National Defence Committee on March 29th, 2018

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

Last night we elected the executive of our Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association. We re-elected one of the members of our committee, Leona Alleslev; another member of our committee, Cheryl Gallant; and one my colleagues, Rachel Blaney, as members of our executive.

I'm wondering whether you've seen change over time, because many argue that until you get to about 30% of women participating in organizations, it doesn't really change the culture. Have you seen a change in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, in the number of women participating, and in particular on the defence committee?

[Madeleine Moon]

That's an interesting question. Here in the U.K. we are really struggling with the new phenomenon for women in politics, when, particularly in social media, the threats against women politicians are growing. It is now seen as perfectly acceptable to leave a social message suggesting that a woman politician will be raped or murdered. There are really quite nasty threats made against them.

What is interesting in the Parliamentary Assembly, and it's one of the reasons that it's such a pleasure to serve there, is that the discussion and conversation is at a different level. In fact, there's an urgent desire to hear from women politicians and to hear a different perspective. I think that's important because women do bring a different perspective, a different understanding, but they also bring an opportunity for the countries they represent to hear how that country is seeing their women. I think that's one of the great values. The opportunity to hear how women are projected in the society of each of the alliance members is as critical as the work we're doing to protect women in war zones.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

We have MP Gerretsen.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Moon, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about NATO, and the general understanding of NATO among the U.K. population.

I see from reading up a bit on your history that you were a mayor, and councillor before that as well, and I think you have a unique connection at that grassroots level. You get to hear what a lot of people are talking about. I'm wondering if you can provide some insight into, first of all, what the general perception is of NATO amongst the population in the U.K. Do people know what NATO is, what it effectively does, how it plays a role in the defence of the U.K.? Is that generally understood? We seem to be struggling with that problem in Canada and we don't know if it's an educational thing or a geographic thing. I'm curious to get some of your insight on that.

[Madeleine Moon]

Actually, we have just set up a working group looking at how we go back out across the alliance and explain the nature of NATO and the alliance, what it is, what it does, and what the alliance actually stands for. I'm also an ex-schoolteacher, so I am very passionate about going into schools and talking to schoolchildren about politics, and why they should engage in politics. On a regular basis, I also have a series of talks I give about NATO. It is really quite scary how many of our under-25s have no concept even of what our air force does, what our navy does, never mind what the NATO alliance does.

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

Exactly.

[Madeleine Moon]

That is extremely worrying.

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

Is there any kind of educational program under way or being talked about in the U.K. to help promote that? I'm sure you can imagine how much more our population is disconnected from understanding NATO, given that we're so far away from the actual operations that NATO is regularly engaged in. I would be surprised if 5% of the population even knew what NATO was in Canada if you were to randomly start walking down the street talking to people about this. I'm curious if you've done any programs that we can model ourselves after.

[Madeleine Moon]

No, we don't have any programs, nor do we have anything in our educational system where children, as part of their studies, examine NATO and see where it came from. That is why I wanted to start with that. Knowing where you came from is very important to see where you're going and why you're doing what you do. It is a major problem and we are addressing it within the Parliamentary Assembly.

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

Can you explain how you're addressing it?

[Madeleine Moon]

We're looking at the issues that we need to focus on, going back into our educational systems. As individual members, we go into our constituencies and our wards and talk about defence and security, and I have to tell you, there's nobody in Bridgend who doesn't know I do defence. There's nobody in Bridgend who doesn't know that they're going to hear from me on a regular basis about what threats the country is facing, what the risks are, and why we're doing what we're doing.

I recently had the army presentation team in my constituency. I have the RAF presentation team coming in soon. I am passionate about going out there and talking about defence and security. There's a huge risk that many of our voices are being drowned out by those who would like to see defence and security as something that is done, dusted, and gone away, and since Britain is so isolated and still a little island off of the coast of Europe, we're perfectly secure.

Canada can think that it's perfectly secure it's on the other side of the Atlantic. You wake up when citizens in your country are attacked by chemical weapons. We have to recognize that risks can be anything at anytime.

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

I just have one follow up question on the discussion that you were having with MP Garrison about the state of nuclear weapons and the different actors in the world.

Do you think it is realistic to assume that we can live in a world that is free of all nuclear weapons?

[Madeleine Moon]

You always need something you aspire to, and it has to be greater than yourself and be greater than mankind, so yes, I think it's something we have to aspire to and want. As for wether we achieve it, I think humankind isn't quite there yet.

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

Okay. Thank you for that.

Mr. Rohozinski, I'm going back to your opening remarks and your comments about social media, the changes in our world, and how these relate to nuclear weapons. It got me thinking about the Cuban missile crisis and how that might have been handled so much differently in the world we live in today.

I'm curious what threats you see from social media and the fact that we live in a world where information is so freely available to flow around. What kind of impact does that have on the security and use of nuclear weapons?

[Rafal Rohozinski]

I think there are two separate questions there, but I can address them. I think that part of it is answering the question you had asked Ms. Moon about whether we can live in a world absent of nuclear weapons and how that links to NATO.

I think, in particular, the U.S. declaration of the development of a new generation of nuclear weapons that are dial adjustable—in other words, are more usable, in that yields can be adjusted—sends a very poor message to the rest of the world, in the sense that these weapons can now be used in a contained manner.

Similarly, my earlier statement about the fact that weapons can be designed to maximize the electromagnetic pulse means that small powers that may aspire to create a very limited nuclear capability suddenly have an incentive to do so because it would allow them to hold much larger countries at risk. The issue is not mass destruction of society, but the mass effects that can be generated through the use of these weapons.

Moreover, if you link the two things, the ability to use sub-yield nuclear weapons to take out limited nuclear capabilities means that the whole thought and architecture of nuclear exchange has become something other than this escalation ladder that we had with MAD. How does this relate to social media? I think part of the problem is that we're now living through a “Jerry Springerization” of politics, with the highly dangerous ability to seize the moment and to be able to drive political agendas around through Twitter.

Politics by Twitter means that you don't have the mechanisms to be able to engage and deal with escalation ladders in a reasonable manner. This comes back to my opening statement. We can confront peer countries that we feel we have a difference with, over things like territorial integrity or international adventurism. However, as we are doing this, we need to have mechanisms to be able to engage in confidence-building measures in areas where we have shared security interests, like the digital economy, existential matters, etc.—these things that we need. Make sure that first, we have a game plan when we escalate and, second, always talk even when you're fighting.

Thank you.

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

Don't make eye contact with them; then they can't cut you off.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Well, I can. I'm just trying to do it gracefully.

We're going to move to five-minute questions now.

MP Alleslev, you have the floor.

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

Thank you very much.

The level of conversation today is simply outstanding, and I can't thank you enough for being here.

I'd like to move to areas of focus, particularly to Mr. Shea and Mr. Rohozinski. You gave us a distinct perspective on what not to do and some of the things that NATO is prioritizing within NATO. Of course, we're looking to give advice to government. It's a highly complex area. There are so many moving pieces. What should our top three areas of focus be in this domain? How do we make sure we're working smarter, not harder?

Mr. Rohozinski, perhaps.

[Rafal Rohozinski]

Rapidly, I think that on the NATO level, one of the things that has made NATO an exceptionally effective alliance in its past is the focus on interoperability and inter-operation.

In terms of the cyber domain, although there's been a declaration of cyber as an operational domain, I think that has been very much lagging.

In terms of defence of NATO systems, which I think Mr. Shea knows an awful lot about, there are definitely capability gaps there where I think leadership at a national level has to happen.

However, NATO is more than a military alliance; it's also a political alliance. I think, on that level, Canada's taking leadership in recognizing the fact that NATO needs a political strategy around cyber as a destabilizing environment is also really important.

Cutting off points of engagement and closing down mechanisms is not the way to go. I think Canada needs to show leadership on the fact that we can talk even when we have differences, recognizing the fact that the absence of a predictable escalation ladder in this particular area is something that creates volatility and danger for us all.

I'll let Mr. Shea answer the other two.

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

That ties in with what you were saying.

Go ahead.

[Dr. Jamie Shea]

I don't disagree at all with what Mr. Rohozinski just said.

My top three, very briefly—because I know we have to be brief—are these.

We need to invest at a national level. NATO is only as good as the sum total of the capabilities its members provide. Apart from some AWACS aircraft—and Canada now is rejoining that program, which we're very pleased about—NATO depends exactly on its ability to generate national capabilities.

I'm very pleased, of course, that Canada is increasing its defence budget significantly. I mentioned the $750 million Canadian over the next few years going into upgrading cyber-defence, for a proposed Canadian centre for cyber security and a national cybercrime coordination unit. These are good examples. Of course, we need resilience to be built at that national level.

NATO could help the defence planning process. It could help to guide nations to where their investments would probably be the most cost-effective. We can learn from each other. We can give countries realistic targets, of course, but we very much need the 2% mark of GDP to be reached over the next few years progressively, because of all the challenges we face, whether from the east, the south, or this homeland front that we've been talking about today. Those are three strategic fronts where NATO needs to deliver, and we need that 2% to be able generate the suite of capabilities we're going to need.

The second thing is NATO-EU. Although Canada is not a member of the European Union, 22 NATO countries are. When it comes particularly to this hybrid thing, the co-operation between the two institutions is key. The EU has things—the R and D money, the new European defence fund of 5.5 billion euros that's being set up to promote more research and development, and the way in which the EU works to regulate the environment. Think of the general directive on data protection that is now coming in, and the efforts to protect critical infrastructure. The EU has many of the assets, frankly, that we lack, but NATO has things, of course, particularly in the military field, that the EU lacks. Getting these two organizations not just to talk about working together and not just to organize seminars in Brussels, but also to really pool their efforts is going to be key.

Finally, exercising is important. These challenges today, as I say, present us with some difficult issues. How do you do attribution? When do you do attribution? How do you classify a hybrid attack? How do you respond? Frankly, like everything else in life, we need to rehearse, rehearse, rehearse, not just military exercises—we have lots of those—but also political exercises on crisis consultation and try to work out which measure suits which situation best. The more we train, as with anything else in life, the more we'll be able to identify and deal with the real thing if it ever happens to us.

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

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Go ahead, MP Gallant.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Rohozinski, it took parliamentarians, people like you with experience who go to think tanks, as well as academia and those in the commercial sector to convince NATO that cyber had to be another domain. Given that it took a decade to get that through, what should we be looking at as the next operational domain?