National Defence Committee on Nov. 24th, 2022

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

Again through the chair, the reality of the Canadian Armed Forces is that today it's much more complex. Misperceptions surrounding it have significant consequences, in our opinion. Our armed forces play a unique role within Canadian society. They're often the face of the government.

My question is this: How is it possible for the Canadian Armed Forces to plan for the defence of North America if we cannot determine the basic facts concerning our ability to fly missions in our north?

[VAdm J.R. Auchterlonie]

Perhaps you could clarify that. I'm not sure what the question is, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I'll stop the clock while the member repeats it.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Certainly. I'm happy to repeat it.

How is it possible for the Canadian Armed Forces to plan for the defence of North America if we cannot determine the basic facts concerning our ability to fly missions in our north?

[VAdm J.R. Auchterlonie]

Mr. Chair, I'm not entirely tracking the nature of the question.

The fact is that we have aerial sovereignty over our northern territories. I can pass this to my Canadian NORAD commander, General Huddleston. That being said, we control the air space within Canada. We conduct the operations in the north using not only our fixed bases but our forward operating locations.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Perhaps I can be more specific.

Do we know how many fighter pilots we have lost to the private sector in the last three years, or, for example, what the contract length is of new trainee pilots that we are onboarding now?

[VAdm J.R. Auchterlonie]

I will pass that to General Huddleston, who is the commander of 1 Canadian Air Division.

[MGen Iain Huddleston]

The answer is that we've lost too many fighter pilots. We are adjusting our approach to retention or to mandatory service after pilot wings. We have done that with respect to pilots generally, but it's not the only solution. It's certainly not the silver bullet.

What we need to do is focus on our retention strategies, which we've been working on in the RCAF for a number of years. They involve fixing processes and policies primarily in order to encourage our pilots to remain with us. There's also been a recent change in pay. Those are two specific areas that we're focused on, but you've identified one of my key priority issues as the force generator of the operational air force.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have the final questions, Ms. Lambropoulos, for five minutes, please.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to thank our witnesses for being here with us to answer some of our questions today.

My first question is going to be about how the Royal Canadian Navy submarine capability influences Canada's ability to protect its territorial sovereignty in the Arctic. I know we've already touched on this. I read up a little bit and saw that in July 2021, the RCN launched a replacement program for the submarines that were in place in order to modernize the submarines.

Can you give us an update on that and answer the question as to how this helps us defend the Arctic?

[VAdm J.R. Auchterlonie]

Again, given the colour of uniform I wear, I'm happy to take that question myself.

I believe that the commander of the Royal Canadian Navy as well as the assistant deputy minister of materiel have talked about the submarine replacement program. That has now been announced publicly. The fact is that looking to replace the Victoria-class submarines' capability is vital to the sovereignty and security of Canada.

I talked earlier in terms of co-operative waterspace management with the United States. We do that because we have submarines. The fact is, we have submarines and the U.S. has submarines, so we make sure that the waterspace between the two of us in our own waters and adjacent waters is co-operatively maintained in a partnership with the U.S. and NATO to make sure that our boats are deconflicted under the water. You can imagine that we don't want to have things bumping into each other at depth, which would be rather unfortunate.

In terms of sovereignty in the north, I believe that the commander of the navy answered that question. Obviously, in terms of capability, a submarine brings significant capability for deterrence and sovereignty. At the same time, it also potentially has the capability to operate in the north. I'm probably going to get into the commander of the navy's lanes, but he's a good friend of mine, so I'll probably avoid that, given that his testimony was pretty clear on this.

In terms of that capability for me as the operational commander, it's vital to the sovereignty of Canada.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you.

You already touched on this within your answer. I think you alluded to the fact that others may have spoken to it as well, but can you go a little further into detail as to how this capability helps our military-to-military relationships?

You spoke about NATO countries, the U.S. specifically, but can you elaborate a little bit further and give exactly what this does to help the relationship?

[VAdm J.R. Auchterlonie]

I may tackle this in a different way. The fact is, I think you've seen—I don't want to call it this—a submarine proliferation around the globe, but you may have seen that. Right now, hundreds of submarines are operating in Southeast Asia, in Asia and in the Indo-Pacific region. At the same time, we have submarines on our coast working with our U.S. allies and counterparts as well as our NATO allies across the ocean. That capability brings a significant deterrent and a capability to Canada to ensure our sovereignty, because the submarine itself is a lethal weapon, and it is one of position as well.

I probably won't expand on that, but the fact is that you're seeing this capability expand globally, and we are a key part of this within North American defence because we have submarines interacting with our American colleagues'.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, and I'll go for a broader question for my last question.

What is the role of the Joint Task Force North in search and rescue, and how does it help the Coast Guard work in partnership with the Canadian Armed Forces and the RCMP?

[VAdm J.R. Auchterlonie]

I'll turn this to Pascal, the commander of the Joint Task Force North.

Quite broadly, we do have three search and rescue regions in Canada. As I said, it's co-operative in nature. We coordinate on behalf of the Government of Canada for marine and air search and rescue.

Ground search and rescue is a local and provincial responsibility. That being said, we coordinate with the joint rescue coordination centres across our three regions.

Pascal is involved in search and rescue in the north, and I'll turn it to Pascal.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Please be brief.

[BGen Pascal Godbout]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Very briefly on our role, when local capacity has been exceeded, the RCMP or the local search and rescue authority—because Nunavut operates a little bit differently in that regard with their EMO—will contact us and request assistance, at which point I will activate Canadian Rangers in the area, based on their availability, to augment the search parties to locate and assist anybody who has not reported back on time and who needs to be located.

In terms of how that works with aeronautical search and rescue, the coordination from the local authorities will also happen in parallel with the JRCCs to determine whether aeronautical assets would be preferable to assist in the search efforts or whether a ground search and rescue is sufficient.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Lambropoulos. That brings to an end our questions for the first hour.

Unfortunately, I had to cut off General Huddleston a couple of times.

If there's something you wish to submit to the committee just for points of clarification, you're more than welcome to do so.

On behalf of the committee and Ms. Lambropoulos' cat, I want to thank you for your testimony here this morning.

With that, we will suspend.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I'm bringing this meeting back to order.

We are fortunate to have with us Lieutenant-General Alain Parent and Lieutenant-General Walter Semianiw, both of whom have made frequent appearances before this committee. We thank you for your past appearances and look forward to your present one.

With that, I'll turn to General Parent for an opening five-minute statement and then General Semianiw for his five-minute statement, and then we'll go to questions.

[LGen, Ret'd) Alain J. Parent (As an Individual]

Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. Thank you for the invitation and the opportunity I have been given to contribute to your work.

Let us think back to November 24, 1987.

The U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed to scrap short- and medium-range missiles. It was the first superpower treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons.

It is now November 24, 2022, nine months after the aggressive, unjustified and miscalculated Russian invasion of Ukraine.

ICBMs remain to this day and have evolved and mutated into advanced cruise missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles with conventional and/or nuclear warheads.

Threat is a calculus of capabilities and intent. While we spent decades getting away with an economy of effort in defence investments in the north, Russia has increased its capabilities for the Arctic and the intent is now nebulous and subject to miscalculations.

The baseline of just enough deterrence has gone up, and investments are required to close the delta. I think it's time to embrace integrated air and missile defence as a whole, as we should worry about defending against the explosion—the boom—and not about the propulsion system or the domain the missile is travelling through, whether it be through the air or space.

Allow me to establish some of my NORAD credentials ahead of your questions.

My first steps in NORAD were as a missile warning crew commander and as a staff officer for the NORAD agreement. I wrote my master's thesis at the United States Air Force Air War College on the renewal of the NORAD agreement in 2006. I had the honour to command the Canadian NORAD region, and I was a NORAD deputy commander, where I had the watch for three years.

I have been a practitioner in the NORAD enterprise. I can tell you that I have looked at the polar view map of our world intensely, under pressure, with focus, for many years. To me, the Canadian Arctic is an avenue of approach of geostrategic importance.

As a NORAD assessor for deciding if North America was under attack or not, the polar view and all the available information from the warning systems architecture providing inputs were collated and interpreted to determine time and space for response, which is largely provided by the United States.

Canadian geography matters if we have all the main situational awareness over all of it. It is our sovereign responsibility to provide that so that we do not offer Russia an avenue to exploit on its way to an attack on the United States.

As commander of 1 Canadian Air Division, I instituted an Arctic air campaign plan to learn and increase our readiness and resilience to operate in the Arctic effectively on our own terms, and to increase our presence over our true north.

A new utility transport aircraft for the north emerged as a requirement. As commander of CANR, I had to rely on U.S. tankers to send forward our Canadian fighters. I am grateful for the pledge of additional tanker aircraft to enable sovereign fighter operations in the north.

As deputy commander of NORAD, I launched the all-domain situational awareness research and development efforts with the DRDC and initiated the formal extension of the Canadian air defence identification zone to cover the entirety of our country. Nobody got excited when armed Russian bombers were reported as having flown within hundreds of miles of the CADIZ back then, but translated, that meant within close proximity of our coast line. With its extension, we need to sense what is happening, and if something is happening, we need to be able to decide and to act.

I'm grateful for the recent announcements for increasing air domain awareness with the over-the-horizon radars. However, I look forward to more granularity, such as the fate of our present North Warning System and its potential replacement for a layered air defence system.

I'm also grateful for the intentions on persistent surveillance from space and from remotely piloted aircraft systems. There are other gaps in terms of Canadian airborne early warning systems. In a maritime domain, under and above the sea, anti-submarine warfare particularly needs to be addressed to provide the full picture to achieve unambiguous warning and to provide time “left of bang” to the decision-makers.

That is why it is important to implement NORAD modernization and continental defence to enhance our contribution and to be a reliable partner with the U.S. in the defence of North America. I am hopeful we will do more on our own to pull our weight with the U.S. and take more seriously our Arctic NATO flank to ensure that seams and gaps among sectors, areas of responsibility and NORAD's area of operations are not exploitable.

With China and Russia, the bar for effective deterrence has been raised. In the Arctic, we must rebuild a credible deterrence posture against Russia, and we need to be credible with our interoperable military capabilities with the United States in all domains of air, land, sea, space and cyber.

The recent announcement on NORAD modernization, along with the upcoming defence policy update, must prioritize persistent all-domain situational awareness, enhanced command and control, force projection with reach and power, and presence in the Arctic.

Thank you.

I am now prepared to answer your questions.

[Lieutenant-General, Retired) Walter Semianiw (As an Individual]

Mr. Chair, thank you very much for the invitation to address the committee.

As the last commander of Canada Command specifically responsible for Canada's Arctic from a military perspective, I will focus my comments today on what the government could do to practically address threats to Canada's north and the Arctic.

I worked closely with my U.S. counterpart, the commander of USNORTHCOM, who was responsible for the north from a U.S. perspective, and he was also seized by this issue.

I also had the responsibility to work in this area with other militaries from countries that are Arctic nations.

I know that the committee has heard from other witnesses that threat is determined by two factors: capability and intent. Clearly they come together to define whether or not it's a low or a high risk, and, as we've all heard, Russia poses a high threat to the peace and stability of the Arctic and Canada's north today and in the future.

With that said, I'll now focus my comments on what I believe the government could do to improve practically its work in the north.

First, Canada needs to remain part of and join in support any and all bilateral and multilateral organizations and agencies, non-military and military, with like-minded nations that are involved in the Arctic, such as the Arctic Council, which it is part of today, and others that will come together in the future. These alliances will help to maintain peace and stability across the Arctic by providing international forums for dialogue and to resolve disputes. Moreover, if Canada needed to act in the Arctic, then it could do so in a unified manner with greater capability with other like-minded allies.

From a sovereignty perspective, we need to know what's going on in the north, as we've heard a number of times at this committee, and be able to act against that threat, if that's the decision of the government. Canada needs situational awareness in five—and you could call it six—key domain areas: air, space, on the seas, below the seas, on the ground, and number six could be cyber.

Currently the awareness of what is going on below the seas and on the land across Canada's north are the weakest areas in this respect. There are technologies today that could be put into place across our main sea passages to know what's going on beneath our waters.

With respect to improving our awareness of activity on Canadian soil in the north, we could build on two existing military capabilities, the Canadian Rangers, which was discussed, and drones.

We could expand and professionalize the Ranger program in order to fully cover our north with a more robust force. The Canadian Rangers do amazing work and just celebrated their 75th anniversary, but the support they receive, to be fair, in terms of equipment, training and logistics needs to be improved dramatically for the Rangers to be prepared to detect a modern threat and respond to it.

In addition, having unmanned medium and large drones patrolling our Arctic working closely with the Rangers would additionally increase our ability to detect land threats across the 2.6 million square kilometres of Canada's north. Drones of this nature have been used in the north by our military but have yet to become part of the regular inventory of Canada's military.

Once a threat is detected, one hopefully has the capability to respond to the threat. NORAD modernization, as mentioned, to include new radar and combat aircraft will meet the need to effectively respond to threats in our northern air space and in our northern waters to a degree.

Responding to a maritime threat can take many forms, including aircraft and armed medium and large drones, but being able to effectively respond to a maritime incursion requires the presence of an armed ship. Given the need in the north for icebreaking capability, that is a part of the Coast Guard's responsibility.

Second, the need for ship-borne weapons systems rests with the Royal Canadian Navy. How could we have an armed naval presence in our north across the entire year? Do we arm the Coast Guard? Do we build icebreaking capability with the Royal Canadian Navy, or do we purchase submarines that can go under the ice? I leave that for this committee to ponder.

Last, to respond to a land threat, our military would initially have the Canadian Rangers in place providing surveillance and being supported by drones. They could be augmented by the Canadian Army, if what we could do would provide a longer-term presence and fighting force, as we will need. The Canadian Army can effectively fight in the north. That's not in question; however, we need to get land forces on the ground quickly into the north where needed to contain an incursion to our sovereignty and support our allies, if needed.

To get land forces on the ground quickly in the north, one could simply expand the Canadian military's armed forces reserve program, which is already in the north. Expanding the reserve forces in Whitehorse, Yellowknife and Iqaluit with some new forces in Resolute Bay would be the most economical and efficient way to have land forces on the ground in the north where needed quickly.

One could even stand up a new unit as part of the Canadian Army, with a new, full northern indigenous identity.

In short, much needs to be done. We need to be prepared to address that threat. At the end of the day, what we do need is a northern security strategy.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

With that, we'll turn to our six-minute round, starting with Mr. Bezan.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank both generals for being here. It's great seeing you again. Thank you for your long service and dedication to the Canadian Armed Forces and to this country.

General Parent, I've always appreciated our exchanges over the years when you were deputy commander of NORAD and commander of NORAD for the Canadian region when you were in Winnipeg.

There are a few people around this table who don't believe in ballistic missile defence or that it works. Can you quickly explain how BMD works and why Canada should be a part of it?

[LGen (Ret'd) Alain J. Parent]

The ballistic missile defence system is a U.S. system only. It was not built to go against Russia or China. It was built to go against the terrorist threat of North Korea, mainly.

It has missile fields. It has radar. Right now, it launches and hits a bullet with a bullet. The system works, and in anger, it could also defend against an attack from Russia, obviously, because a missile is a missile. It doesn't matter what it is.

The problem is the number of missiles available to achieve an effective hit. It's about shot doctrine. You launch so many missiles against one missile and it blows up in outer space.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you. Accuracy is there, but as you said, it's for a lone wolf type of attack coming from North Korea or Iran; it's not necessarily for dealing with multiple warheads coming across the Arctic.

You were talking about the need for more awareness in the domain, especially under the ice and above the sea.

This question is for both generals. We know that last week Russia launched two Arctic icebreakers as part of their navy. They will be armed up.

General Semianiw, you talked about how we need to have more of a projection of power in the Arctic on our ships. Do you believe that our current AOPS ships that are going out there—the Harry DeWolf class—are armed up enough, or should we be arming them more?

Also, should the Canadian Navy have heavy icebreakers as part of its arsenal as well?