Evidence of meeting #37 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 russia.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
NDP
Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
One of the conversations we led to last week, as well, was that idea of, through whatever will happen in the world with Russia, not pushing it towards China in terms of our activities, certainly not isolating it permanently, and going forward in a far more diplomatic way.
Could you comment on that as well?
12:35 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Political Studies, and Director, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
I certainly can. As I was saying in my opening remarks, I don't think this Arctic 7 versus Russia is helpful. I was actually very surprised that Canada would host the first Arctic chief of defence staff meeting this summer, having already met with Arctic allies without Russia, and including the Netherlands, France, Germany, and the U.K. in the Arctic security forces round table in Alaska. We don't want to entrench this A7 and others versus Russia. What we really want to do is encourage Russia.
I think the Arctic is going to be the issue area that is how we normalize, eventually, relations with Russia after it returns all annexed territory to Ukraine. So it's quite far off, but traditionally, coming out of the Cold War, the Arctic has been very special for Russia. It accounts for 20% of their GDP. They have the largest amount of land and maritime space there, and population. There are all sorts of reasons they want the Arctic to work for them.
We have to find other avenues for the Arctic 7 to discuss Arctic issues without making it into an Arctic 7 club, and work with the permanent participants. Let's not forget that we promised them that we would consult them, and time and time again we make decisions without them. It will be the scientists and the permanent participants who will be the leads in normalizing relations and encouraging Russia to return to what has been a more co-operative space.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you.
The math doesn't work, folks, so we're down to three minutes, then three, one, one, three, three and one.
Go ahead, Mrs. Kramp-Neuman.
12:40 p.m.
Conservative
Shelby Kramp-Neuman Conservative Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We've heard today and throughout the entire study so far that we're vulnerable and that we have limited capabilities in the north. Without a strong plan for recruitment and retention, Canada will not have the troop numbers we need to achieve our current objectives. What's the plan to improve the military lifestyle, and how do we attract the best and brightest to our Canadian Armed Forces?
12:40 p.m.
Academic, As an Individual
I can answer that question.
I teach regularly at the Royal Military College of Canada distance learning program, which is an excellent program, particularly at the undergraduate level. My students tell me—they are often married couples, and they have kids—that their priority is that when one of them is posted, they both be posted to the same location. That's extremely important to them, to the extent that they could both leave the military if they were separated. That's important to them.
To the extent that career managers and the system can move people from one place to another, that makes a big difference. I think it will really be a significant issue if that can be put in force.
12:40 p.m.
Professor, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
I would add only a few things.
First, and I don't mean to be flippant, hope that the economy goes down and the labour market shrinks dramatically. That's always a correlation to increasing recruitment in the forces. As I said, I'm not trying to be flippant. There are things that National Defence, in a more focused and sophisticated recruitment and retention program, can do, but you have to remember that today, and this is the real elephant in the room on this side, the shift from a labour-intensive armed force to a technology-intensive armed force means that the forces are competing with high-tech, highly educated private companies and the public service as well. What will entice them to go into the forces, when they're going to make a lot more money and life is a lot better—let's be honest—in the private sector? That's an Achilles heel, and sometimes there's not.... It's what in public administration they call a “wicked problem”.
One thing that the forces have to start to realize...and this is not new to me. I would refer back to Doug Bland's words long ago, that the forces have the mentality that you enter when you're 18 or 19, you get trained and educated, and that's your life career. In the world we live in now, life careers are no longer attractive: In five or 10 years, I can get these skills and do this, and then I'll transition into the private sector—
12:40 p.m.
Professor, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
Shut me up.
12:40 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Yes.
I doubt that any political party is going to take on your suggestion of contracting the economy.
Mr. Robillard, you have three minutes, please.
12:40 p.m.
Liberal
Yves Robillard Liberal Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
When it comes to international co‑operation in the Arctic, what are the most important things Canada can do to advance its interests, improve Arctic security overall and work productively with its allies?
12:40 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Political Studies, and Director, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
I can answer that one.
One of the things we are lacking is a code of conduct for military and security vessels operating in the Arctic. We have one for the South China Sea and the East China Sea.
One of the things that all the Arctic states were trying to work toward was this code of conduct, keeping it outside of the Arctic Council, because we don't want to mix the really good environmental protection and sustainable development work of the Arctic Council. It was to have a code outside of that, to have that red phone, and to make sure that, as James Fergusson mentioned, we have those confidence-building measures: that we continue to inform each other of exercises and continue to call out bad behaviour—such as, for example, when Russia is buzzing vessels during Arctic exercises—and that we have no snap large exercises, because that often erodes trust—but all of that will happen after a solution to Ukraine is found.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Yves Robillard Liberal Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC
Tell us, if you would, how NORAD has evolved since it was created, particularly in terms of bilateral challenges Canada and the U.S. have had to face.
What does the future of NORAD look like, and what does Canada need to do to prepare?
12:45 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Political Studies, and Director, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
Well, I think NORAD has evolved over time, especially since 9/11.
More important, I think, is integrating the efforts of NORAD, NATO and the hundreds of bilateral agreements that Canada and the U.S. have in the other domains, in the land, sea and space domains. That's where we need to see more momentum and more movement, so that we're not dealing just with domain-specific plans.
I'd also like to see us start exercising not just in a NORAD context, not just in a NATO context and not just in a land context, but really doing those strategic exercises that involve all domains and more than just one alliance at a time, and more than one event going on at a time, because realistically that's what we're going to have to prepare for. It's going to be a climate change event and an adversary will take advantage of that and the lack of resilience on the ground. It's going to be all of these factors that we need to exercise, but that's expensive and time-consuming.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
12:45 p.m.
Bloc
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Professor Charron, in the brief you sent in the spring, you talked about reviewing NORAD's command structure. What change would you like to see if that structure underwent a review?
12:45 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Political Studies, and Director, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
Thank you very much.
I don't know that it's necessarily a change, because I don't want us to make precipitous decisions. I do think that this move towards all-domain command and control is going to mean that, first of all, our air operation centres will need to be larger to be able to physically receive the amounts of different data that we're going to have.
There was talk of a combined forces air component commander. We seem to have walked that back. The idea is that the NORAD commander can't be bogged down in the day-to-day workings of NORAD, that we leave that individual to think strategically about protecting North America, but I'd also like to see.... Between the three NORAD regions, we tend to operate only within that region. Our adversaries don't assume that we are going to stay in those boxes, so we need to integrate more within the NORAD regions themselves as well.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal John McKay
Thank you, Madame Normandin. We're going to have to leave that there.
Ms. Mathyssen, you have one minute.
12:45 p.m.
NDP
Lindsay Mathyssen NDP London—Fanshawe, ON
The Biden administration has recently changed a bit in terms of where it was going on the nuclear posture review, certainly in terms of what it's sending out in terms of bombers to Australia. How does that change Canada's positioning, considering that we are so integrated?
12:45 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Political Studies, and Director, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
I think we don't want to try to be all things to all people. We have now made North American continental defence the priority. We cannot deviate from that, because quite frankly we can't manage very much more.
I'm also really concerned that we're having a NORAD moment and that we will start to turn our attention to other events and once again leave North America vulnerable. We have this one chance to get it done. We need to make sure we do that, and that it stays in perpetuity rather than becoming the “nice to have” or the “we'll try to do it every other weekend”. The defence of Canada and North America is the number one priority.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
12:45 p.m.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Thank you, Chair.
I want to thank our panellists for being here.
My question is for Professor Fergusson and Professor Charron.
I want to challenge your assumptions that Russia is going to be a reliable partner in the Arctic, given not only how they have behaved in Ukraine but, leading up to the situation in Ukraine, how they continued opening up and expanding military bases in their Arctic. Because of Russia's behaviour, we now have an expansion of NATO, which they, of course, oppose. I hope Russia is defeated and all the territory in Ukraine is returned, including Crimea.
The question becomes how we will bridge that gap when essentially, I would think, they're going to be in quite a foul mood for a long time based upon a defeat in Ukraine, and they will blame Canada and all the rest of our NATO allies who have contributed assets and funding to enable Ukraine to be as effective as it is.
Wouldn't the Arctic become part of the neighbourhood in which they might see weakness? Shouldn't we be investing even more aggressively in our Arctic capabilities?
12:50 p.m.
Associate Professor, Department of Political Studies, and Director, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
Well, yes and no. What we're seeing from Russia so far is that they are not being more aggressive in the Arctic. When Exercise Cold Response was held by NATO in May, Russia was very careful about its behaviour around that. The fact is that, from an economic perspective, the Arctic is very important to Russia.
We have examples in history of how we have taken aggressors out of the international community and they have risen up to be more of a problem. This was Germany after World War I. We also have the example of France after the Napoleonic War. They were encouraged to again be part of this thing we called the “Concert of Europe”, and they rose to the occasion.
We always have to be vigilant. We have to watch Russia, but if we are not opening opportunities for them to become a good international community member, then we reap what we sow.
12:50 p.m.
Professor, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, Department of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual
I'll be very brief. Do I have time or not?