Atlantic link by adding a parliamentary dimension to it to make sure that there weren't just governments talking to each other but legislators from both sides of the Atlantic. Again, that was built into the founding aims of the organization. The final one was to promote the aims and values of the alliance. I suppose, since the end of the Cold War, we've also added doing that within partner nations, as well.

As a bureaucrat, it's so tempting, but I won't go into the committee structures and all the different wiring diagrams that we have.

We're a parliamentary organization. We have committees, we have subcommittees, we have seminar programs, we have training programs, and we do all sorts of stuff all over the place. At the small end, it can just be a visit of our president, one MP, up to a session, which can actually involve 350 MPs, possibly 750 participants, and all points in between, those different meetings.

We organize about 35 activities per year. If you look at the parliamentary working year, almost every week there's a meeting of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly taking place somewhere. Most of those meetings are within alliance countries, but it does change. We find ourselves going to partner countries sometimes as far afield as North Korea—not to North Korea, but about North Korea—South Korea, Japan, Australia, and, of course, the Gulf and the Middle East, depending on circumstances.

As a consequence of the visits that we make, the meetings that we hold, and the reports.... We do about 17 reports per year. Four of those rapporteurs, by the way, are Canadian, so you're doing extraordinarily well, I would say, for us. They are sources of information for parliamentarians. We aim to produce the best 20 pages on any subject that we address.

As a consequence of that, they find a much broader audience. If you Google a report topic that we're dealing with in NATO, the chances are that you'll get us on the first page. There's a lot of interest in the output that informs national parliaments as well, particularly in some parliaments that don't have the same resources as you do, as the Americans do, and as the U.K. does. There are some where the library resources and research capability is much, much lower. The value added for them is massive within the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

It's not directly a spinoff, but in terms of the contacts between parliamentarians, it's quite remarkable how meetings where parliamentarians come together with their counterparts from other countries can have all sorts of different benefits. I could go into many different examples.

One that I heard just recently was a rather strange one from a former member of our Dutch delegation who is now a government minister. He said that one of the things that had proven remarkably valuable to him was that although he hadn't had much to do with the upper chamber in his own parliament, as a consequence of meeting members of the upper chamber within the context of the assembly, he was able to deal with them and he could work across both chambers very quickly because of the surprising spinoff, even in his own parliament.

The work that our parliamentarians do makes us a real sounding board for ideas. It's almost a parliamentary think tank, and it demonstrates the art of the politically possible. Each of our delegations represents the political spectrum within the alliance, so you can see how an idea will evolve and develop, what will fly and what will not fly, and who thinks what. It's a tremendous indicator of prevailing political opinion and is followed as such rather closely.

We do play a part in strategic messaging. We get lots of hits on the website. We know, for instance, that the Russians follow what we do very closely indeed. That is very much appreciated by members and partners alike, because they see us very much as being on the side of the angels in terms of strategic messaging.

As for what we do with partner countries, there are many benefits, but one crucial role that we play is what I would call “de-demonizing” NATO. When we go to places where NATO is not well understood—for example, the Gulf or North Africa— there is an incredibly stereotypical Cold War view of the alliance, which is of an American general in uniform with a nuclear weapon behind him. Then they see us, and we're incredibly non-threatening and we're talking about human rights, values, democracy, and rule of law, and this is NATO. So we provide tremendous value added to the alliance, because we actually take the demon, if you like, out of perceptions of the alliance wherever we go.

For NATO itself, they recognize the organization as being a wonderful constituency for them. It's one-stop-shopping for getting a message across to parliaments. For example, next week one of our meetings will entail specifically members only. We're bringing about 120 members of Parliament to Brussels where they will meet all the key NATO personnel working on issues from emerging security challenges to intelligence co-operation to Afghanistan. The heads of the delegation and the North American delegations will actually have a meeting with the North Atlantic Council.

Our policy recommendations go to NATO. We get a formal reply. The NATO secretary general appears twice a year. Our president speaks at the summits.

I could spend another half-hour talking about our president's own agenda, but he is working very hard to build synergies with other international organizations and other parliamentary bodies, and also to see how we can help get the message about NATO and what NATO does more into our education systems and into our Parliaments.

I will stop.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

We'll have a number of questions, and we can go back to a number of those ideas when we get to that point.

I'd like to turn the floor over to Senator Day.

Sir, you have the floor.

[Joseph A. Day, Senator, New Brunswick, Lib.]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and colleagues.

A good number of you have been involved with NATO Parliamentary Assembly's activities along the way. I'm here as a resource, to talk about parliamentarians' participation in NATO Parliamentary Assembly. David has talked about some of the advantages. I agree wholeheartedly with that. Professor Fergusson touched on a couple of reports that we've been involved with. I was the rapporteur on the missile defence report, but let me tell you how this ballistic missile defence report was generated. Then there may be some questions that flow from the parliamentarians' participation.

David, as secretary general, leads the secretariat. There are a lot of very talented people who work in your office. We're very fortunate to have those people working with us because they can provide a lot of the research and support. There's also the opportunity. From time to time, we find Canadians who are working on their master's or Ph.D. who work in the NATO secretariat, NATO Parliamentary Assembly secretariat, which is and that's a great experience for them, as well.

We are, as parliamentarians, keeping an oversight on the executives in NATO. David explained the evolution of that, so I think that's important for us to understand. From 27 nations, now, we have representatives of parliamentarians at our meetings. The purpose is to inform parliamentarians about what the executive is doing, and in Canada's case, what commitments the Minister of National Defence and the Prime Minister are making with respect to defence and security issues.

We organize ourselves into a number of different subcommittees. There is a political subcommittee, and a number of parliamentarians from Canada have played an important role in the political aspects of security and defence matters; an economics one; a civil dimensions one; a defence and security one; and a science and technology one.

I can think of Canadian parliamentarians past and present who have played important roles in each of these committees.

I participate at the overall level. The president is from Italy at the present time, and then there are five vice-presidents of the organization, and I'm honoured to be one of those at this particular time. In addition to that, for a good number of years, I have worked in the defence and security subcommittee. You can't cover everything, so you make some choices. Our Canadian NATO Parliamentary Assembly chairperson, Leona Alleslev, will help determine who goes to what committees. We sit down and work out what we should do in that regard. Defence and security has been my area; I was president or chair of that particular committee for a number of years and held various other offices. Now I'm rapporteur on that committee. That's how I happened to have my name on this particular report.

I come in to you for the background. The committee is very good from a background point of view. The secretariat put a lot of work into bringing this together. We did some outreach and we talked to the different countries involved more specifically. We didn't go to Iran for this particular report.

We did have a delegation that went to Korea and talked to the Korean defence personnel about their concerns with respect to North Korea and the expanding threat or menace that is happening there. That's the kind of work we do. That report has been done and adopted by the assembly, but we'll keep an eye on developments there. It may well be that we revisit some of the changes, some of the evolution that's happening, because it is evolving very rapidly, as you know, both in North Korea and in Iran. This becomes an important aspect of the ongoing oversight of the parliamentarians' role in this.

We're now moving into another area, which is the enhanced forward presence and Canada participating in the Balkans and in Lithuania in that regard, so we'll be watching that evolution and how that new initiative will be working.

Just generally, on the role of parliamentarians, we have a joint all-party committee that goes from the House of Commons and the Senate. Members of all parties in each of the chambers will go to the two major sessions; then those who are participating specifically on some subcommittees will be involved, all of which is to say thank you very much for supporting the JIC, Joint Interparliamentary Council group.

To support our NATO participation as parliamentarians is not inexpensive, but it's well worth it, as it gives us a very important role to play in balancing North America against Europe. It's always interesting. For many years—David will know—they used to talk about Europe and the United States, and we convinced them to include Canada in that discussion, and it seems to be working. We think we do have a role there.

The United States does play a very important role in this. In some international organizations you don't see the U.S. playing a major role, but it certainly does in this particular organization.

We have a great chance for parliamentary diplomacy as well and getting to know parliamentarians. You talked about knowing the upper House of our friend from the Netherlands. I'm sure I know who they are, and I know them because I have participated and I've been fortunate enough to get chosen to go on these various organizational trips to get to know parliamentarians from other countries. That makes it very helpful.

Are there any other points you wanted to talk on?

I'd like to conclude my opening remarks by reminding you that the Senate defence and security committee—on which I have served for many years—about three or four years ago came up with a report that we should revisit the missile defence situation in North America, whether within NORAD or separately. The time has come to do that. We have one report on that and the government probably needs another little nudge, maybe from a group like you, to convince it that this should be looked at. I think the U.S. would be open to discussion on that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

Because we have a three-person panel and the conversation might jump between you, just to keep everyone on time, if you see this, you have 30 seconds to finish up your idea, so I can manage the time fairly and appropriately for everyone.

Having said that, we'll go to seven-minute questions, and I'm going to turn the floor over to Mark Gerretsen.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the three of you for being here today.

It's always tough when I'm trying to make a decision as to whether to just focus my questions on one person or all three, because really I have questions and I could spend the whole time with any one of you. I apologize in advance if I'm short.

I'll start with Mr. Ferguson. The U.S. recently released a national defence strategy in which they said powers like China and Russia are a greater threat than terrorism. I'm wondering what you see that Canada can do, as a NATO member, to address these increasingly assertive countries.

[Dr. James Fergusson]

Given a lot of factors, not least of all capability issues on the part of the Canadian Forces and investments in defence, I think the most important thing Canada can do is to be a loyal ally, both in the context of NATO, meeting its NATO commitments, and in the context of our close defence and vital defence relationship and broader relationship with the United States, but also in the case of China and issues in east Asia, in which Canada is noticeable by its absence in the defence and security realm.

I think it's an important question for the government. This is not just about North Korea—there are bigger issues involved here—and the government has to come to some sort of position on where it stands on these issues, outside of typical, Canadian, nice rhetoric about how we want dialogue, and co-operation, etc., etc. That's fine when you're not saying these things that have no real impact because you're not participating out there. This becomes a resource issue for the Government of Canada, and I can understand why the government is reluctant to start moving, because it simply doesn't have the resources. Let me qualify that: it doesn't wish to invest the resources into these areas. For the government right now, east Asia is economic, and I can understand that entirely, but if Canada wants to have an impact, it needs to in fact commit itself and do much more, do something in terms of that part of the world.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Hobbs, I understand that you've written extensively on the political and military implications of new technology. You talked about the history of NATO and where it's come from. Obviously, when NATO was created, we didn't have anywhere near the kind of technology or threats that we have now. I'm curious as to whether you can comment on how you've seen NATO evolve over time. More importantly, this committee is about making recommendations to the government. Where do you see a role for Canada in helping to make sure that we are assisting NATO staying on top of the developing, new technologies?

[David Hobbs]

You've been reading my bio. I actually started my professional life, my academic life, in physics, so I love the technology stuff, basically.

The fundamental shift, of course, is that since NATO was founded, there has been the rise of the IT revolution, which has utterly transformed the way warfare is conducted. That's changed the whole paradigm for defence procurement. It's also made it much more difficult to go it alone.

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

You said the word “procurement”, so now I'm going to jump in.

[David Hobbs]

Okay.

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

This is good, because one thing we've been talking about lately is how the procurement processes can sometimes take a very, very long time. In this day and age the technologies are changing, so by the time you go through a procurement process and it's time to make the purchase, the technology's outdated. How does NATO respond to that kind of thing? How can Canada help contribute to a solution to that?

[David Hobbs]

I wish I knew the answer. It's staggering, for example, that the B-52 will have gone from the drawing board to being out of service in 80 years. It's absolutely astonishing, with some weapons systems, how long they're in service. Of course, when you have a rate of innovation in IT, where something's obsolete in two years, and yet we have this incredibly long development cycle for certain hardware, we are going to think much more in terms of learning lessons from civilian industry and being able to do much more plug-and-play and life-cycle upgrading.

I don't know the answer. It's getting much, much harder, and it's a real challenge for defence when you have to invest a huge amount of money in certain kit, but it's obsolete almost as soon as you've built it. I don't know what the answer is, but I do think we need to be paying a lot more attention on the civilian side, and doing a lot more to have a much more rapid production life cycle.

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

Senator Day, I'd like to ask about BMD. First, how does the BMD program differ in Europe in the NATO context from BMD in North America in the NORAD context?

[Joseph A. Day]

We're not part of missile defence in North America, so what the U.S. is doing we can only surmise in part. I think it's hugely important that we change that.

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

Do all NATO countries contribute to the NATO—?

[Joseph A. Day]

Yes. As a NATO member, we're participating in missile defence in Europe.

Then we say, well for some reason we haven't participated in missile defence in North America.

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

Why do you think that is?

[Joseph A. Day]

I think it's just a political reality that it happened.

Certainly from the point of view of the nations as part of NATO, we participate fully in a number of issues there that we might pretend back home we're not as actively involved in.

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

Obviously we don't get coverage from the ballistic missile defence program in Europe.

Is it feasible to assume that we could ever receive coverage from that?

[Joseph A. Day]

I think Mr. Ferguson mentioned that that we'd be chasing, from the European point of view, to try to protect North America this way. The Americans know that. They would have liked at one time to have us part of this, but they are going ahead. They have monitoring in Alaska, and it's most likely that they'll open something in the northern part of eastern United States.