National Defence Committee on Feb. 15th, 2018

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

Those things should also be considered by NATO, in your opinion, when considering the contribution.

[VAdm (Ret'd) Denis Rouleau]

Absolutely, yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you, and right on time.

Mr. Bezan.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for appearing today. Also, I want to thank all three of you for your service to Canada in your role in uniform, and as diplomats and top public servants. You guys have been just amazing in the work you've done in protecting Canada and representing us on the world stage.

I'll leave aside the 2% and all the metrics that are there, although I do believe it is a metric that is an aspirational target that's been agreed to by all partners. It's something we need to aspire to and work towards, and we at least need to get our defence spending moving in the right direction.

We talk about procurement and how difficult it has been. Mr. Fadden, you were a deputy minister of defence. You know how this works and how slowly the wheels turn. How do we cut through some of these layers of bureaucracy and legalese, which make the bidding and selection processes so impossible and complicated? I look at what's happening in the U.K. and Australia, and they seem to have fixed it somewhat, but they're also facing challenges.

Could you talk about some of the ways we move forward on procurement?

[Richard Fadden]

I can try. To be honest, when I was the deputy at Defence, procurement was the one topic that regularly had me go home and hit my head against the wall.

More seriously, there are three elements to dealing with defence procurement reform. I think the biggest problem is that there's a policy conflict. Successive governments have said we have to have money on defence distributed across this country. There's a regional component. They have said that it has to be distributed for innovative purposes, for industrial development purposes. Somewhere in there, there's meeting the requirements of the military, then taking into account what our allies want. I think if there were some greater clarity in the policies that have to be applied, it would go a long way towards dealing with this issue.

I had the opportunity to sit in on cabinet discussions, for both Mr. Harper's cabinet and Mr. Trudeau's cabinet, and the same things came up again. Some people want to go out and get a turnkey purchase of a cruiser. Other people want to make sure that either Halifax or Vancouver can develop a shipbuilding program. I think part of the problem is that if we're going to have this multiplicity of policies, we have to have the capacity to say, in some instances, that we're going to forget regional development and we're just going to do it. In other cases we're going to say it's really important for the development of an industrial base, and we're going to do that. We have not had, I think, the honesty to admit to ourselves publicly that part of the problem is this conflict in policy.

The second issue, I think, is the requirements that are generated by the military. For entirely reasonable reasons, the military wants the best equipment it can get. It has to be interoperable. We used to joke in DND that if the admirals and the generals could get a gold-plated Cadillac in everything, they would. I understand why they would want that, but sometimes you have to look at whether or not giving them slightly less than they want would not be a bad thing. I think, in fact, the defence portfolio's gone some distance now towards improving on that front.

The third area is just bureaucratic public service fear and inertia over the years to deal with the requirements of whatever they're calling Public Works this week. They are afraid of the CITT. They are afraid of the Federal Court. They are so cautious they will not take the slightest chance in dealing with defence procurement. The Treasury Board is similar, and quite honestly, in Defence we've developed a similarly cautious approach to life. I think also, quite bluntly, since Afghanistan we have not had enough people working in procurement to be able to move the file. When you put all that together in a stew, you have a significant issue.

Having said that, I do recognize that you can't acquire a ship overnight, but we could significantly accelerate some—I don't mean all—of our defence procurement decisions if we simply said to ourselves—and I'm just picking an example—the French have a perfectly valid, reasonable frigate, and the navy—no offence to Denis—is going to have to accept that this door opens to the left as opposed to the right. I'm making a joke of it, but sometimes some of the change requirements that are imposed because of these requirements are not reasonable. Do a bit of this, and I think you could speed things up.

I think in order to really change defence procurement, the government is going to have to find a way to kick-start change. All of this is really deeply ingrained, both in the public service and in governments.

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

Thank you.

In the past year on this side of the table—not counting the NDP—the Conservatives have said it is time for us to join ballistic missile defence.

Mr. McRae, you talked about it. It is kind of contradictory that there is no participation by Canada in North American missile defence but we are in European missile defence. If we decide to join, what would that look like? What contributions do you think we need to make?

I will leave that with all of you to give feedback.

[Richard Fadden]

Maybe I can start, if you'll allow me. I think one thing we have to remember is that doing defence spending in a democracy is not easy. I don't need to tell you this: you have to go to explain it all to your constituents.

One issue we have in Canada is that we don't talk about this a lot. We don't talk about the threats, so when it comes to the point where we want to establish a BMD system, there's a real division within the population. I've worked with politicians long enough to know this doesn't make it easy for the government you were a part of or for the current government.

Another issue in dealing with BMD is that some people have this image in mind that you have to have a United States Air Force anti-missile battery in Coquitlam, British Columbia, and then one outside of Montreal, and another one in Halifax. Whereas potential contributions range from having a correct array of radar on our new surface ships to having some radar establishments in northern Canada to contributing to research and development to simply giving people a cheque to increasing our contribution to NATO.

Just to be up front, I think we should become involved in BMD, but I don't think we can do this unless we talk to the Canadian public and you talk amongst yourselves about the range of issues.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

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

He relishes cutting me off.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You make it easy, James.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Heckling maybe limited his ability to get his questions in. I don't know if that's part of the normal protocol.

[An hon. member]

It is. It goes both ways.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

MP Garrison

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here today. It's one of the greatest amounts of expertise we've ever seen at this table at the same time. I'm kind of daunted about how to get enough questions in, in the time available.

I'm going to start with Mr. Fadden because I have, in a different hat, in a different Parliament, asked questions of him when he was a civil servant. I look forward to hearing his expertise without any of the possible traces that may have been on him in the past. Others may guess from that that we maybe had testy exchanges in a previous Parliament.

I have always respected your expertise, and I certainly do on the question of threats. I want to ask you a bit more about the threat situation. In particular, as the members of the committee know, I've been concerned about the increasing nuclear threat, and not just through proliferation. Since the end of the Cold War, both the United States and Russia have developed the idea of battlefield or tactical nuclear weapons, which they tend to call low yield, which is not a backyard firecracker but something the size of Hiroshima.

I have concerns about both the security of those kinds of weapons in the field and also the drift of decision-making down the chain of command. I wonder whether you could comment on your views on this as an additional threat to peace and security.

[Richard Fadden]

I think it's a very reasonable thing to be concerned about. I don't worry in particular about what the major nuclear powers are going to do. I don't think France, England, and the United States are going to treat these matters easily. To take North Korea as an example, I don't think it would take a great deal for a match to be struck and something to happen there. North Korea has a number of tactical nuclear weapons, and I think that if it ever really felt threatened, it would use them. I think one of the things we need to remember is, whether they're tactical or strategic, the population at large doesn't really distinguish. It's going to scare the living daylights out of people. We need to be very careful about any thought of using tactical nuclear weapons. When the United States mentioned this as a possibility a while ago, it was really concerning.

Pakistan is a nuclear state, and it allegedly has some tactical nuclear weapons. I really worry about whether their security is as good as it could be. Pakistan goes to a considerable length to make sure that's the case, but that part of the world is very unstable. I was arguing earlier that NATO should have a diplomatic component as well as a military one. I think one really good area for Mr. McRae's successors and colleagues would be to push very hard for the elimination and greater control of tactical nuclear weapons. When one is used, it's going to be very hard to back away, because of the psychological impact, not necessarily the military impact.

I hope that's helpful.

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

Go ahead, Mr. McRae.

[Robert McRae]

I might add a little bit to that, on a couple of points. Tactical nuclear weapons have been a subject of U.S.–Russia negotiations for some time. It was to be the next stage of negotiations following the strategic agreement. The Russians have never wished to go down that road. They have about 4,000 tactical nuclear weapons deployed. NATO, at last count, had somewhere below 60 gravity bombs, which is very old technology. The main impediment is Russia on the negotiation of tactical nuclear weapons. The stocks it has are way out of proportion to whatever perceived threat it may have.

The second thing is that Russia is really effectively abrogating the INF treaty by developing a very high-speed cruise missile, faster than anything the United States has. Think of that. There are some very serious arms control issues with Russia that are unresolved and seem to be unresolvable. The Putin regime basically seems comfortable with abrogating various commitments it's made.

Finally, I would endorse fully what Dick said about Pakistan. It has the most active nuclear weapons production facility in the world. It's producing more nuclear weapons than any other country in the world. It's stockpile is increasing. It's developed suitcase bombs, where the core is fused. The traditional security protocols for these weapons don't exist. Its military doctrine governing the use of these weapons is scary. If it anticipates a threat from India, the doctrine has it putting them in the backs of trucks and distributing them around the countryside. Think of that.

I could go into more detail.

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

That's frightening enough.

[Robert McRae]

It's frightening. If I might, I'll just put a fine point on it.

It would take about a week for any of us, including the U.S., to know if one of those deployed weapons in the back of a truck went missing in a period of crisis. That's scary. Then, as Dick has said, there is North Korea. If there ever was a case for Canada to begin discussing missile defence, North Korea certainly is it.

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

Admiral Rouleau, do you have anything to add to this?

[VAdm (Ret'd) Denis Rouleau]

I support everything that was said there.

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

Okay.

Either one of you, Mr. Fadden or Ambassador McRae, do you think there is a role for NATO diplomatically in trying to address this question of tactical nuclear weapons outside of the U.S.-Russia relationship? If that's stalled, there's still a problem.

[Robert McRae]

It is an issue that was raised with Russia when there was a NATO-Russia council. Since the invasion and acquisition of Crimea, the first time since World War II that a European power has grabbed a piece of territory of another country, the NATO-Russia council doesn't exist anymore. That was a subject that factored into NATO's discussions with the Russians, and of course it was always an issue with the U.S. and Russia as well, that whole tactical nuclear weapons—

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

Is there a way that NATO, as an alliance, could play a role in the larger question of those other nuclear powers with tactical weapons? Is there a diplomatic role there?

[Robert McRae]

There's effectively no formal relationship between NATO and Pakistan. There have been ongoing discussions with Pakistan because of Afghanistan. Certainly, U.S. chiefs of defence staff have regularly met with their Pakistani counterparts, and the nuclear weapons issue was always a part of that conversation, but that aspect has not been a part of NATO's dialogue with Pakistan to date.

It's something that could be explored in the NATO council. I suspect there would not be unanimous agreement as to what NATO may do in terms of engaging with Pakistan. That's a very controversial subject right at the moment.