National Defence Committee on Feb. 13th, 2018

[Ainars Latkovskis]

Hartley. Before that game, the opening ceremony was...our soldiers and your soldiers. The biggest arena in Latvia was full of people. They were rejoicing. They were all happy. There were Canadian and Latvian flags. It was the most-watched game last year.

They are not succeeding; that's the thing. I have to tell you they are not succeeding because, as I said, we know them very well. It doesn't necessarily mean that maybe they'll succeed somewhere. But they try, like with Lithuania. They would probably have tried in Latvia, but then the Germans were first to be stationed there, sooner than the Canadians. They tried there. They looked... “Oh, it doesn't work. Okay, no waste of time.” They have stuff enough to do around the world. They're busy.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

The last question is to MP Bezan.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have two questions. I'll ask the first one.

Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania have all benefited from their membership in NATO over the last 15 years. There are other countries that have aspirations to join NATO: Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova in particular. How does Latvia view that potential membership?

[Ainars Latkovskis]

Yes, we are supporting them, especially Georgia. I think they have been ready for some time. I know there are some problems with some NATO member countries that always postpone these dates and put forward new targets to be achieved by Georgia. They do everything possible. But they had elections, and the first elections were very harsh against the opposition, but not as harsh as what usually happens in that part of the world. So they had the second elections and they were, I would say, democratic. They deserve it, and they are ready. In that part of the region, we have to have an ally, a strong ally. I'm not very good with my English. We need a friend there—not only us, Latvia, but I think NATO.

Moldova is a bit more of a difficult situation, but hopefully one day. Yes, why not? And the same with Ukraine. I would wish them to do well and become a modern western country.

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

I'd say with the defence reforms that are taking place there, that in time, and hopefully sooner than later, they'll meet all the targets laid out by NATO for membership. I know Mr. Yurdiga and I are both of Ukrainian heritage, and so we are quite passionate about Ukraine.

[Ainars Latkovskis]

You have 200 people there for training missions.

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

Yes, we have over 200 people in training and other operations.

[Ainars Latkovskis]

You're doing a really good job. However, instead of just feeding them with promises and then saying they have to achieve this and that, of course they have to do that, but at the same time you have to give them, besides training, also something to fight with, some equipment. They have to have—

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

As Conservatives, we support providing lethal military equipment to Ukraine. It's actually party policy here.

[Ainars Latkovskis]

That's my personal view. I'm not speaking on the part of the Latvian government.

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

I'll just move on to the next question before we run out of time here.

Everything that Canada has been doing and what we've been talking about largely has been around cybersecurity, as well as ground-based army operations through eFP Latvia.

What about the other threats coming from Russia? You are a Baltic nation. What's taking place in and under the sea, and what types of aerial threats is Latvia dealing with right now?

[Ainars Latkovskis]

What we have in the Baltics is called an air policing mission. It has its limits. In name, it's there. We have to show Russia that we know what they are doing. It's not the time of conflict and it's not as though our response times have to be like during the war, but every time they switch off a responder or fly close to our borders, or sometimes actually break international law and take some shortcut specifically for special purposes to see if we can check them, to see if we are there.

I think the next steps are sea and air. We would be, of course, interested in changing it from an air policing mission to a normal mission. It depends, of course, on the decision of all the NATO countries, but Canada has done its part in being there for air policing missions, and many other countries as well. Every half year they have a rotation, so for many countries, some have been there more than twice or three times.

I brought my committee there also to see how they do these things. At that time, the Italians were there. It was impressive. They had new Eurofighters. I was very impressed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I want to thank you all for coming this morning. It was mentioned earlier by MP Garrison that Canada's participation not only has, obviously, the Government of Canada's support, as they're the ones who tasked them to go there, but it also has all-party support in the House of Commons, which is very important. It's important to us and I know it's important to you.

You also talked at the very beginning of this hearing about mutually beneficial relationships. I think you used the term “give and take”, but we're proud to stand with you in Latvia with NATO.

I want to highlight the fact and thank you for supporting Canadian aerospace. I know you're one of the biggest customers for C Series and you're the launch customer for the CS300 version. That matters to us. It shows that there's a lot more to our relationship than just defence and security, which is very important, but this relationship between Canada and Latvia can grow into a bigger relationship, with trade and other things that are very important to both nations moving forward.

It's very important to us.

[Ainars Latkovskis]

Yes, and if you remember, Latvia was the first nation to ratify in our parliament the free trade agreement with the European Union. We're the first. We think that's the way to do it. It's not the other way, which we hear very often from the part of North America that is south of Canada. That is the way that Latvia and Canada do it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for coming. I'm going to suspend for a few minutes so we can maybe get a photo. We didn't get one last night.

[Ainars Latkovskis]

Yes, that would be nice.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

We'll say our goodbyes, and then I'll resume with an in camera session on committee business.

[Proceedings continue in camera]