Evidence of meeting #114 for National Defence in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was industry.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Bloc
Professor, Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Your questions are excellent. The submarines do matter to the thinking of both the Chinese and the Russians. For the Chinese, if we actually had been thinking, when we should have, of some form of submarine capability for the Arctic.... The newly announced third icebreaker the Chinese now have, which has a deep-diving submersible that puts our cables at risk, along with the independent SOSUS the Chinese have developed, all point to the fact they see the north as undefended.
To get to a really critical point at the heart of your first question, which is that we talk about political will, look at our enemies over the long term. In 1989 China had a defence budget of $19 billion, which was $3 billion less than Canada's. Following Tiananmen Square, it had the political will to become a military superpower, and it now has the largest navy. Look at the GDP of Russia from the period of 1989 to 2024. It is roughly equivalent to the GDP of Canada. There are different ways of counting it, but it's within that ballpark figure. Russia is now the number one military threat to Canada. It made the political decision to become an aggressor state, to oppose NATO expansion and now to threaten us.
Now, I'm not saying that Canada would ever be in a position to match them dollar for dollar for their defensive capability, but we can see clearly that when we have an aggressor state such as Russia making the political decisions it is making and the Canadian state making political decisions not to do anything, I think that really illustrates Justin's point that this is an issue of political will, not capability.
Liberal
Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
Thank you to the witnesses for appearing today.
Professor Massie, I want to talk to you about the DPU, in terms of the fact that it talks a lot about the relationships we have in the defence industry. There were a lot of conversations—of course, recently—about our domestic arms industry and ensuring that it aligns with Canadian values. We saw a lot of questions, especially around the NDP's motion to end arms sales to Israel, yet there's a continuation of the exportation of Canadian weapons. Can you talk about how the DPU could or should have been used to better align our Canadian values with our own arms sales strategy and also international humanitarian law?
Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
I think Canadians value peace. Canada is a peaceful nation that wants to live in peace. Unfortunately, to achieve that peace, we still need armed forces because our enemies have them.
I believe that Ukrainians would have liked Canadians to help them before the full-scale invasion of their territory rather than receive non-lethal equipment from Canada before the same invasion. That is why we need to better align our humanitarian values. We have to understand one thing: We live in a world where states armed with nuclear weapons want to invade their neighbours. Peace will not be achieved with pretty speeches. Regrettably, we have to have a credible defence policy and support our allies, otherwise they will be at the mercy of those states.
We see what is currently happening in the United States. There is a potential future American president who is able to state publicly that he will let his enemies invade American partners and their allies if they do not live up to American expectations.
We live in an extremely unstable world. To guard against that and achieve peace, we have to arm ourselves and arm our allies. There's no way around it.
NDP
Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
That inconsistency can be seen as a weakness as well. Is that what you're saying?
Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
Absolutely.
NDP
Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
To go to procurement, we did a big study here at defence, and the discussion about procurement seems consistent and continuous. One thing we heard about quite a lot within that study—and we made it a recommendation—was the depoliticization of the military procurement system and trying to find the consensus around those commitments. I think that's what we're talking about a lot, in terms of committing to longer-term plans, thinking this through and being consistent.
Can you talk about that in terms of what we need to do, in a time when everything is politicized, and how we can work to depoliticize that longer-term planning?
Professor, Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
We've seen one of the clearest examples of doing the exact opposite of what you've just suggested, and that was the politicization of the Canadian shipbuilding strategy.
The Canadian shipbuilding strategy was based on a long-standing problem that Canada has always faced, which is that we have politicized how we build our naval and coast guard vessels. The shipbuilding strategy was an effort to ask how we could do that in a long-term, sustainable fashion. Their public conclusions, which were applauded by both parties, were that, in effect, if we want to keep it going, we have to train two shipyards. We have to pick two. That's all that we can sustain economically, and we have to keep them going.
Of course, we know that for what many have argued are very political reasons, a third shipyard was added into the mix and, of course, we're right back to where we started. We're building a whole bunch of ships now. For example, Davie is doing a great job building many of the coast guard vessels that are absolutely necessary.
The short-term and political payoffs that come from jamming everything at the front mean that, again, we're not going to have that shipbuilding capability in the long term. We haven't given Vancouver enough time to learn how to do it and how to proceed with all the mistakes that come with that.
Again, the question is that there is an example where we said we should have the shipbuilding strategy so we can address that major problem Canada faces, and we immediately rip it up. No one has said, “Hey, politicize the shipbuilding strategy.” There hasn't been any discussion on that. You may agree or disagree, but that is what happened with that.
The question I ask you, as a parliamentarian, is this: Why did that occur?
Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
I would add that we need strategic planning, as you say. It's necessary, and it has to be done at the right time.
Currently, if Canada had planned things properly, the delivery of the submarines would not be scheduled for 2040, but 2030. In addition, in 2024, Canada would not end up with a policy that provides no funding for drone procurement, when thousands of them are being used in the high-intensity war in Ukraine. What we are hearing is that by 2044, Canada will consider the possibility of acquiring surveillance and attack drones.
In my opinion, that makes no sense. Strategic planning is required, but decisions must also be made immediately if we want to acquire the necessary capabilities in the right area to fight well-defined threats.
Professor, Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Just to pick up on something that Justin said at the beginning, remember he made the point that we weren't providing to Ukraine in the initial phases. Remember, the Ukrainian war did not start in 2022; it started in 2014. The actual Canadian policy was that we were not going to provide lethal armaments to Ukraine. Again, if we look at Russian behaviour from 2008 onward as an expansionary action against NATO efforts, how is the policy of not sending lethal capabilities in line with the protection of Canadians? I would say that is the most important value that all of us have.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
We're going to have to leave it there. Thank you.
We're now on to the five-minute round, starting with Mrs. Gallant.
You have five minutes, please.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Dr. Huebert, does the DPU have sufficient funds set aside to accomplish the systems and redundancy you described?
Professor, Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
That's easy: No.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
There's no political will to be a reliable defence partner, because there's no public perception of a probability of being hit on our territory. How do we mobilize the entire Canadian population so there is the political will to have our government do something about defence?
Professor, Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
That's an easy question, actually. Why? It's because I'm old enough to have been studying environmental security threats and remember the time when the whole idea of climate change and the existential threat that it posed to Canadians was even considered. It wasn't in the literature and it wasn't in the political discourse. There is an appreciation of what climate change, from the period of about 1990 onward, means as a threat to Canada. In that regard, we have to understand how successive governments have been able to understand that developing threat, present it to Canadians and have Canadians respond.
We need exactly the same type of thinking about the geopolitical threat. There is a mythology that either you are trying to solve the existential threat of climate change or you are trying to solve the existential threat of geopolitical nuclear war. What we really need to do is tell Canadians it's just as serious as the threat to the environment is. The threat to our security on the basis of a failing American democracy, if we see what we are expecting to transpire with one possibility and with the rising weapon systems and threats that China and Russia offer to us, is just as serious a threat. It's not one replacing the other.
We've solved one. We've created the political thinking that we needed to respond to climate change. We need exactly the same type of political will, at exactly the same time, to deal now with the geopolitical threat.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Dr. Huebert, has there been any movement or initiative that you've seen from the government so far to have Canadian industry step up production of drones for combat use?
Professor, Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
I'm afraid that this is beyond my expertise. I haven't been following that. You need to be following the companies closely.
I can't really answer that. I'm sorry.
Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal, As an Individual
To my knowledge, there has been no order other than the 11 drones that were recently acquired. The policy update only mentions the potential procurement of attack and surveillance drones.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
This is for Dr. Huebert again.
The government is claiming cabinet confidence in refusing to provide a plan to meet the NATO commitments and become a reliable partner.
Are you confident of their estimate, which was made up to placate our allies' frustration over our lack of contribution?
Professor, Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
No. If you look at any of the open sources that have examined what we did following the promises of “Strong, Secure, Engaged” and then subsequently look at the promises that were made in June 2022, the open source literature tells us that we basically haven't met any of those promises.
The real problem at the heart of your excellent question, though, is that we have created a politicized element of confidentiality. We say we can't talk about this in the open because we don't want to let our enemies know. We know our enemies have efficient ways, and they probably know already. Really what it does is it prevents any of the public discourse and discussions that we are much more willing to have when it comes to the problem of climate change.
That's really at the heart of what you're talking about. It's that we are not sharing the information that is necessary for people such as me or Justin to actually make any engagements of understanding just how bad or how good we've been.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON
Dr. Huebert, you said that this government, for whatever reason, has decided that traditional foreign policy does not matter and that this government's only interested in what it does for its electoral benefit.
Might it be worth a question on whether or not the DPU is worth anything without having a corresponding foreign policy?
Professor, Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Absolutely. The fact that we had both the Minister of National Defence and the Minister of Foreign Affairs actually say something in DPU really is, I think, the way the government itself is acknowledging that it never got around to having a foreign policy.
How do you have a security policy when we do not know as a country what our foreign policy officially is?
There's a problem, again, in terms of informing Canada where we are supposed to be going. That has been the traditional purpose of a foreign policy. Of course, as we all know, we don't have one.
