National Defence Committee on March 7th, 2023

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay.

There have been billions of dollars in lapsed funding for defence. We now know about the urgent need for NORAD modernization. Have any funds lapsed that were intended for NORAD modernization?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

No. NORAD modernization was just announced about eight months ago, and it is a 20-year project that will see about $38 billion spent over those 20 years. We will continue to make plans relating to the upgrades to continental defence.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Has any procurement already begun, and has anything actually been taken forward and actioned in terms of NORAD modernization so far?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

There are a number of items on the agenda in the short term, one of which is over-the-horizon radar. We are working very closely with the United States through NORAD and bilaterally to ensure that over-the-horizon radar, which is so important to move our surveillance further and further north, is well in hand.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

In earlier testimony we heard about a delay. Actually, perhaps you can walk us through the timing for when the balloon was shot down over Yukon. Can you tell us when it first entered North American airspace and then Canadian airspace?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

The suspect balloon was shot down at 3:42 p.m. on February 11. We had been tracking it for hours before it was shot down. Of course a decision needed to be made, and we needed to make sure we could get infrared sighting or a radar lock on the object in order to shoot it down.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

I'm sorry, but I'm speaking about the one that was shot down over Yukon.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

That is the one that I was referring to in my response. It was on February 11, at 3:42 p.m.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay. In earlier testimony we were told that it was a question of daylight and being able to identify.... It was at 3 p.m.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

It was a question of daylight there. It's in Yukon, and the daylight hours are much different from what they are here.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

The point, then, is to what extent darkness represents a gap in domain awareness.

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

I'm going to ask my chief of the defence staff to—

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

We have him for the next hour, so if not—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You're out of time. It is a good question.

The final question goes to Mr. Fisher. Go ahead for four minutes, please.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank you and your team, Minister, for being here.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining the minister here today.

Minister, I want to thank you for the level of transparency you've shown in this. You and your team of officials have offered numerous briefings on this topic, over and over again. Canadians have had every opportunity to hear everything that we needed to know as we learned each individual snippet.

At this committee we hear an awful lot that states like China and Russia are destabilizing the rules-based international order. With incidents like the one involving this surveillance balloon, we're seeing China act more aggressively and in a more open and adversarial manner towards western nations. Can you tell us a little about what this means for Canada and how we are adapting to meet the challenge that China poses? Also, what do we need to do going forward?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

With respect to the surveillance balloon, the United States took definitive action to bring down China's high-altitude surveillance balloon, one that violated Canadian and U.S. airspace and international law.

You're correct that it is extremely concerning, especially as we see China being more and more aggressive. This is a space that we are watching very closely. It underpins our view in the Indo-Pacific strategy, that we need to have eyes wide open on China and that we must challenge China where we need to.

Emboldened authoritarian regimes like China and Russia are displaying unacceptable aggression. What we need to do is to be cognizant of a more assertive authoritarian regime in each of these countries.

In particular, your question dealt with China. China is an increasingly disruptive global power. It increasingly disregards international rules and norms. As China disregards UN rulings in the South China Sea and militarizes that region, for example, it is also creating challenges to navigation and over-flight rights, and it has engaged in coercive diplomacy.

Canada will and must unapologetically defend its national interests, as we have set out to do in our Indo-Pacific strategy. As you may know, that Indo-Pacific strategy will be making several investments in defence over the next five years, which I can go into if you like.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I have a little over a minute. Thank you, Chair.

This incident has really publicly shone a light on NORAD's capability. I think Ms. O'Connell maybe touched on this a little, but can you walk us through how Canada and the U.S. work together through NORAD, and how our massive investments are going to improve our capabilities as a military?

[Anita Anand, Liberal, Oakville, ON]

Approximately 1,000 Canadian Armed Forces members support NORAD in fulfilling its missions of aerospace warning, aerospace control and maritime warning for the defence of North America.

As a country, Canada also contributes fighter aircraft, command communications and control nodes, bases and forward-operating locations across the country. What we are doing in NORAD modernization is we are upgrading our contributions to NORAD. We're investing in new technological solutions, such as over-the-horizon radar, which will greatly enhance early warning and tracking of potential threats to North America. These investments are going to help protect Canadians from new and emerging aerospace threats in an era in which technological development is continuing to occur and in an era where command and control are absolutely essential.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Fisher.

With that, I am going to suspend, but before I do I want to thank the minister for her appearance here today.

We appreciate your making yourself available, particularly on this day, which is going to include an interesting evening with the President of the European Union.

With that, we'll suspend to allow the minister to leave, and we'll reconvene in a moment.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Okay, colleagues. Let's reconvene.

I'm assuming, General Eyre, that you have no opening statement, but correct me if I'm wrong.

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

No, Mr. Chair. I have no opening statement. I'm happy to be back here.

I will say that this is General Molstad's first committee appearance in his career. General Molstad is the deputy commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command, and during the time of these incidents he was the acting commander of CJOC. He is also an F-18 pilot with more than 2,200 hours of flight time, so for any technical questions I will be leaning on him.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Okay. Thank you.

Welcome to the committee, General Molstad. We hope it's not too painful for you.

We're going to see how painful it might be by opening the floor to Mr. Bezan for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

General Molstad, welcome to committee. We'll probably get to see you many times going forward, and I'm sure that if you follow the lead of General Eyre, you'll be doing just fine and dandy. He has always been very forthright with us, and I always appreciate his candour.

It's good to see Deputy Minister Matthews and Mr. Quinn here again. They're regular features. We saw each other just yesterday at PROC. It's always good to have everyone here.

I'm still trying to connect the dots. When we look at the incident in Yukon and you talk about what the U.S. Department of Defense says versus what we heard here in committee from Major-General Prévost, we find out now that the shoot-down actually happened in the afternoon, at 3:30. I think everybody made the assumption the balloon had transited Alaska through the night, yet we had CF-18 fighter jets and CP-140 Aurora doing surveillance on the balloon and trying to make a determination on what the object was and what type of risk it posed.

We had CF-18s in the area. I'm just wondering if those were being refuelled in air, or whether they had done their flybys and then were put at our forward-operating location in Whitehorse, or whether they were up at Inuvik or had returned to Cold Lake. What's the reasoning the CF-18s didn't shoot down the aircraft after observing it in Canadian airspace? Can you tell me how many hours the balloon was in Canadian airspace before we made the decision that it had to be shot down?

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Mr. Chair, there's a lot there, so it may take a few minutes to explain the details.

Let me say up front that the shoot-down occurred in exactly the way we practise, exactly the way we train. We train all the time in cross-border operations using other nations' assets—Canadian aircraft in U.S. airspace and U.S. aircraft in Canadian airspace—so this worked. The communication worked. My discussions with the commander of NORAD, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the briefings up to the Prime Minister were almost textbook.

That being said, there are some lessons that we are garnering from this, but going to the exact specifics of your question, I was informed the night before, February 3, that there was an object that had been picked up transiting Alaskan airspace. It was night. They had a radar lock. It was slow. There was no indication that it was a kinetic threat, but they wanted to confirm in daylight what it actually was. It just so happened that as it transited Alaskan airspace, it entered Canadian airspace right at daybreak. Two American F-22s were on station to be able to characterize that object as it entered Canadian airspace.

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

You're talking about the one that came into Yukon. Is that right?