National Defence Committee on March 1st, 2018

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

But we, as Canadians, do not have the ability to intercept these missiles. Am I correct?

[MGen A. D. Meinzinger]

If you're referring to a ballistic missile system, we do not have a system like that.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Is there an early warning sign for the general public to say that there is an inbound missile and to seek shelter or whatever? Do we have anything of that nature?

[MGen William Seymour]

The answer to that is really that we're a part of the information network, so when a missile launch is detected through NORAD and through the Canadian connection to NORAD, that information is passed to government. It's not the Canadian Forces' responsibility to activate those civilian measures; it's actually Public Safety Canada's, but the Canadian Forces would then activate a potential response because our responsibility is to mitigate the potential attack.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Is NATO involved at all, say, in those circumstances? How is NATO involved in that? Obviously they would come to our aid after the fact, but there is nothing in the interim, during the attack?

[MGen William Seymour]

I would say that NATO is involved in the warning piece, and NATO would also be notified of a potential missile launch.

In terms of the impact of a strike within North America, our ability to handle that on our own, and then in the context of article 5 and Canada and North America being attacked, the extent to which that is invoked would guide the extent to which NATO might come to our assistance.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

If we had recommendations, do you think it's prudent that the current government and future governments really consider working with NORAD and actually having the comfort, knowing that the U.S. will intercept these missiles?

Everybody is concerned about what would happen, but we have nothing, giving the general public, “Well, we're okay, the Americans will intercept these missiles on our behalf because we're part of the system because we're investing in the defence system.”

[MGen A. D. Meinzinger]

It's not really my position to offer up my opinion on that. As I said, the policy is pretty clear, and we respect that policy, and I think it's well articulated in “Strong, Secure, Engaged“.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You have 10 seconds for a question or a response. That's your time, and I'll leave it to you.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I'd like to thank you for participating in our study.

Do I have any more time left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You're out of time, but we're going to go for another round, so you're welcome to join in.

MP Gerretsen.

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

Thank you very much for being here. General Meinzinger, it's nice to see you again.

In response to the first question you had from Monsieur Robillard, you said that you had some other thoughts on some of the other considerations that would contribute to Canada's contribution to NATO that perhaps aren't being measured because we seem to focus on this monetary aspect of 2%. Can you provide what some of those other considerations might be.

[MGen A. D. Meinzinger]

Yes. I believe what matters is people stepping up. I think you heard from General Hainse, who talked about when the call is made, Canada steps up and makes a contribution. A country that had a 2% expenditure, but never offered up capability to NATO, compared to a country that, say, has 1.8%, but is always offering up capability and doing that in a professional way, I think you can see the meaningful difference between those two examples. I think it does speak to the quality, and to Ms. Alleslev's comment on capability, our ability to bring leadership to bear.

I think General Hainse was very clear from his perspective. His view is that when Canada raises its voice around the table, people stop and they listen because we're a credible partner in the alliance, so I think our contributions are very broad. I always point to Latvia because we're very proud of the work that our members have done to really bring life to that battle group, and that matters. That's not something—

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

I would agree that we were very impressed with what we saw, not just from our interaction with fellow Canadians, but with the way they were embraced by the other countries that were involved, Latvia and the other nations that were there.

Just changing gears for a second, I recently had an opportunity to speak to a few of the classes of cadets at RMC. One of the questions that seemed to be identified as a concern that they had was around Canadians' understanding of what our military does, an understanding of what NATO does, and other organizations. I think that one of the benefits of where we are positioned geographically is that we have the luxury of being able to turn off war when we want because we just stop looking at the screen that we have in front of us, whereas many other nations, some of those in the NATO group, don't have that luxury because they're worried a lot more about it.

I'm wondering if you think that there's more that Canada should be doing to educate the Canadian people in terms of what we do in NATO, why NATO is so important for Canada, as part of an educational campaign at home.

[MGen Derek Joyce]

Perhaps I can address that.

In fact, it very much aligns with Ms. Blaney's question about educating the youth in Canada, because we need to educate Canadians. I would start small, I guess, and then get a little larger. One of the recent examples that I've had is to participate in Carleton University's Model NATO. These are political science students in the university who actually run a week-long session of NATO, and they go through what a North Atlantic council would look like. It's a really good educational experience. That's a small microcosm.

Something that's more aligned with your question, I think, is a very recent initiative on the part of NATO to actually educate, and it's called #WeAreNATO. In fact, Canada is one of the first of five countries, along with the United Kingdom, Poland, Slovakia, and Romania, to participate in this. It's really designed as one of the first large NATO communications campaigns designed to exactly do what you're talking about.

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

Our role here is to give recommendations to the government. Would you agree that one of those recommendations would be to better educate the Canadian population on what NATO is and what it contributes to Canada as a nation?

[MGen Derek Joyce]

I would encourage you to build a strong narrative—we as Canadians to build a strong narrative—for Canada on what NATO does, what we get from NATO, what NATO contributes, and how we contribute to NATO. The hashtag #WeAreNATO is one tool through which we can actually communicate with Canadians.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

And is really one of the reasons we're doing this study. There are many reasons, but this is exactly what we're trying to achieve here.

The last formal question goes to Mr. Garrison.

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

Once again, I'm going to turn my time over to Ms. Blaney because I think she had more she wanted to do and I think there was more they wanted to say.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you again.

I'm just very curious about this interaction with youth. I think you mentioned UBC and bringing young people to Latvia. I would like to learn a little bit more about that. The other thing, as a person who represents more rural and remote communities, are there ways to engage young people with some sort of activity as well in those areas?

[MGen A. D. Meinzinger]

I can follow up with you on the UBC piece separately. I don't have a lot of details in terms of the size of the cohort. I'm aware of the interest. I think it's a great idea. The questions are somewhat linked, Mr. Gerretsen's and yours. I think we all have a job to do to educate. I think our politicians do; we as senior leaders do. I do believe that we have a very hierarchical system in the military. I found in my career that the greatest effect, and the biggest ability to have a positive impact and make change, is at the tactical level, the unit level—the squadrons, the ships' companies, the battalions—where you really are proximate to your local community. It's not the case in Ottawa; we don't live in that kind of interface.

I think we rely on the leadership in those units to forge the bonds, create the relationships and, to some extent, educate and interact with the local populations. I think we get a lot from that. I think we need to continue to do that. It's not a top-down-driven campaign plan. I think it's kind of a grassroots, bottom-up engagement. I think we rely heavily on that to share the message.

[MGen William Seymour]

I can supplement that too.

Like General Joyce, I was the wing commander of 14 Wing Greenwood in Nova Scotia, which is a small area in Annapolis Valley in southwest Nova Scotia. One of my roles was to interact with the community and build relationships with the community. One of the things we did was partner with local schools so that I had folks from the base going out to schools, working with the schools, and interacting with the kids and with the youth.

I would also really like to add that every time it deploys internationally, one of the things that the Canadian Forces does very well is interact with the community. In the air task force that deployed to Romania, the lieutenant colonel who was commanding it built relationships in the local area, went out to orphanages, and did things like that. The same thing is true in Latvia. One of the key aspects of our role there is to build connections with Latvia. We're doing that across the entire country. That's a great thing about what we do when we deploy internationally.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you for that.

I think this is an important issue. I appreciate the questions about how we educate people about the usefulness and the meaningfulness of NATO. I appreciate the hashtag. It's getting people to use it that's the challenge.

This is a great tool. How are we going to use it, and how do we get everyday Canadians to use it?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm going to have to hold it there just to end the formal questions. The good news is that we'll have more time.

I see about 45 minutes on the clock. We'll do five-minute rounds. I'll divide the time evenly amongst all parties.

Just before I get to that, I want to ask a quick question now that we're done the formal ones. From the lens of the value that Canada adds to NATO, I had asked a question that I kind of already knew the answer to, but I wanted to quantify it a bit more. It was about our ability to integrate with NATO with land, air, sea, special forces, and command. I think I asked one of the last two panels that question. They thought that there are only a handful of countries that can do that within NATO. The number I was told was six.

I'd like to know if you agree that that's an important and valued thing within the organization. We're not that big, but we can basically be inserted anywhere NATO wants us. Maybe I could get your comments on what kind of value that adds to the alliance.

[MGen William Seymour]

I can start off with an example yesterday.

We had a two-day joint operations symposium here in Ottawa. One of the attendees was the three-star German commander of multinational core northeast, which is the superior organization to which the Latvian brigade reports. We have a number of Canadians working for him already. He specifically asked for more Canadians because we plug in and we play and we make things happen so effectively. That's one great example.