Public Safety Committee on April 5th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Good morning, everybody.

I call this meeting to order. Welcome to meeting number 17 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

I will start by acknowledging that I am meeting here on Treaty 1 territory in the home of the Métis nation.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. Per the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on March 10, 2022, all those attending the meeting in person must wear a mask except for members who are at their place during the proceedings.

Members and witnesses participating virtually may speak in the official language of their choice. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of either the floor, English or French.

The committee clerk will advise the chair on whose hands are up to the best of his ability, and we will do the best we can to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members whether they are participating virtually or in person.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motions adopted by the committee on Thursday, March 3, 2022, the committee is commencing its assessment of Canada's security posture in relation to Russia.

With us today by video conference as individuals are Dr. James Fergusson, deputy director, centre for defence and security studies at the University of Manitoba; Dr. Robert Huebert, associate professor, department of political science, University of Calgary; and Dr. Veronica Kitchen, associate professor, department of political science, University of Waterloo.

Up to five minutes will be given for opening remarks, after which we will proceed with rounds of questions.

Welcome to all of you.

I now invite Dr. Fergusson to make an opening statement of up to five minutes.

Sir, the floor is yours.

[Dr. James Fergusson, Deputy Director, Centre for Defence and Security Studies, University of Manitoba, As an Individual]

Thank you, and thank you for the invitation.

I want to begin my brief comments with a concern I have. I think it's very important that the committee and the government do not overreact, if not go into panic, with regard to existing vulnerabilities both in the cyberworld and defence world of Canada from Russian capabilities.

Certainly the war has heightened the attention, but as I would argue to you, these vulnerabilities have been here for a long time now. We need to recognize, given the adversarial relationship that exists between Russia and Canada, Russia and the west, that this is not a new Cold War. There are other issues and other threats out there which have to be taken into account in trying to respond to the Russian side of this equation.

In terms of the cyberworld, what I would point out in my central concerns is primarily the question of whether the government and particularly our relationship with the United States as a function of economic integration and the integration of critical infrastructure is structured properly to deal with the vulnerabilities that exist. There is no central agency as in the defence world, in this case NORAD, to coordinate responses to potential Russian cyber-attacks, whether they are for espionage reasons or attempts to undermine or sabotage critical infrastructure. I think this is an important issue. NORAD for some time has sought to be, or believed that it could be, responsible for the cybersecurity world, cyber-defence in North America. I still argue that this is very problematic.

Some restructuring is necessary, I believe, particularly in the relationship with the United States, but the cyberworld is a unique world from the defence world, not least of all because the critical infrastructure is by and large in the hands of the private sector. Private sector issues, of course corporate issues, with regard to threats have different dynamics and different concerns on the corporate side relative to government. This is not just the federal government, but also includes the provincial government.

In terms of disinformation, I'm not one who believes that Russian disinformation, Chinese disinformation or anyone's disinformation campaigns really have much of an effect at all. I think that's highly overblown and exaggerated. Espionage has been around and that is a concern, but that's a concern to ensure that government and military cyber-networks are closed and secure.

Canada has no capacity except to deny access as best it can across the spectrum. We have no ability to retaliate in terms of a cyber retaliation, so I think we need to think about those things in particular.

In the physical world, the defence world, I would point out to the committee that for a long time, Russian strategic doctrine has been one of first use of nuclear weapons. The Russians have developed a new set of capabilities beyond their ballistic missile capacities. These are in the world of longer and longer range cruise missiles and the future nuclear-powered cruise missiles and hypersonic vehicles, all of which are nuclear and conventional capable. It's hard for defence, of course, to know what is coming, if it's coming. We have significant gaps and vulnerabilities which have existed for over a decade in terms of the ability of NORAD, and as a result Canada, to be able to detect these threats, to track them, to discriminate, and then to be able to cue interception capabilities.

Interceptors are another issue. The F-35 is a step forward, but there's a broad need to rethink the way Canada in conjunction with the United States via NORAD undertakes and modernizes North American defence to reduce our vulnerability and to be able to deter potential Russian threats. This will affect the way Canada and the United States—North America—respond to threats that originate overseas as we see today in Ukraine.

I shall leave it there. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I would now like to ask Dr. Huebert to make an opening comment of up to five minutes.

Sir, the floor is yours.

[Dr. Robert Huebert, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Calgary, As an Individual]

Thank you very much. I'm very honoured to be asked here to contribute to this very important topic.

In the five minutes, I have five points.

The first point is that Russia is an existential threat to Canada and it is growing.

The second point is that we have either ignored or appeased Russia since the signs of the type threat that we are dealing with, which has been developing since 2008. We are not talking about a threat that developed in February 2022. We're not talking about one that developed in March 2014. It is one that clearly has been indicating to us what it means to Canada and what it ultimately means to Canadian security.

This threat comes from Putin and the administration of Putin seeing an existential threat to his regime by the activities and the existence of NATO. NATO, of course, is the alliance in which Canada is a participant, along with NORAD, which means that any conflict that involves NATO will involve Canada.

Now, where does this threat come from? There are two major elements that drive the Russian threat to Canada. The first one is that we have seen Putin, even on his first days as acting president in 1999, move to reconsolidate the Russian empire. What do I mean by this? One of the very first steps he took as acting president was to intensify the war in Chechnya, which the Russians had come close to losing in 1994. They were subsequently successful in being able to put down the moves for secession. We see a series of military moves to expand Russian control starting with Chechnya and Georgia, and then when the Ukrainian war actually starts, which was 2014. We see that there is this effort.

The second part is the protection of the regime. Once again, we have tended to ignore the threat, but we see the manner in which the Russian regime has moved against any opposition within and even those opposition that are physically outside of Russia.

Perhaps the most important element of this threat that Canada has in fact been ignoring is the Russian way of war and its willingness to use that way of war to achieve its policy objectives, which places it on a direct collision course with NATO.

When we talk about Russia, there are at least three levels to their multi-domain processes of warfare.

The first one, which Dr. Fergusson also touched on, is the existence of the Russian commitment to use tactical nuclear war. We have tended to pretend, after the initiations under the Gorbachev regime of significant arms control movements, that this was a thing of the past. The reality is that in Russian doctrine, Russian force projection and Russian force delivery, we see that they are modernizing their tactical capability. We see the threat that Putin gives today to utilize nuclear weapons. This illustrates and is further amplified by the Russian commitment to also learn how to blind NATO countries.

We have seen the demonstration effect when the Russians demonstrated how they can shoot down one of their own satellites with their missile capability. In February of this year, they also demonstrated how they can cut cables and, hence, communications. All of this points to a very concrete tactic, so that if they indeed feel it necessary to use nuclear weapons, we would be involved.

They have also demonstrated a very strong willingness to engage in conventional war with means that I'm afraid we do not have a full appreciation of. Some of the evaluations coming out at this phase of the Ukrainian crisis illustrates that we did not pay attention to the Georgian war, the Chechnyan war and the Syrian war.

Dr. Fergusson has already touched upon cyberwarfare. I am more concerned about the weaponization of social media. I do think that the Russians are problematic, in light of some of the evidence that our American and British allies have shown.

Ultimately, we are facing a threat from Russia. It is growing and it is reaching the level of an existential crisis.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I would now invite Dr. Kitchen to take the floor and give up to five minutes of an opening statement.

The floor is yours, Dr. Kitchen.

[Dr. Veronica Kitchen, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Waterloo, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the kind invitation to speak to you today on the topic of Canada's emergency preparedness for threats posed by Russia.

My remarks today draw on a career studying Canadian security in a global context, and specifically on the work I've done with the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society and as co-director for North American security at the Defence and Security Foresight Group.

The threat to Canada is exacerbated by Russia's clear desperation. Missiles over the Canadian Arctic or the use of weapons of mass destruction look more likely than they did a few months ago, even accounting for the fact that Russia is clearly preoccupied by its invasion of Ukraine not going as it expected. This may mean that the prospects for widening its targets to include Canada or NATO allies may be smaller in the short term, but possibly only the very short term.

What are the most immediate threats? My colleagues have already discussed some of the military threats. I want to focus on some of the immediate but more indirect threats to Canadian public safety.

Russia's disinformation campaign has been hindered by sanctions that have removed Russian media from our airwaves, but they are still prevalent on social media and in forums frequented by adherents of other kinds of populist conspiracy. The weapon of disinformation is not going away. One of the lessons of sanctions research is that sanctions become less effective over time, so we should expect this to be an ongoing threat from Russia. Canada is a target as a member of NATO, but also as a long-standing supporter of Ukraine as personified in the Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland.

Russian disinformation campaigns connect the invasion of Ukraine to QAnon and other deep state conspiracy theories that feed hate crimes and distrust of the Canadian government. A concrete example is the recent QAnon claim that President Putin endorsed the sovereign authority of Romana Didulo, the self-styled “queen of Canada” and QAnon adherent. The attractiveness of conspiracy theories has been increased by the COVID-19 pandemic, and will be increased even more by Russian misinformation, whether targeted directly at Canada or not.

Certainly there's a risk that adherents of these conspiracy theories will commit violent acts, but the political action of supporters of populist extremism can also have harmful effects that don't escalate to the level of security threat or crime. We saw examples of this in the recent trucker convoy in Ottawa, where traffic prevented ambulances from leaving downtown and convoy supporters flooded the 911 system with calls. I want to be very clear that I'm not suggesting that the trucker convoy was a product of Russian misinformation, because I don't think we know that, but these are examples of the kinds of effects that are threats to human security, exacerbated by Russian disinformation, that we're not used to dealing with in the context of security and law.

The good news is that only a narrow swath of Canadians will be attracted to these ideas and influenced by Russian misinformation. The bad news is that their effects are easily amplified by bots, and the solutions may be long term. Media literacy can help in some instances, but in many cases the disinformation will be too sophisticated to educate ourselves out of. Working with private companies, as has already been mentioned, and our allies to improve our technological responses to disinformation is essential. The recent creation of the advisory group on online hate is a step in the right direction, as is the security and intelligence threats to elections task force, which some have suggested should have a role [Technical difficulty—Editor] in now.

We also need to find ways to turn down the temperature on social polarization caused in part by human insecurity and exacerbated by the necessity for global action against Russia. Examples include increasing fuel and food prices, but reinforcing trust in institutions through transparency, reform and cultural change also has a role.

We should not underestimate the ways in which Russia's actions have affected Canada's security by destabilizing the world. Russia has undermined the United Nations, committed war crimes, generated massive flows of refugees and threatened our borders and our allies. Canada is less secure in a world where international law is not respected.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by the scale of the threat when we're talking about everything from a potential nuclear attack to hate crimes. Foreign policy and domestic security are linked. Working to protect Canada from the most direct threats, from missiles to misinformation, and contributing to end the war are obviously imperative. Welcoming refugees and ensuring that the social services that help them are adequately resourced is important, but so too is ensuring that there's a perception that refugees from other conflicts are treated equitably, because not doing so contributes to mistrust in government.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have 10 seconds, please.

[Dr. Veronica Kitchen]

The need to provide military aid or come to the defence of our NATO allies in Europe stretches our military and forces choices about how to use it.

The biggest—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much. My apologies again; it's our world.

Thanks to the witnesses for those opening remarks.

We'll now move into the first round of questions from members of the committee. I'll start with Ms. Dancho.

You have six minutes. The floor is yours, Ms. Dancho.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank our expert witnesses for sharing your very critical and important testimony today.

My first question will be to Professor Fergusson, a fellow Manitoban.

Thank you again, Professor, for being here.

I would like your thoughts. We've been talking a lot in the last few months about modernizing NORAD and the north early warning system. Can you explain why it's important that we modernize those systems and how we go about doing so?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

The first answer is that we're vulnerable. The north warning system is out of date and, in fact, it's too limited to deal with the 360-degree threat environment that North America faces.

Government tends to talk about NORAD modernization as equivalent to modernization of the north warning system. It's much bigger than that. It's about North American defence modernization and developing a group of new sets of sensors, both land, sea, air and space-based, and developing the computer capabilities, the processing of analytical capabilities to be able to integrate an all-domain defence requirement. The F-35 is an important step forward, but it's only one step of thinking about the need for a much more complicated, complex, layered defence capability, one that has to move farther north.

All of these are major issues when we talk about dealing with the vulnerabilities that Canada faces in conjunction with our close ally, the United States, in trying to ensure that our deterrent, the Western deterrent, the U.S.-led deterrent, the global deterrent, is not undermined because of vulnerability at home.

Potential adversaries like Russia can hold Canadian populations as hostage, which would then reduce the willingness of governments in Canada and elsewhere to respond to deter these threats overseas.

Those are the two key elements in my mind.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

You mentioned that a U.S.-led deterrent should not be undermined by any vulnerabilities in Canada.

My understanding is that right now, with the advanced weapons technology and hypersonic missiles of Russia, we wouldn't even be able to detect any incoming missile threat, given our outdated system. Is that accurate? Is that the type of undermining and vulnerability we have in Canada?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

Certainly. The north warning system has no capacity to be able to detect a hypersonic missile flying over the Arctic region heading towards targets in the south. The American ballistic missile early warning system is optimized to deal with long-range ballistic missiles, not hypersonics, so you have a major gap there.

Moreover, the north warning system has a difficult time. It can potentially briefly detect cruise missiles in flight, but because of the long range, they'll be launched well over the Arctic Ocean, and that is another important detection gap we have. If we can't detect, we can't deter and we can't defend.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Do we have adequate information sharing among Transport, the Canadian Armed Forces and any northern agencies? Do we have adequate Arctic coordination among departments currently, and do you see that as an issue?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

I think that's an important issue. Right now it's more or less ad hoc, depending on the specific issues that emerge, particularly in the Arctic.

If you ask who is responsible at the bureaucratic level for the Arctic, the answer is everyone. If everyone is responsible, no one is responsible. Government needs to rethink how it's going to organize to ensure that the various agencies—and this ranges from the Defence department to Transport Canada, the Coast Guard, Health, Industry, Foreign Affairs, etc.—all have a piece of the pie, and that needs to be looked at seriously.

I understand that government never likes to do this big reorganization, but we have to remember that we are structured for a world that no longer exists, with the Arctic as a function of climate change. This coordination and co-operation needs to be developed quickly.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

In essence, you would recommend that there should be a central agency responsible for Arctic defence, and there is currently not one of those.

[Dr. James Fergusson]

Exactly. I would call it a centre for Arctic security, with defence as a component.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Okay. Thank you very much.

I have about a minute and a half left.

Professor Huebert, if you would like to just top up anything that Professor Ferguson has said, you're welcome to conclude my minute and a half.

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

The one area that Dr. Fergusson didn't have time to talk about is the maritime dimension of the approaches. He's talked very correctly about the hypersonics, but we know that Russian submarine activity has been increasing. We know that their deep diving capabilities are increasing. We've seen how they can do the cable, and NORAD has the mandate to deal with the underseas threat, but that is one area where we are really weak.

The Russians have even developed underwater autonomous vehicles that can go, allegedly, 10,000 miles and carry a nuclear warhead. Once again, these are all elements of the overall domain type of warfare that Russia now brings to the table that we ultimately and completely need to be able to detect and, as Dr. Fergusson said, respond to.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

In my remaining 25 seconds, do you have anything else to add about the critical importance of building our defences and where we should be focusing our efforts, for example, in the upcoming budget?

[Dr. Robert Huebert]

First of all, we have to make sure that we are getting that domain awareness. It's a 360-degree threat that is happening now. That means the entire entity of Canada is under threat of these new weapon systems.

If the Russians believe that they have an advantage that we can't detect or we can't respond to, we've seen the lengths to which they go in the engagement of the achievement of their objectives. That makes us very vulnerable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I would now like to invite Mr. Chiang to begin a six-minute block.

Mr. Chiang, the floor is yours, sir. Take it away.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank all the witnesses today for participating in this important study that we're doing.

My question is for Dr. Fergusson.

What are some strategic geographical advantages that Canada enjoys related to national security? How can we use these advantages to our benefit?

[Dr. James Fergusson]

The answer is twofold. We enjoy the strategic advantage of geography, which constrains the military and defence threats to North America to the aerospace realm. It can be maritime, as a function on maritime launch capabilities, but basically we can focus our attention on that.

The second big strategic advantage we have as a function of geography is that we sit beside the United States. It is a global superpower with the capabilities across the board to lead the global deterrent against not just Russia, but any other threats of importance to Canada that emerge. We benefit, of course, in our relationship with the United States from American support, the provision of American capabilities and American funding support for modernization on a 60% basis for infrastructure in Canada.

All of those work in our favour while at the same time providing us with access to American information and American planning, to ensure that Canadian interests are taken into account in the construct of NORAD as a binational command.

[Paul Chiang, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Based on your comments, is there something we could improve in our partnerships with the Americans? Can the Americans improve the NORAD system, or is that a joint venture?