Evidence of meeting #6 for National Defence in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was systems.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Cheryl Gallant Conservative Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke, ON
How are Canada's, and, by extension, NORAD's, capability and readiness when detecting and destroying a hostile unmanned aircraft if it ever intrudes into North American airspace? How are our capability and readiness for that?
Professor, Centre for Military Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
The one example we have is the responsibility that we had in terms of the Chinese UAVs, the balloons or whatever ultimately they were sending through. Again, we are reliant in terms of what the government published in terms of its ability to respond. It's for obvious security reasons that academics are not going to know the true ability of the speed by which that was taken, but I do know from conversations I've had with serving members that they were fairly satisfied with how quickly they were able to respond.
The problem we face is that we don't know how badly we responded to ones that we might have missed. There have been allegations that this is not the first time the Chinese did this. Now, it's not so much the point of the balloons, but if that is in fact true, that points to our inability to have actually responded. That's very hard for us to be able make an assertation on.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Charles Sousa
The time is up.
I know that we have a few hands up there, but we're now at six minutes, which is about a minute over.
I will now pass it over to Chris Malette.
Maybe some of those who had their hands up can respond to your questions.
Liberal
Chris Malette Liberal Bay of Quinte, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
My questions are going to drill down a little more on the nuts and bolts.
This is for Dr. Shadian and perhaps some of our other panellists.
Canadian Forces Station Alert in Nunavut is the most northern permanently inhabited location in the world. As many here know, it's a unit of 8 Wing CFB Trenton, which is headquartered in my riding of Bay of Quinte.
As NORAD can send planes to this location, which is of course challenging geographically and environmentally, how can modernizing NORAD improve connectivity and efficiency of resources for this Alert station? Are we looking at a need for more stations such as Alert, or is the whole notion of Alert outdated in today's threat world?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Arctic 360, As an Individual
In my mind, we're missing the underbelly. We're missing the foundation. We're missing all of the critical infrastructure to do really anything big or more in the north.
Even if we try to put up a few more people and bases, what's the energy for that? What are the telecommunications for that? What's the water situation? We are not prepared with just the basic fundamentals in the north to actually have an economy, much less defence, right?
That's why I was saying that in a sense here, it's not because we need to make all of these new strategies. It's because we don't have time to get it right. We also need to be thinking cognizantly about the reality and what all of these things we talk about mean. What does it mean to put up another base? Okay, let's think that through.
We are also in a time of austerity. I just think that we need to think with much more coordination and be purposeful. As much as we need all of the hypersonics and all of this kind of stuff, we can't still neglect as the side piece or the leftover $15 the fundamental critical infrastructure we need, because then we are still going to lose our sovereignty. It's going to be undermined, but in various other nefarious ways.
Liberal
Chris Malette Liberal Bay of Quinte, ON
I'll ask the same question of Ms. Redfern, whose expertise in that region is most welcome.
Chief Operating Officer, CanArctic Inuit Networks Inc.
Without a doubt, we need to see more investments, and not only in Alert, with respect to, almost certainly, MMR technology. You need an energy source. You definitely want a ground station there. You ideally want it connected potentially to, in the future, fibre optic, but it's really high up, so I appreciate that satellite is much more preferable there. We see the strategic importance of Pituffik, historically known as Thule.
Liberal
Chris Malette Liberal Bay of Quinte, ON
I have one more question further to that.
With regard to our supply chain issues, you mentioned.... I was going to bring up Pituffik, formerly Thule, and YTR in Trenton to Alert. Inuvik, does that play into further developing that network in the north?
I'm trying to get a handle on how we can have.... As you said, we're familiar with the length from Trenton. I'm very aware of that. As you said, it's ungainly; it's untimely. Where do you see Inuvik in all of this?
Chief Operating Officer, CanArctic Inuit Networks Inc.
Inuvik, without a doubt, is a strategic hub. It already has fibre optic cable. It already has a road network there. What I would say is that it needs an energy solution, and the $100-million wind turbine did not address that problem. You also need redundancy. It does have a couple of ground or earth stations there. It has some of the essential existing elements, but it actually needs more.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Charles Sousa
Thank you very much.
Mr. Savard-Tremblay, you have two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Hickey, let's continue the discussion on hypersonics capabilities.
You touched on the topic. However, how much of the current situation is a direct result of the delay in universities?
Associate Professor, As an Individual
It's actually difficult to determine whether the delay stems from the universities or whether the lack of investment has prevented universities from conducting research. I don't know what causes what.
In any case, this hypersonic infrastructure is quite expensive. This major infrastructure requires highly qualified personnel. With this infrastructure, we can develop these capabilities and skills and train highly qualified personnel to help us identify and address hypersonic threats.
Bloc
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot—Acton, QC
I understand that it's a bit like the chicken and the egg. Is the lack of political interest in this area affecting universities, or are universities contributing to the issue by failing to train the next generation in this field? It's a vicious circle.
You spoke about the Defence Research and Development Canada, or DRDC, Valcartier research centre. However, I believe that there are other centres in Longueuil and Sherbrooke, for example. You can list other examples of centres. I don't mind.
Clearly, some centres are already working in this field. What more could we do?
Associate Professor, As an Individual
When we talk about hypersonics, we're also talking about the ability to bring rockets back to Earth. All aspects of developing rockets' abilities to deliver cargo into orbit are related to hypersonics. The development of these capabilities will also benefit companies such as Reaction Dynamics and NorthSpace in Toronto, and other companies. The investment isn't just for the military. It also benefits civilian companies. Tekna is another example of a company developing the ability to increase the temperature and enthalpy for hypersonic flows.
These companies could benefit directly from an investment in Canada.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Charles Sousa
Your time is up, but we can ask.
Mr. Huebert, do you want to respond?
Professor, Centre for Military Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
Yes. Very quickly, one important thing to understand here is that the open literature starts talking about the Russian hypersonics as early as 2002. You can go to Janes. You can go any of these aspects. It was fairly obvious to everybody that they were looking for a system to defeat the American anti-missile systems, such as the Patriot. We therefore knew, in terms of the community of scholars who looked at this issue, that the Russians were looking for a system to have a missile delivery that, in fact, would beat what the Americans had.
One problem we face in Canada—and it very much follows on a point made in terms of the lack of hypersonic research—is that very few Canadian universities, or even the Canada research chairs, at that point in time addressed issues of security. You can find, to my knowledge, out of all the CRCs out there, there are probably only about two or three who are hard-core security. We used to have a community of scholars with what was called a security and defence forum under DND. That was changed to the MINDS program, but the MINDS program wasn't in existence during the period when this threat developed.
Again, with the theme that's developing here, Canada basically said, “The Cold War is over. The Americans are here. Even though we see the evidence, we're not going to worry about it.” That's why we are where we are today.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Charles Sousa
Thank you, Mr. Huebert.
I'm sensitive about the time. I want to give Mr. Kibble his five minutes, and then I know there are a few people who are anxious to respond. It's over to you for five minutes.
Conservative
Jeff Kibble Conservative Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the panel for joining us and helping us all learn about these important systems. I appreciate your opening statements.
Ms. Redfern, I'll start with you, to follow on with the fibre optic—and I liked your comment “all domain awareness”—for gathering intelligence in terms of surface and subsurface. Is that on par with or better than current traditional array systems?
Chief Operating Officer, CanArctic Inuit Networks Inc.
I would say that, from what I know, we're relatively good with knowing what's happening on the surface of the water and in space, especially with respect to our satellites. Where we seriously lack all domain awareness is in the marine. We do not have good, even baseline, data, let alone real-time data.
Conservative
Jeff Kibble Conservative Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you.
You mentioned the systems can be configured for strike capability. Could you explain that, briefly?
Chief Operating Officer, CanArctic Inuit Networks Inc.
What we're seeing in Ukraine is that a lot of the small...either drones or even the ones that are for and in the marine environment are starting to be weaponized. They're being very successful and are even taking out the Russian ships from the Black Sea. They're very agile in also dealing with tanks and personnel on the ground.
Conservative
Jeff Kibble Conservative Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
You're referring to underwater fibre optic arrays.
Chief Operating Officer, CanArctic Inuit Networks Inc.
Oh, I apologize. They're integrated technologies, so you would want, actually, what Cellula Robotics is working on, which is the ability to have unmanned systems connect into the fibre optic networks for energy and to relay the data.
Conservative