National Defence Committee on March 27th, 2018

[LGen (Ret'd) Charles Bouchard]

Thank you, sir.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Okay.

Then would you be able to compare and contrast the command structure within NATO, having been commander, and tell us how it differs from a command structure with a non-NATO-led command of a UN mission?

[LGen (Ret'd) Charles Bouchard]

Each commander will add his own touch. NATO brings a set of procedures and policies and trained individuals, with whom you've been working before, for a while, working together, whereas a UN mission may bring a non-NATO partner who you may not have worked with before. To me, I will always lean toward NATO, because we speak not the same language but a similar language, and we share procedures and processes that we've trained together to do, whether individually in our own home nation or as a group as an active member of the NATO standing force. Therefore, I will always lean toward that.

That does not mean the UN is not a good thing. I'm saying that NATO members have probably worked together before, whereas a UN mission would bring new partners that may not necessarily have worked with us before, and will require the commander and his team to adapt. Again, as I stated in my comments, it's for us to adapt to the situation.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Scheid, there has been quite a bit of controversy in the news lately with respect to the sharing of personal information on social media. You mentioned how important it is to use all types of available intelligence. They talk about the political weaponization of social media, but to what extent would we be using that militarily?

[Kevin J. Scheid]

That's not something my agency actually gets involved in. If there's open-source material, and open-source collection of information that comes through a variety of media outlets, that's usually considered by the....

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you.

How will the Internet of things impact our security from a NATO standpoint, or from a security standpoint altogether?

[Kevin J. Scheid]

The Internet of things is providing capabilities that are far beyond what NATO is struggling with right now. We're working with our basic infrastructure. You've heard about cost reductions and so forth. We're building and modernizing our infrastructure for communications. We're not taking the steps, as the commercial sector is, with the Internet of things, but in all instances, NATO information is secure. Whether it's at rest or moving, we provide the cybersecurity and we provide the encryption to ensure that it's protected.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you.

General Bouchard, could you tell us a bit about the actors on the ground in Libya when you were commander?

[LGen (Ret'd) Charles Bouchard]

In terms of the actors on the ground, there were NATO forces on the ground.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

I know.

[LGen (Ret'd) Charles Bouchard]

Therefore, the actors were Gadhafi, the regime forces, and/or the rebel forces. Under directions from the North Atlantic Council, I had no access to discussions with them.

If I may add a point here, Madam Gallant, how do we reach them through social media? We dropped nine million leaflets on a country that had six million people. I would like to have been able to reach every one of their cellphones and reach them directly.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

I'm more interested in how you dealt with the Tuareg on the ground. Could you tell me what you learned about them by the participation on the ground?

[LGen (Ret'd) Charles Bouchard]

Absolutely. The Tuareg in the Berber region on the west side of the country had, and still have, a close relationship with the Emir of Qatar. Part of the alliance that we had also included Qatar. When dealing with that, I could reach out to Qatar and get some information, and some discussions could take place through the advice of my Qatari adviser for the mission.

Again, you find connectivity where you can, and in this case with the Tuareg in the Berber area it was through Qatar and Jordanian intelligence services.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Is that my time, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You have a minute left.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Okay.

Let's go back to the Internet of things. The NATO Parliamentary Association has been seized with this, and for over a decade we tried to overcome that inertia in NATO to even be homing in on cybersecurity. It seems we're having the same sort of push with the Internet of things. We're always caught behind.

What, if anything, can you recommend to us as parliamentarians to push NATO forth to be taking more of a leading-edge approach on this very important security threat?

[LGen (Ret'd) Charles Bouchard]

With your permission, Madam Gallant, I will pass this to General Henault for comments.

[Gen (Ret'd) Raymond Henault]

I was just researching something here.

Could you repeat the basic part of the question?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

That's going to exhaust the time, unfortunately.

I will go to MP Garrison.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to start by thanking both generals for their service to Canada, and all three of you for your service to NATO.

I want to focus on one of the points that General Henault raised. It was about NATO's recognition of the necessity to put equal emphasis on projecting stability, defence, and deterrence. Certainly, one of the interesting things in Canada right now is that we've had all-party support for projecting stability.

My concerns that I've been asking about here in committee are on the defence and deterrence part of this, which have received less attention. In particular, the U.S. nuclear posture review, which was on February 2, talked a lot about low-yield nuclear weapons or tactical nuclear weapons—which, I always want to point out to people, are slightly larger than weapons dropped on Hiroshima—and basically seemed to abandon the no-first-use doctrine pretty explicitly in saying that nuclear weapons might be used to respond to conventional disadvantages or attacks.

What is NATO's role here in trying to either adapt to or combat this lowering of the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, and would Canada have a particular role in that?

[Gen (Ret'd) Raymond Henault]

Canada will have a role to play in terms of North Atlantic Council decision-making, because it is consensus-based decision-making. For that very reason, we'll at least be involved in the discussions of deterrence and the postures. The deterrence, of course, is not just conventional. It is also nuclear. Of course, now we're even into cyber-deterrence as well, as Mr. Scheid has already mentioned quite extensively.

To me, the Russian threat would not change NATO's position. NATO would not adopt a different deterrence posture, in my view. The NATO nuclear deterrent, by the way, has reduced significantly since the end of the Cold War. However, we have seen—it's something in open-source information in the recent past—where the Russians have talked about the development of missiles like the Iskander missile, for example, which is a nuclear-tipped short-range kind of missile. That sort of thing is obviously of concern to NATO and all of its members.

Will it change anything? I don't think so. I certainly don't have any insights as to whether or not NATO is discussing that in any form, other than the normal summit formats, and the normal North Atlantic Council regimes, whether they're at ministerial or head of state levels. To me, the thing that's maintained NATO's credibility over time has been its consistency, especially with its deterrent posture, and recognizing that change has required some changes in that posture overall but hasn't changed its overall intent. So I don't see anything massively changing in the short term.

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

Is there now a gap between NATO's deterrence policy and the United States deterrence policy with the issuing of this new posture review in the United States?

[Gen (Ret'd) Raymond Henault]

I think the U.S. is still in consonance with the INF treaty. To me, NATO and the U.S. are pretty much in lockstep, I would offer. The U.S., obviously, has the largest nuclear arsenal, if you want to talk about a deterrent arsenal, along with the U.K. and France.

So I don't think so. That would be my assessment.

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

General Bouchard, do you have any comments?

[LGen (Ret'd) Charles Bouchard]

I wouldn't have anything more than what the general has said.