National Defence Committee on Feb. 8th, 2018

[David Hobbs]

They can't make it an obligation that they act upon it. I think that would be—

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

Exactly.

[David Hobbs]

—asking a little bit too much.

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

Now, I'd like to take you to the education aspect, because we do—

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm going to have to cut it off. That's five minutes. There's going to be some time, and I know you're on the list for another question, if you'd like it.

I'm going to go to Mr. Garrison for the last formal question and then I can let the committee know what we'll do with the remaining time.

Go ahead, Mr. Garrison.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to go back to Mr. Hobbs with some trepidation, because parliamentarians like to ask leading questions to get answers that they will like.

You said that arms control would not be the first tool in the box for responding to the heightened level of tensions. In your professional opinion, what would be the first tool in the box to respond to these increased levels of tension over possible nuclear confrontations?

[David Hobbs]

We started with something called the European reassurance initiative when, of course, our members, particularly in the Baltics, were genuinely frightened about what might happen next after the experience of Ukraine. Now, that's switched. It's now the European deterrence initiative. Right now, the response is to make sure that we can deter anyone from thinking that they could mount a similar type of operation against a NATO ally.

I don't say that arms control is off the table, but the first reaction is to make sure that you can deter and, if necessary, defend. That's the mode that we're in now. Regarding efforts to actually have dialogue with Russia at the NATO level, they do their best. They still have meetings at the NATO-Russia council, but it's largely monologues by people talking past each another. Nobody's saying that there's been a huge amount of progress there.

As I said, it would be great if we could achieve lower levels of armaments through arms control. However, before that, you need a degree of stability, trust, and a different environment from the one that we have now, which is more one of competition than cooperation.

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

Certainly, in Canada, I would say that we've had all-party support for those deterrence efforts, including the forward deployment, so it seems to me that NATO's already done those things.

[David Hobbs]

No, they are still doing them.

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

Okay. They are in the process of doing those things.

You mentioned that disarmament and arms control are not on the 2018 agenda of the Parliamentary Assembly.

What is most prominent on the agenda?

[David Hobbs]

Overwhelmingly, it's NATO adaptation to the new security environment. It's also addressing and responding to instability in the south. It's looking forward to the summit, including with regard to what's being done in terms of the burden-sharing debate. How much progress is being made towards 2% and what are the impediments to that? Also, what is NATO's role in the fight against terrorism? What can be done and what should be done?

Specifically, if you want the topics of reports, there is the role of special operations forces, Afghanistan, space industry, free trade instability in the south or the Balkans, security in northeast Asia, cybersecurity, the dark web, the Gulf, hybrid warfare, democracy and human rights.... It's a big list.

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

I do take it that the Parliamentary Assembly is very active. I do accept that.

In terms of the upcoming summit—

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I have to leave it there with time for the last question.

That ends the two rounds of formal questioning.

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

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

We do have time left on the clock. I have four people who indicated to me that they would like questions. It's not necessarily balanced out by party, so I'm willing to take more and I have undertaken with Mr. Garrison to leave him some time to discuss a motion, which we will do as a committee.

I'm going to start then with the first question. Please limit it to four minutes for the question and response.

Mr. Bezan, you have the first question.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First and foremost, my question is for you, Professor Fergusson. I know that we've talked a lot about BMD, so I want to switch over to aerial defence and look at the aggressive posture that Russia has assumed. They're flying Russian Bear bombers up along Canadian and U.S. airspace, flying through the English Channel, and buzzing the maritime task force ships with their fighter jets in the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, and the North Sea.

I'm wondering what we need to be doing from a Canadian perspective and a NATO perspective to make sure Canada is doing its part. We send jets for air policing in Romania, Iceland, and other places. What do we need to have to build up our aerial defence here and help our NATO allies?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

As I mentioned earlier, the key thing for Canada is the north warning system and NORAD's relationship with it, and then from there the acquisition of intercept capabilities to ensure our capacity to deter, relative to the Russian strategic doctrine of the threat to escalate in order to de-escalate. You have gaps or command-and-control seams between various command structures, or you have capability gaps. Those can be exploited politically in this case to advance the interests of Russia.

That's the key thing in my mind, and it's really the interface for Canadian vital interests in the alliance with NATO. Our current forward commitment, given our available resources, is probably as much as Canada can do. I can't see our doing any more.

The important thing for Canada, as it is for all the allies relative to the threat that the Baltic states perceive, particularly Poland and Romania as front-line states, is the need to symbolically commit—this is part of communications and deterrence—and communicate that the alliance will stand together. That, I think, we are doing fairly well.

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

Thank you.

The second part of my question is for both Mr. Hobbs and Professor Fergusson. It's about going down the path of the shared values that NATO members have. We can see the behaviour of Turkey right now, particularly in the bombing of Afrin in Syria. Do they still have that shared value? Are they a trusted member of NATO?

Also, there are other nations that have always aspired to become members of NATO. We have a different dialogue taking place in Sweden and Finland now. Is there more that we can be doing in Ukraine? What about Georgia and Moldova?

I'd like to have some comments, particularly on Turkey's membership, and then on which other future members could achieve membership within NATO.

[David Hobbs]

We had our annual meeting in Istanbul in 2016. The Turks had to approach that realistically, because it was quite clear that many of our members—which pretty much represent all political parties in the alliance—were expressing very, very, very severe reservations about what was going on in Turkey and that we could not possibly have that meeting and not discuss those issues.

I give credit to our Turkish delegation. I don't say they slipped into it, but they eventually recognized the logic that they had to make space for those forms of discussion, because it was inevitable that those things would come up. They put the minister of justice and various government ministers into each of the committees so that we could have a completely frank exchange of views, and it included one member of the Turkish Parliament who had been arrested and had just been released.

In formal terms, when a nation ceases to have a functioning parliament, the assembly is quite clear: they cease to participate in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. In our history, there have been times when we didn't have Portugal, Greece, or Turkey. We're not there yet with Turkey.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

That's your time. It goes quickly.

Almost every single person on that side of the group has indicated that they want to ask a question. There's only one way I can do it fairly: I've just taken the ones who had the least amount of time in the first round and put them at the front.

The first question will go to you, Leona.

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

Thank you very much.

I want to draw your attention, if I could, to the “NATO and Security in the Arctic” report that was done for the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. In there, they make a very compelling case that NATO should and does have a role in the Arctic. In terms of their recommendation around the changes in the threat levels and the increasing presence of Russia and China, they've made a recommendation for NATO not necessarily to be active but to start the dialogue and start looking at preparing for that space.

I wonder if you could comment on that, Mr. Fergusson, and please give me just one minute at the end so I can ask Mr. Hobbs one more question.

[Dr. James Fergusson]

Okay, I'll be very brief.

I read the report. I disagree with the recommendations. What exactly is NATO going to do except in the context of flight paths, which is something we have already dealt with? The key thing is the Arctic is a transit point. We're talking about transit of both air and sea, and increased transportation up there. Those issues are regulatory and co-operative. You need to sit down with the Russians, whether you do it through the Arctic Council or through the Law of the Sea process, or you simply do it on a bilateral, trilateral, or multilateral basis of the actors who are involved to sort out the rules of the road, if I can put it that way.

NATO has no role to play in that. Happily they can talk about it. That's fine, because NATO likes—and don't take this badly—to talk about everything, for a variety of political reasons within the delegations. The key issue for NATO is the nature of the Soviet fleet: their long-range aviation and the bastioning of their submarine-launched ballistic missile fleets, which takes place in the area north of Norway—not north of Canada. That's the key strategic issue for the alliance. It's not questions around the security of the Arctic. That is for the key Arctic players, and NATO's formal involvement will simply be seen by Moscow as provocative: “What are you doing up there?”

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

NATO parliamentarians think there's a role, because we hosted 30 of them to go up to the Canadian Arctic in September, which was pretty fantastic.

Mr. Hobbs, if I could, speaking to the working subcommittee on education of the NATO allies, and the importance of the annual session in Halifax, what is the role of parliamentarians in communicating within their countries, and what would be the benefit of coming to...oh, I don't know...Halifax, Canada for the first time in 12 years, where the NATO PA is hosting an annual session?

[David Hobbs]

We've found that NATO has been incredibly supportive of the initiative that our president launched to improve education and awareness about NATO within member countries. It's like delivering that last mile. You can put in all sorts of facilities that are available, but NATO itself can't reach down and do information policy. Information policy is national, so it can provide all sorts of resources that national people can pick up, and they are hoping that our delegation—our participants in that working group—will, if you like, take advantage of all the information resources that NATO has and apply them in the national context as they see appropriate.

They are hosting two meetings of that working group, starting a week on Monday and a week on Wednesday, and for parliamentary staffers there's another meeting on the Thursday. We are really moving ahead with this, and it really is to try to get synergy between NATO and the assembly in terms of getting the message about NATO down to our publics, our education systems, and our parliaments. That's one thing.

In terms of participating in a session, this is the one where it really is a massive opportunity to look at the topics we're dealing with, as well as to have the dialogue. This is the annual session where we will have probably 100 parliamentarians from non-member countries—predominantly but not exclusively the Middle East and north Africa—and we will try to engage them in what we do and explain what the alliance is about and how we can co-operate with them. You can clearly see it's the pinnacle, the crowning achievement of what we do, and it's where the policy recommendations get adopted.

Sorry, I keep on with, “We've got to adopt your rules. They're so much better than ours.”

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

We'll go to Mr. Bezan, then Mr. Robillard.

Mr. Bezan.