Thank you.
Thank you for the invitation to testify before the committee. I have three points to raise, which, hopefully, we can get into in some detail in the question period.
The first concerns NORAD modernization and its impact on the Arctic, and other general issues about North American defence and security. The second concerns relations with Russia in the Arctic. The third relates to the impact of the commitment to defence investment in the Arctic—although we don't know, from the announcement by the Minister of National Defence in June, the specific amount of the $40 billion devoted that will actually go into the Arctic—and its implications for the indigenous and local communities.
First, concerning NORAD modernization, if you look at the documents, including the joint statement between the Secretary of Defense of the United States and the Minister of National Defence in August of last year, the parameters of NORAD modernization remain locked into a Cold War structure and mentality. Even though the threat environment has changed, by and large dictated both by geopolitical changes that have occurred roughly since 2014 and by technological changes that have changed the nature of the threat environment, it doesn't seem that either the Canadian government or National Defence, at least publicly—and again, I won't speak to the United States and their views on this—has really thought about the implications of NORAD modernization for the Arctic.
In specific terms for Arctic security, when the government is committed to funding a new surveillance system consisting of two new radar lines and additional upgrades, modernizations and perhaps some new forward operating locations, they don't seem to realize that this of course creates a direct threat to the Arctic. In this context, we rely upon the defeat mechanism or defence mechanism, basically, with our new generation of fighters—when we get them—and long-range to medium-range air-to-air missile systems.
What's important is to recognize that in the case of conflict, these will become a first target for Russia, and I'll put China sort of in the background of all this. This raises issues about the need to develop point defences. These will be ground-based defences to provide a layer of defence, and this extends further south.
That's the immediate issue that emerges from the modernization program, but of course it existed in the past, so there's nothing new there. More importantly, when you think about the new threat environment, the main threat environment, two things pop up immediately.
First, NORAD is now in the business of missile defence. By the nature of the long-range cruise missile hypersonics, as well as the ballistic missile capabilities of Russia—and, in the future, China as well—these have become missiles.... We need to have the capacity to intercept missiles in flight. This of course raises major issues for the government and the department, as well as the United States, about being able to keep NORAD in its traditional box of air defence or air control, or “aerospace control”, as they call it. It's just air defence, because we have not been in the missile defence business in the past. Hence, what capabilities will we need to be able to deal with this problem?
That's the first thing that emerges. This raises major issues that the government and the department need to start thinking about. I'm sure they're thinking about it, but of course this has implications for long-standing Canadian policy on ballistic missile defence.
The second element of this is that it's an all-domain environment. It's an all-domain defence environment, so we of course talk about surveillance being in all domains, with land, air, space and maritime being integrated together on the surveillance side of the equation, but this also needs to be integrated in terms of the defeat or defence side of the equation for an effective deterrence by denial. In that regard, this raises questions about the current structure or the mission suite of NORAD, which is largely aerospace—air defence—and whether this needs to expand the NORAD mission suite and in fact move towards the development of a true integrated North American defence command.
The second reason related to this is of course the command and control issues. That's an essential part of NORAD modernization. In so doing, you have an issue about the current command structure, which is NORAD headquarters and the regional commands, and whether that's an efficient and effective way to undertake this. These are all changes that are going to fall out, or what I like to call the elephant in the room.
The third thing raises the issue of the eastern approaches to North America. This raises questions about NORAD as a binational arrangement and the issues of Greenland, which means Denmark—of course, on the sideline of this is Iceland—and how they may essentially need to be brought into the NORAD arrangement. In so doing, this raises questions about NATO and NATO's involvement in the Arctic; traditionally, the Canadian policy has been to keep NATO out of the Arctic.
Those are the first set, on NORAD modernization.
The second is relations with Russia. We have treated, as a function of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, our relationship with Russia, as well as China, as black and white. That is, they are our enemies, as the chief of the defence staff said about a week ago in testimony to another committee—I think it was the committee on public safety.
We live in a world of great power politics, great power relations. It's important to remember that in great power politics, the United States leading the west, Russia and China, and I would add—