National Defence committee  Thank you. Mr. Chair, members of the committee, I thank you for the invitation to join you today. Joint Task Force North, or JTFN, encompasses a vast region, including over 4 million square kilometres, about the size of western Europe, and including over 75% of Canada's coastline.

National Defence committee  The Rangers, as you know, are a special reserve component, and they're absolutely vital. They were first envisioned back in 1947 to provide the eyes and ears of the north—surveillance and presence. We have more than 1,800 in one Canadian Ranger patrol group, the one that serves my area of responsibility.

National Defence committee  That's correct, sir.

National Defence committee  I can't go much further. I'm aware that the navy has capabilities, but primarily for their own purposes. They're not specifically designed or envisioned for that kind of response.

National Defence committee  Yes, for cleaning up anything small, in ports, wherever they are, but not necessarily envisioning that kind of response. I believe the lead agency is the coast guard, as it applies to the north. I know they have undertaken some preparations in the north, to and including distribution of community response kits and providing some training at the community level.

National Defence committee  There was quite a long list of military assets used. In terms of air force assets, we used every flavour of lift aircraft, including C-17s, Hercules, and our utility Twin Otter aircraft. We also had CP-140 support. Our operation was across four different lines in four different areas across the north, from Whitehorse, Resolute Bay, to Gjoa Haven, to Iqaluit.

National Defence committee  You may be familiar with Canadian Forces Station Alert, based up on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island. It's a direction-finding and signals-intelligence station, as well as a weather station. It doesn't sit within any satellite footprint so we can't have satellite communications into it from the south.

National Defence committee  To be clear I don't envision any specific role for the military in that other than the more general role we have as a force of last resort. When it comes down to another department running out of capacity or capability to respond to a specific event, they will normally ask us if we've got something to offer.

National Defence committee  We have an MOU for cooperation that has enabled us to reach out at a commander-to-commander level. We've had reciprocal visits and exchanges of personnel. We'll have a Danish ship participating in Operation Nanook this year. I would characterize that as an initiated and growing relationship.

National Defence committee  Let me start by framing the Arctic security working group, our team north partners that I referred to repeatedly: the federal, territorial, regional organizations; first responders; and emergency measures. We come together twice a year to look at what we have, what we don't have, what we need to do together, how we need to get better at doing it together.

National Defence committee  Yes, sir.

National Defence committee  Simply to reinforce that point, when it comes to surveillance, that's not the issue. There isn't communications infrastructure across 4,000 square kilometres of Arctic zone. That's my area of responsibility. When we go to operate in the north, it means we have to plan for and take with us the necessary means for command and control to undertake our operations, so we're not relying on civic infrastructure to carry out our business.

National Defence committee  What suspicious activities....

National Defence committee  For the summer of 2014, the activity is scheduled to take place from mid-August through mid-September, including deployment out and redeployment back, with the majority of the activity at the end of August and start of September. We've got two lines of operation. The first is an Arctic search and rescue scenario, with a specific view to testing out some of the ideas and intent behind our international Arctic SAR Agreement that we signed onto a few years back through the Arctic Council work.

National Defence committee  I think your question probably has two parts. One part you're talking about is surveillance, and the other part is the ability to communicate for command and control. I can assure you that there are all kinds of blackout areas. We have a network of networks and system of systems that overlap to the greatest extent possible, but the north is still developing in many different flavours of infrastructure, including communications.