Yes.
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.
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
Jeff Kibble Conservative Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you.
Who presently monitors these systems that are in the Arctic that you described?
Chief Operating Officer, CanArctic Inuit Networks Inc.
A lot of the systems actually don't exist, except for satellite, ground stations and whoever's personnel is on the ground, which include our Arctic rangers.
Conservative
Jeff Kibble Conservative Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
I understood that there was already fibre optic cable under the ocean right now.
Conservative
Jeff Kibble Conservative Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Okay, so nothing has been deployed since 2022 in that area.
I'm going to switch to Dr. Huebert.
You said that the North Warning System is 30 years old. When is it going to be obsolete, or are we effectively already there?
Professor, Centre for Military Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
There's no question we're already there in terms of what we are seeing within the capability.
There's another point, and this is critical for you as elected leaders too. We've been talking about the technology and the infrastructure, but recognize that, when we talk about all domain awareness, we're talking about getting the information to decision-makers. The Prime Minister now has to make decisions in a speed frame that hasn't existed before. If we are going to any form of interception of, let's say, the submarines carrying the hypersonics or the bombers carrying in any of these weapons systems, the Prime Minister has to be able to respond within about a five- to 10-minute bracket.
There's a question I have to ask you, as decision-makers, because we don't have good studies on this. Have we adapted our political system that you exist within such that the Prime Minister is aware of the decisions that he or she will have to make, and do they have the capability to respond? You can have the best of all domain awareness in terms of whatever NORAD modernization looks like, but can the Prime Minister act upon it, and will there be the capability for his substitutes in that context?
Conservative
Jeff Kibble Conservative Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you.
I just want to confirm that these hypersonic weapons that we can't defend against are nuclear capable.
Professor, Centre for Military Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
All of them are nuclear capable. This is what the Russians were doing.
Conservative
Jeff Kibble Conservative Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
We're seeing drones being used a lot. Would this new upgraded NORAD system we're looking at be capable of defending against the very different threat that modern drones present?
Professor, Centre for Military Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
The big thing for drones is that there has to be a carrier that gets you within that location. What we're seeing in Ukraine are, of course, closer locations. Now there are some drones that are capable of extreme distances, but the reality is that the type of swarming we see occurring in Ukraine is not what we're really talking about.
Your question raises a critical point, which is that even if we get this infrastructure in place, we also have to add the thing that we're not thinking about, which is defending that infrastructure. As Madeleine knows—and she is one of the best people speaking on this—once we get the fibre optics in, we do have to defend that against the Chinese capability. Some of those icebreakers that came north already have it. You have to be able to defend it, so there is an added dimension for what we have to do. We haven't got to that stage yet in terms of NORAD modernization.
Conservative
Jeff Kibble Conservative Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you.
Quickly, if I may, just looking at the timelines between an F-35 acquisition and F-35 infrastructure construction, we've seen that it takes a lot of infrastructure to support that. I'm wondering about the gap between those two if we decided to go ahead right now today. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Senior Fellow, Macdonald-Laurier Institute, As an Individual
I can answer that very quickly, Chair.
The current plan basically will have a temporary facility and structure that's built, I think, around 2030 or so, with the final infrastructure being built presumably by 2032. The dates are around there. The biggest issue there is pilots and maintainers and gaining the capacity, which is why this potential delay could seriously harm that delivery schedule.
If I can go back to your last question about the threat to the north and the capabilities of the North Warning System, the one aspect that hasn't been highlighted is the development of a large family of long-range, low-level cruise missiles, which was a significant problem set. Not just for the last five or 10 years but for over two decades, this was seen as a serious potential threat to the NORAD North Warning System.
In the intervening time, almost every single Russian major surface combatant and submarine now carries weapons like the Kalibr missile, which have been early tested and utilized widely in the war on Ukraine, so we know they're highly accurate and highly able to undertake these missions. Arguably, they may actually pose the largest threat to our ability to defend the north in such an attack, beyond hypersonics, given the prevalence of those systems and their accuracy.
Conservative
Jeff Kibble Conservative Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate it.
Liberal
Liberal
Viviane LaPointe Liberal Sudbury, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Dr. Shadian, from your perspective, what is most concerning about relying on foreign or privately owned satellite networks for critical northern communications? What tends to be overlooked about those risks?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Arctic 360, As an Individual
We're not in control of them. They could be turned on. They could be turned off. We don't have sovereignty over our own basic telecommunications in the north. That is essentially what we're saying. I don't know. Are we overlooking this? I think we're just not paying attention.
Liberal
Viviane LaPointe Liberal Sudbury, ON
What guardrails would you suggest be put in place to protect sovereignty and community trust?
President and Chief Executive Officer, Arctic 360, As an Individual
This goes back to a larger question. It goes back to the fact that we need to be, again, controlling our own data. I don't know how it would work in a NORAD situation, but we're collecting a lot of data. Even if we are going to have a collaboration, collaboration is a co-operation. Codependency is never great, and an uneven relationship is never great either, so how do we set...? This is where I'm not in the weeds of these sorts of defence situations, but how do we then also have sovereignty over our data and be collaborating and sharing that data?
I think this also goes back to just a general sense in Canada. I want to go back to Rob's statement, when he said that this is very urgent and that we need to be serious. Really bad things could happen, and there could be a world war. It kind of goes a little bit to the hypersonics discussion. I think that feeds a bit into the fact that we just haven't been paying attention to the north, and we have kind of cast it aside. In my world and Rob's world, when it comes to Arctic research, really, all the Arctic research is focused on studying climate change. That's it.
Okay, so now what? What are we going to do about it? This is where this whole kind of AI, the technology and the innovation.... We're just not thinking that way about our north at all, much less a defence kind of construct. We cannot afford to just rely on others to defend our north.
Liberal
Viviane LaPointe Liberal Sudbury, ON
Thank you, Doctor.
Robert Huebert, leading off on the witness testimony that we just heard, you've argued that the real Arctic challenge is security, not sovereignty.
From that lens, which parts of Canada's NORAD modernization delivers the clearest near-term deterrent effect? Where should NORAD modernization focus in terms of threats derived from Russia?
Professor, Centre for Military Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
There are two responses. The first one is the political response. We need to show that we are serious.
The biggest challenge that we face from the sovereignty perspective is the moment the Americans.... Trump, of course, is Trump, but even previous American presidents, as Richard has alluded to, have not trusted what we are doing. We are seen as a laggard. It's called a defence against help, in academic terms.
We have to be showing that we are serious moving ahead. It's almost like, do anything, but just make the decision. That's the first thing, so that we are allaying any American concerns that they have.
We then have to get the systems that we say we're going to get. In some ways, “Strong, Secure, Engaged”, back in 2017, had a lot of very promising elements, but we didn't act upon them. We also didn't act upon subsequent announcements of modernization.
Remember, the Russian war against Ukraine started in 2014 and we pretended that all it was was an illegal occupation. Territory was seized, and Ukrainians died defending it. That's a war, yet we said that it was not a problem. We have to prove that we are past that.
The second thing is that we have to get the F-35s up. We need to get the listening.
Those are the two critical points at this time, I'd say, but a third point is that we have to get the political elites taking this seriously.
We need Carney walking around with an equivalent of the American black bag. All American presidents always have the nuclear codes with them. We need to have Carney, or any successive Prime Minister, in the mindset that they have to be able to make this decision and understand it, so that when something happens, they're ready to act, so that the Americans are then able to actually respond. That's the only way you're going to convince the Russians that we can't be surprised.
Liberal
Viviane LaPointe Liberal Sudbury, ON
In your opinion, do you consider the classification, the export control rules and organizational seams between Canada and the U.S. departments to be an obstacle to faster NORAD early warning and tracking? Should anything be done to address those governance issues within NORAD?
Professor, Centre for Military Security and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary, As an Individual
There are two answers to your question.
The first one, of course, is whether the technical elements of these agreements are hindering us. That's a little bit beyond what I study. I can't get into the actual details of what's happening.
The critical point is that we've shown time and time again that when there is political will, when we basically say that we need to get this acted upon as quickly as possible and it's at the prime ministerial levels—i.e., it's the attention of the Prime Minister and he says we'll overcome that—I've noted that we've been able to overcome all these issues.
The best example is when we considered buying nuclear submarines. Of course, we were running into all sorts of issues back in 1985 to 1987. Ultimately, when the Prime Minister of the time said that we needed to do it, we were able to get through because of the direct participation.
It gets into that political question, and that's part of the problem. We see this. It goes back to Richard's point that this is a bipartisan problem. If you don't have the buy-in of the Prime Minister basically saying to the bureaucracy that he doesn't care about these agreements, that we need this piece of kit and we are going to go ahead and get it from the Americans, as soon as you see that happen, we do know that it can occur.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Charles Sousa
Thank you, Mr. Huebert.
Mr. Shimooka, I know your hand is up. I'm sensitive to the time and I want to give Mr. Scott Anderson the opportunity to do his round. We're going to be starting round three. Maybe you can interject at that point.
Mr. Anderson, you have five minutes.
Conservative
Scott Anderson Conservative Vernon—Lake Country—Monashee, BC
Thank you very much.
This question, first of all, is for Robert Huebert.
We saw from Ukraine the lessons we've taken away from them. The two main lessons that I've seen are drone and anti-drone activity and the weight. We didn't think before that symmetrical warfare would involve the need for weight, I think.
With regard to drone technology, we've seen the effectiveness of both drones and anti-drone technology. How much weight do you think we should be putting behind drone development in Canada, given the vast expanses of the Arctic in both defence and surveillance?