Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 19 - Evidence (afternoon session)
OTTAWA, Wednesday, August 14, 2002
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 1:12 p.m. to examine and report on the need for a national security policy for Canada.
Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. Today, we continue our study on the need for national security policy. My name is Senator Colin Kenny. I am a senator from Ontario, and I chair the committee.
Let me introduce the members of our committee. On my immediate right is our deputy chair, the distinguished senator from Nova Scotia, Senator Michael Forrestall. Since being appointed to the Senate, he has been on all defence- related committees. Senator Forrestall has also had a distinguished career in the House of Commons. He was elected to the House in 1965 and served there until 1988. During his time in the other place, he was the defence critic for the Progressive Conservative Party. As a senator, he was also the chair of the Subcommittee on Transportation Safety. In that capacity, he published a report in June 2000 on air safety and security.
On my far right is Senator Jane Cordy, who is a native of Sydney, Nova Scotia. She has a long background in education and community service. She taught for 30 years throughout Nova Scotia, including in Sydney, Halifax and New Glasgow. She has also served as vice-chair of the Halifax-Dartmouth Port Development Commission and as chair of the Board of Referees for the Halifax Region of Human Resources Development Canada. Senator Cordy has been extremely active in the voluntary sector. She has been a board member of Phoenix House, a shelter for homeless youth, a member of the judging committee for the Dartmouth Book Awards, a member of the strategic planning committee of Colby Village Elementary School and a volunteer and lector with St. Clement's Church in Dartmouth.
Senator Norman Atkins is from Ontario. He came to the Senate in 1986 with a strong background in the field of communications. He has been actively involved in a number of organizations and groups, including Diabetes Canada, the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation, Health Partners, Markham Transit for the Disabled, and Camp Trillium at Rainbow Lake, of which he served as chair. Of particular benefit to his work with this committee, Senator Atkins has had direct experience in the military, having served in the U.S. army.
To his right is Senator Jack Wiebe from Saskatchewan. Senator Wiebe is a long-time farmer and has been involved with the cooperative movement. He was twice elected to the Saskatchewan Legislative Assembly in the 1970s, and more recently completed a term as Lieutenant Governor of Saskatchewan. He has a strong interest in the reserves and served as the Saskatchewan chair of the Canadian Forces Liaison Council.
Senator Laurier LaPierre is from Ontario. Over the span of his career, Senator LaPierre has been a constant presence in the Canadian media, working as a journalist, author, editor and commentator. Senator LaPierre earned a doctorate from the University of Toronto and was a faculty member with several other universities across our country. He has served as chair of Téléfilm Canada and as host of the electronic town hall meetings for the Citizens' Forum on Canada's Future.
Beside him is Senator Joe Day from New Brunswick. Senator Day studied at Royal Military College and obtained a master's degree in law from Osgoode Hall. Senator Day has been very active in many legal associations, including the Canadian Bar Association and the Canadian Corporate Counsel Association. He has volunteered for many professional and community associations, including serving as chair of the Tattoo 200 Saint John Bicentennial Celebration.
Our committee is the first Senate committee with a mandate to examine subjects of security and defence. Recently, we have concluded a seven-month study of the major issues facing Canada, and we produced a report entitled ``Canadian Security and Military Preparedness.'' The Senate has asked our committee to examine the need for a national security policy.
This afternoon, our committee will hear from two panels, the first of which includes LGen. George Macdonald, Vice Chief of the Defence Staff. LGen. Macdonald joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1966. In 1992, he became Director General of Aerospace Development and was then seconded to the Foreign and Defence Policy Secretariat in the Privy Council Office. In April 1998, he was promoted to his current rank and became the Deputy Commander-in- Chief of North American Aerospace Defence Command in Colorado Springs. On September 6, 2001, he assumed the duties and responsibilities of the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff.
With LGen. Macdonald is Dr. Kenneth Calder, Assistant Deputy Minister of Policy. Dr. Calder began his career as a defence scientist. Among others, he served on the task force in support of Prime Minister Trudeau's peace initiative and was editor of the 1987 White Paper on Defence. Since 1991, he has been the principal source of defence policy advice to the Deputy Minister of National Defence and the Chief of the Defence Staff.
Gentlemen, on behalf of the committee, I welcome you. We are glad to see you back again, and we look forward to hearing what you will say to us.
LGen. George Macdonald, Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, Department of National Defence: Honourable senators, we are pleased to return to the committee to update you on the issue of enhanced military cooperation between Canada and the United States to meet new threats to our peace and security. Since my last presentation to you, this issue has progressed. The government has authorized us to continue to explore even more fully with the United States options for enhanced cooperation for land and maritime issues and support of civil authorities.
As I explained to honourable senators at my last presentation, Canada has undertaken discussions with the United States to consider improvements to better protect Canadians and Americans in a changed security environment post- September 11. Today, I will discuss the nature of these discussions by first describing the possible enhancements, the options for organizational implementation and, finally, the resource implications.
Let me begin by noting that what we are discussing is a modest step beyond that which currently exists. No one should mistake any enhanced military cooperation for integration of our Armed Forces with those of the United States — far from it. The discussions to date have considered practical, sensible and realistic ways that our Armed Forces can jointly prepare for a range of circumstances where cooperative or coordinated operations could save the lives and property of Canadians and Americans. This is exactly what our government and citizens expect us to do.
We have envisaged situations requiring enhanced cooperation using notional scenarios. Let me describe two of them for you. For example, should there be a major natural disaster, such as a catastrophic earthquake, both nations could be affected directly. We both would have to act quickly to help our injured citizens and re-establish our infrastructure. This would demand the movement of emergency personnel and materials such as medical supplies, blood products, food, and fresh water, despite the loss of roads, bridges and power and water systems.
While the recovery would be led by civilian first responders, municipal and provincial or state authorities, there is clearly a role for military support in many areas. By coordinating and cooperating with our larger and better-equipped continental partner, we could ensure that the right capabilities were available at the right time in the right place. Such actions would always be under the control of the Government of Canada, thus preserving our sovereign interests despite a time of national challenge.
In the face of terrorism, to give you another example, involving the possible use of weapons of mass destruction, the scenarios are more speculative and horrific. We have considered the potential impact resulting from the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons within North America at key cross-border nexus points such as Detroit or Windsor and at major maritime ports on the East and West Coasts.
These situations demand rapid and coordinated actions to minimize collateral damage and to deal with the potential propagation of hazardous materials through the air, water or personal contacts with citizens in both countries. Prompt and effective response would minimize the immediate effects, reduce the chance of widespread disease, maintain order and confidence in our populations and allow key economic and commercial links to remain open.
Once again, civilian organizations have the responsibility to provide the first response, but specialized military capabilities and key coordination measures could be used to mitigate the potential impact of such situations. Proven capability could lead to confidence on both sides of the border to reduce the very effects that terrorists seek to produce.
Aerospace threats are already the purview of NORAD. We have envisaged the establishment of a binational planning and monitoring group to address land and maritime threats.
By planning, we refer to the potential for coordinated military effort to develop a range of military contingency plans that would cover the likely security challenges facing Canada and the United States. These contingencies would span the gamut from natural disasters to potential terrorist attacks having cross-border implications, and other major continental emergencies where the coordination of military and national resources would be needed to save lives and prevent suffering. By developing these contingency plans, by considering the coordination of key resources, and by practising and evaluating our performance, we will be able to better react to the unknowns that we face.
The monitoring function would ensure that we are able to maintain a common operational picture of the continental areas of concern and the threats that could challenge our peace and security. Monitoring includes constant vigilance across the full range of intelligence, surveillance and operational information that we share with the United States to ensure that Canada maintains an awareness of emerging situations. Monitoring also means the ability to quickly assess incidents and emergencies and to make recommendations to our governments.
Limiting our focus to military planning and monitoring at this time will provide a solid foundation for the evolving security architecture in North America. As we all know, the first responders to most crisis situations on both sides of the border are civilian. However, military-to-civilian linkages and arrangements remain complex and undefined. The United States has embarked on a plan to create a civilian homeland security department. This ambitious initiative has received considerable attention in the U.S. Congress and in many of the affected government departments. It is premature to suggest what the final outcome will be.
Canada, on the other hand, already has a well-established arrangement for civil-military cooperation, as the deputy Chief of Defence Staff explained to you in his testimony earlier this year. Therefore, while Canada is perhaps better positioned to discuss modalities for civil-military cooperation, it is reasonable to begin with military-to-military discussions and let the binational military-civilian dimension evolve in due course. Areas to explore in more detail in the future are: intelligence sharing, scenario building, contingency planning, joint training and exercises.
The details of military-to-military cooperation have yet to be formalized through our discussions; therefore we are not in a position to discuss them here. I can say that we do not intend that our planning and monitoring activities will require an active command and control structure or assigned military forces. We do not intend to create a ``NORAD of the land and sea'' with a formalized command structure and assigned forces as we now do for the aerospace mission. Unlike NORAD that must react in minutes for aerospace threats and has several nearly automatic response plans, military reactions for land and maritime threats develop in a longer time frame, which allows national governments the opportunity to exercise their sovereign responsibilities and make specific decisions as the situation unfolds.
As honourable senators are aware from the media attention to this issue, there have been many misconceptions about a new cooperative arrangement. Some have suggested that this would inevitably lead to the prospect of armed U.S. forces entering Canada without our approval or control. Clearly, our objective is to reinforce the essential elements of national sovereignty, while at the same time providing a mechanism for cooperation that is practical and effective, as our citizens rightly demand. Cooperation will only occur when it serves our national interests and under conditions that the Government of Canada formally approves. Whatever the result, no forces from either country will ever be employed in cross-border operations without express government approval. The national security of Canada and the protection of Canadians will be a matter for Canadians to decide, just as it will be in the case for citizens of the United States.
The subject of organizational structure will be considered during binational discussions, so any specifics at this time would be pure speculation. Clearly, we must examine all options for the linkage of the planning and monitoring group to military organizations of both nations. We must examine the relative advantages and inhibiting factors for each of the potential reporting relationships that could be established for this group.
One of the key elements of the process will involve the estimation of critical resources required to implement the enhanced level of cooperation. The Department of National Defence clearly lives in a resource-constrained environment, and this is not likely to change. However, our initial planning and forecasting has shown that the establishment of the planning and monitoring function can be satisfied with modest resources. This could be a small number of Canadian Forces personnel working in close proximity to our current NORAD headquarters and the U.S. Northern Command headquarters in Colorado Springs. Standing military forces such as ships, Aurora surveillance aircraft or land force units, beyond personnel working within the planning and monitoring group, would not be assigned. New requirements for surveillance, monitoring, communications and intelligence capabilities will evolve, and we may see periodic exercises and evaluations to test our contingency plans. Such commitments will be reviewed regularly and included in our annual planning.
In summary, Canada's intention is to work closely with our continental partner to protect our citizens in the face of a real threat. We stand ready to work with the United States on a practical and sensible arrangement.
Dr. Calder and I would be pleased to answer any questions you may have.
Senator Day: LGen. Macdonald, could you elaborate on your comment in your concluding remarks about planning and monitoring being done with modest resources as an adjunct to the current NORAD headquarters staff or Northern Command structure? What would that entail?
LGen. Macdonald: We have not gone into specifics in our discussions with Americans. We envisage that this would be a relatively small group of Canadian Forces personnel that would be dedicated to a separate planning and monitoring group collocated with NORAD in Colorado Springs, the headquarters that will be mostly engaged in North American security. We imagine that there would be a similar number of Americans who would engage with this group and collectively, in a binational way, we would develop contingency plans, do longer-range planning and conduct monitoring. It would not be a command organization. There would not be assigned forces standing by to execute whatever those plans might be. They would, rather, develop scenarios and plans for Canada and the United States to independently decide what to do in a the case of a crisis.
Senator Day: What would you be monitoring?
LGen. Macdonald: One of the discussions you will have later this afternoon relates to maritime surveillance. One of the things we currently do on an ad hoc basis is to share information about maritime surveillance, specifically the position of ships and vessels on both coasts. Monitoring that in a more formal way and from a national perspective is one element of that monitoring function.
Senator Day: That group could conceivably be doing that type of activity.
LGen. Macdonald: Yes, that is correct.
Senator Day: On page 5 of your remarks you state:
We do not intend to create a NORAD of the land and sea with a formalized command structure and assigned forces...
Is that off the table as a possible future scenario?
LGen. Macdonald: We clearly feel that the hard requirement right now is for us to ensure that we develop and evolve our binational cooperation. We feel the best way to make serious progress in this area is to establish this planning and monitoring group that could ensure that we do achieve that cooperation. As a result of the lack of immediate action required in the maritime and land scenarios that we envisage addressing in this planning and monitoring group, we did not feel there was a need for standing forces to be there, at the alert, to respond on a day-by-day basis.
In NORAD, as you know, honourable senators, we have some dedicated aircraft that are on alert on a day-to-day basis that may respond to a crisis that may come up because of the short time of the development or evolution of an air event.
Those are forces that we in Canada and in the United States have decided that we will commit to NORAD on a day- to-day basis. They are in place to perform a specific mission. We call that ``under the operational control of NORAD.''
We do not envisage the same requirement being required in a maritime or land scenario, because we will have more time to work through that and then apply one of these contingency plans, presumably based on a scenario development that could address that particular contingency as it evolves, as opposed to having ships at the ready to go out and do something on an hour-by-hour basis, for example.
Senator Day: You raise the issue of sovereignty and what is almost our paranoia with respect to this issue when it comes to any joint actions or cooperation with other countries in relation to the military. We have to keep saying, ``We will protect against doing anything that would cause us to lose any of our sovereignty.'' Politically, we like to hear those things.
I think the NORAD model is a good one. Could you explain to me and our audience how, if an event that involves NORAD occurs, the word filters up to the Prime Minister from NORAD headquarters?
LGen. Macdonald: I will, and Dr. Calder may have some general comments on sovereignty as well. We have made arrangements on a day-to-day basis within NORAD that if an event occurs, it will be monitored continually from the various regional headquarters that exist throughout NORAD and the information will be passed to the command centre in Colorado Springs, the Cheyenne Mountain Operation Centre, and the personnel there have a responsibility to react to the event and to ensure that the national command authorities of Canada and the United States are both aware of what is going on.
Take the example of an aircraft that flies into our radar coverage that does not correlate to a flight plan. It becomes what we call an unknown. If it cannot be correlated within a certain length of time it becomes a potential intercept target. We may send up aircraft that are on the alert, as I mentioned before, to intercept this aircraft. On a day-to-day basis, if that aircraft is identified in a subsequent few minutes or even intercepted and identified, that would not normally be the kind of event that would be reported directly to the Prime Minister or the President, but rather to a delegated authority at a lower level in the National Defence Command Centre in Ottawa or its equivalent in the Pentagon.
A protocol is set for each event, and as the event escalates — for instance, a hijacking with a threat to actually target a large public building, or crash into it — it would be the kind of event that would ultimately be elevated to the President or the Prime Minister to be engaged in the process to decide what to do in that case.
Thus, there is a protocol that begins with information being fed into the NORAD headquarters operation centre in Colorado Springs that involves Canadian and American personnel working together and reporting the event to the national command authorities equally, of both countries, to ultimately take whatever action is necessary, or to report what action has been taken, or the resolution of that particular crisis.
Senator Day: Do I understand you to say that it would go to both the President and the Prime Minister, irrespective of where it is taking place in North America?
LGen. Macdonald: The normal process is not necessarily to report to them directly but to their designated officials and, on a day-to-day basis, to our operations centre in both National Defence headquarters and the Pentagon; but yes, it is to both headquarters simultaneously for a NORAD event.
Senator Day: When it comes to our operations headquarters at NDHQ, does someone there make the decision whether that should be referred to Privy Council Office or up through to the Prime Minister, or is everything routinely moved along further?
LGen. Macdonald: No. For a routine, everyday issue, as I mentioned, the identification of an unknown aircraft or something that would occur on a more regular basis, normally the information would be held at the operations centre because it was not of the threshold necessary to report to the Minister of National Defence or to the Prime Minister.
In an extreme situation, such as happened on September 11, that process occurred but, obviously, this was a situation where it did demand advising the government per se. On that day, NORAD authorities reported to National Defence Command Centre and to the Pentagon operations centre what events were occurring. Things became almost real-time reporting then as a conference call was established and everyone was aware of the information as it occurred. I was the Acting Chief of Defence Staff that day and I talked with the Privy Council Office to relay this information to the Prime Minister. At one point I spoke with the Prime Minister.
Our Minister of National Defence certainly would have been in the loop, but he was in Europe at the time. He was advised of the situation, but was not part of the process per se because of his distance from the action. Certainly, that was a case where, in the most abject circumstances of extreme crisis, the Prime Minister and the President of the United States were clearly involved directly.
Senator Day: I can understand that when the situation develops and it becomes clear how serious it is. However, in a normal situation, something that is referred from Colorado Springs to our National Defence Command Centre — you were not sitting in the command centre on that particular day — who is in the command centre that makes a decision whether to move this along and tell you about it or tell someone else higher up, and then that person decides whether to go the Privy Council Office?
LGen. Macdonald: We have a staff of people, watch officers who are monitoring situations continuously on a 7-24 basis. They have fairly specific direction on what kinds of events would require upwards reporting. When in doubt, they are asked to report it. They would start with the Deputy Chief of Defence Staff, who is the chief of operations, if you will, for National Defence, and then he would elect to report it to the Chief of Defence Staff or the minister, skipping steps, if necessary, if he could not get in touch with intermediate steps.
We had an arrangement, for example, during the G8 when we provided a protective air cover over Kananaskis where we had a very strict methodology where, if there was an airborne intrusion into our airspace, that was resolved very quickly, we would not have got to the point where we would have advised the minister, or the Deputy Prime Minister, who was acting. However, we had a very clear chain of events that, if it got to a certain point, we would immediately advise them and then ultimately seek their guidance on how to deal with the situation.
It is dependent on the situation. However, you can appreciate that any manner of things are reported to this operation centre that are uplined, some ultimately for information, because there is no action to take; some because the information has been concluded, the action has been taken or the issue resolved; some where it is uncertain and may progress for some hours or days; and some where it is an immediate crisis.
Dr. Kenneth J. Calder, Assistant Deputy Minister (Policy), Department of National Defence: If could I add to that, at a more general level, it seems to us that an arrangement with the United States or any other country that allows us to work together with them but does not in fact force us to work with them in any particular crisis — in other words, if we have a choice — and which does not inhibit us from acting independently, does not in fact impact on Canadian sovereignty. We would argue that is the case with NORAD. NORAD gives us a mechanism where the two countries, when they agree, can act together. It does not stop either country from acting individually and separately in the same area, the area of aerospace defence. In fact, for NORAD to function, it must have the agreement of both governments. Therefore, we would say that in fact NORAD is not any sort of diminution of our sovereignty. It is actually an exercise of our sovereignty to be involved in that operation.
Senator Day: Maybe one of you could answer my final question on that point. If an aircraft is not responding, it is up there, you believe there is a possible hijacking, you do not know what will happen and jets are sent up, who would give the authority to the pilot of the jet, if it were necessary, to shoot that aircraft down? If the incident were over the United States, would the Canadian Prime Minister still be involved?
LGen. Macdonald: No. We have an understanding that, if it is over Canadian airspace, the Prime Minister would make the decision, and similarly, over the United States, an American authority would make the decision.
Senator Forrestall: It raises the interesting scenario of a captain in charge of the events in Colorado Springs at the instant all this was happening. I will not pursue it but I would love to some day. I hope someone writes of that first hour or two hours.
I want to ask to Dr. Calder in response to a position and it has something to do with this.
You said, LGen. Macdonald, that whatever the result, no forces from either country will ever be employed in cross- border operations without express government approval. I do not think I am taking that out of context but for the sake of time I will go along with that.
How absolutely accurate is that, and by pre-negotiated circumstances? Dr. Calder, in previous testimony to this committee, you indicated that Canada and the United States had its share of treaties and 250 memoranda of understanding of all these agreements. Has Canada ever given up its right to command its own troops other than in ``pre-negotiated circumstances''?
Dr. Calder: Are we talking in Canada or abroad?
Senator Forrestall: No, here in Canada. I am talking about something that is vaguely in the back of my mind about hot pursuit — and, I know that sounds like an expression from Dick Tracy in the 1950s or 1940s. I am talking about an event that would require transborder cooperation. I know that there is in place under ``standings'' as to how we will deal with shelter, clothing, transport, and to what extent both Canadian national interests and the United States national interests would look after themselves in pursuit of something if they could not stop at the border because of the consequences that would flow from that. Is it in that context? Are there not in place arrangements that would, by the back door, if you will, allow United States forces to use the services of Canadian Forces personnel in an instance of hot pursuit. Would the details and the minutiae have been part of a pre-negotiated circumstance?
Dr. Calder: You have to take it by land, sea and air. On land, the answer is no because I cannot think of any circumstance in which you would have either forces of one country or another in hot pursuit across the border. That has never happened to my knowledge. It is obviously a law enforcement issue, but not a Canadian Forces one. In the air, I think LGen. Macdonald has answered the question in that hot pursuit of an aircraft that can be controlled is done by whichever country, by prearrangement, over which the pursued aircraft is.
At sea, with respect to naval operations, I am not sure but my sense is that the statement made by LGen. Macdonald is that any sort of crossing of the border by forces of either side is, in response, in any major sense, covered by general agreements. I would find it hard to imagine that would happen without being in the context of a bilateral agreement between the Americans and us. There is one exception. During the Florida hurricane, at one point we had a ship down off the coast and we put people ashore to help rebuild a school.
Senator Forrestall: That was humanitarian.
Dr. Calder: I do not think we necessarily had the permission of the Secretary of Defence on that.
LGen. Macdonald: If I could add to the comments of Dr. Calder, the statement I made in my opening comments is explicitly exact. The arrangements that we currently have now for NORAD purposes, for example, do involve, if we were to deploy American forces into Canada — that is, fighters into Canada for some reason or Canadian fighters into the continental United States or into Alaska — we would specifically request that permission from the authorities, the national command authorities, in either country so that there is no misunderstanding that the deployment of one nation's forces in the other's country would be an explicit and discrete decision.
Senator Forrestall: I appreciate what you are saying. I used the term ``forces.'' They may be security forces, for example, the RCMP in our case.
Do existing negotiated arrangements cover, for example, the pursuit of a couple of carloads or vanloads of pretty highly suspect people who are believed by appropriate authorities to constitute a terrorist group? If they happen to cross the border, what happens? The pursuit does not stop. What is the legal situation then? Do we have an agreement? That is what I am trying to get at. I accept without any question what you say: No forces from either country will ever be employed. I accept that. What if the phrase was ``had been employed?'' Has it ever happened in the past? I can understand how you could say, with some understanding given today's circumstances, that there is a process in place.
LGen. Macdonald: We can only speak in a military context. It is important to recognize that a country has the sovereign right to decide what forces will operate in its own territory. In a NORAD context, we Canadians would make a specific decision if we were to allow American forces to operate. In a case of urgency, we would do that very quickly.
One of the benefits from the planning and monitoring group that we have discussed is to hopefully identify scenarios where that sort of cooperation would be required, and to facilitate the protocols or the process or the plan to enable it to occur on a relatively quick basis, so that if there was a requirement for armed forces to cross a border, one way or the other, there would be a mechanism in place to allow us to decide, or example, ``This is scenario No. 9. This is the contingency. This is what we thought we might do. Do we agree that is what we will do? Fine, let us put that in place.''
Senator Forrestall: It has been 11 months now. How soon will we be getting at some of these questions? It is vitally important that Canadian citizens understand that there are arrangements.
Dr. Calder, what are the pre-negotiated circumstances under which we would permit American authority or some other authority to take command of Canadian military forces or police forces, security forces, for common requirement? Can you give us an example, please?
Dr. Calder: That is a very good question. To follow up on some of the comments LGen. Macdonald made, we have not worked out, to our satisfaction, details with the Americans for various contingencies, for example, an earthquake on one side of the border or the other. If forces from the other country are invited in to help in mitigation of that circumstance, we have not worked that out. We have not worked out the details regarding when the forces move across the border, under whose operational control they would come, what the general understandings would be, and so forth. That is something that we have identified as an area that we should come to grips with with our neighbours to the south. That is one of the purposes for this group that we are currently discussing with the Americans, namely, the monitoring planning group, or whatever we end up calling it. We would hope that they would work out these types of arrangements so that we would know exactly what we were doing in a crisis and would not have to make it up.
As to timing, we are discussing this with the United States. We are hoping to have some results during the autumn. We are mindful of the fact that the Americans are setting up NORTHCOM on October 1. That is not an absolute deadline, but it would be nice to have things in place. We hope to have made some progress in this by the mid to late autumn.
Senator Forrestall: What purview would that preparation fall under? Would it be yours?
Dr. Calder: We have the lead in talking to the Americans but we are, of course, with a team on which is represented foreign affairs and OCIPEP.
Senator Forrestall: Are they active? Is this a series of questions that they are preoccupied with now?
Dr. Calder: In fact, LGen. Macdonald and I went to a meeting about two weeks ago with our counterparts, and our negotiating teams are active and working. The kind of arrangements that include dealing with another country, and particularly with the United States, can become a complex issue. We have to ensure that we are satisfied with the arrangements.
Senator Wiebe: My question is directed more to Dr. Calder, although I will quote LGen. Macdonald, so he should feel free to respond as well. I should begin by saying that I am a strong supporter of NORAD. NORAD has demonstrated to me the wonderful and amazing way that two countries can work together in respect of the air defence of our countries.
Because of my strong support for NORAD, I was disappointed in LGen. Macdonald's comment that they do not plan a similar defence plan for the sea. I can understand us not joining together for land forces, because from what you have explained many of those areas will be more a humanitarian function rather than a defence function. I think the biggest threat to our country and to its security, other than from air, could be from sea. We have a tremendous shoreline in this country — other than Russia, probably the largest shoreline to protect in the world. To be quite blunt, we do not have the navy to handle that. There are innumerable coves and small areas where terrorists could land or carry out terrorist activities on our shores.
I believe it is imperative for us to begin negotiations as quickly as possible with the U.S. to set up a NORAD-type defence system for our shorelines. It would be to the advantage of the Americans as well to use the format of NORAD, which has been a proven quantity in terms of Canadian security.
As a policy advisor, what direction are you giving to the deputy minister and to the minister to pursue this? I think this is an important issue. It is also a political issues, because it involves joint forces into a new area. We must admit that we are a small country, with a large shoreline to defend. Our Air Force alone cannot defend our country. We must rely on the Americans to help us, and that is why NORAD has worked so well. I may suggest that the same thing applies to our shorelines as well. Hence, from a security point of view, this is the area I personally feel we should be directing our efforts at.
Dr. Calder: Senator, when we say it will not be NORAD-like, we should be more specific. With NORAD, we have a headquarters that works 24-7. It has assigned forces. Hence, day and night it is up and running.
What we are talking about is something that would not have assigned forces because of the reasons that LGen. MacDonald has pointed out — timing, et cetera — and would not have a headquarters operating 24-7.
By our calculations, we think that what we are talking about is something that would be sufficient to meet the requirements, perhaps, in the future. Others are entitled to their views.
LGen. Macdonald explained the issue of the timing. We envisage, in the process of discussing with the Americans and the development of this monitoring planning group, a contingency plan that deals with exactly what you are talking about, particularly at sea. These plans would have been pre-agreed such that if both governments decide that there is a crisis in that area, they can, if they so choose, power up a latent command structure to deal with the crisis. We think that is sufficient, when combined with the navy-to-navy cooperation that already exists on both coasts, which is quite extensive. You will hear from Vice-Admiral Buck on that subject. We think that is sufficient for the current situation; however, of course, others are entitled to disagree with us, and will.
Senator Wiebe: I certainly want to disagree with you, because in a way we had NORAD up and operating prior to September 11 and it did not stop those events from taking place. We are dealing with something completely new. We are also dealing with something completely new with respect to our shorelines. If I were a terrorist and wanted to get at the United States, I would look seriously at some of the shorelines in Canada. We do not have the shoreline population that the U.S. has, so there is the potential for an ideal place to land people undetected. I believe that that is where our threat lies and where our energies should be directed.
We have four submarines, 12 frigates, a few other ships and some helicopters. Given those numbers, there is no way we can possibly patrol those shorelines. If I were an American president, I would certainly look at the shorelines of our country. In respect of the security of our country, that is certainly one area to which we should direct our resources. Given our population, we can carry our fair share in terms of resources to provide the equipment and the manpower. That would not cover our shorelines — and to be honest we need the help of the Americans in this matter.
Dr. Calder: I understand that was not the question.
Senator Wiebe: That was not a question.
The Chairman: He was careful not to mention helicopters with Senator Forrestall in the room.
LGen. Macdonald: We agree that the maritime approaches present the possibility of significant threat, and we would always agree that more maritime forces would be helpful. I would not want you to be left with the impression that we are doing nothing about the issue. Already there is, on both coasts, a considerable, meaningful cooperation between the Canadian and the U.S. Armed Forces in addressing specific targets.
However, from the point of view of constant patrolling of the oceans, as you suggest we do not have sufficient resources to do that. This planning and monitoring group will hopefully get us to a point where we would share that information in a more complete way. We would have better surveillance and better knowledge of potential threats, through intelligence sharing, that we must address, and then address those threats specifically in a relatively long length of time when compared against an aerospace threat.
Some of it is improving what we do now, doing more than what we do now from the point of view of information sharing, but also recognizing that there are limited resources and there is time often to make a decision rather than to actually have someone there on a 24-7 basis.
Senator Wiebe: At least I have had an opportunity to express my concerns and my wishes. I will express those same concerns to other members of the committee when we write our report.
Senator LaPierre: I find that there is a vast difference between a catastrophic, natural disaster such as an earthquake or a flood and what the Americans believe is needed to combat terrorism. Consequently, there is a great imbalance in the thinking of the department on that matter. Surely, when the Americans talk about northern command, they are speaking, at the end of the day, in favour of the integration of the armed forces of our two countries — whether on the ground, on the sea or in the air — to protect the vital interests of the United States, which may accidentally or not be in the vital interests of Canada.
Surely, we cannot really dismiss the fact that the Americans have always understood their national interests as being the paramount interests and that it ought to be the interests of mankind and that it has dealt with Canada and many other countries in the world with an iron fist in a velvet glove. I find it somewhat shattering that we are engaging this undertaking without even an appreciation of the history of what the United States has done in the defence of its national interests, the countries it has invaded, the human rights of people it has abolished and destroyed, and so forth.
[Translation]
Basically, we help them by downplaying our national sovereignty to ensure their survival.
[English]
Therefore, I am asking you, sir, who is the enemy that we have to protect ourselves against? Who are these terrorists who are floating around since September 11? All of a sudden we must change the patterns of our existence, value system, our human rights and everything else that we have done since September 11. How valid is all of that? Who is the enemy?
Dr. Calder: Senator, if I may respond to that, had we been here a year ago, you might have put us on the spot on that. It seems to me that September 11 showed that there were certainly enemies out there. I would argue that they are enemies of ours as well as the United States.
On detailed points, I should like to point out that neither the Americans nor we have ever spoken, at all, ever, about integration of our armed forces. The United States has no interest in integrating their forces with ours, or vice versa. The discussion of integration of forces has never been discussed with anyone in a responsible position south of the border.
Second, I would point out that the United States — and we can disagree with them about how they do it, and we very often do disagree with them — has a right of self-defence. What they are doing with respect to command structures and so forth with NORTHCOM is, in fact, exercising their right of self-defence and placing them in a position to do that. Their establishment of NORTHCOM has no impact whatsoever on Canadian sovereignty or our freedom of action. It is entirely an American affair.
We would argue that we protect Canadian sovereignty, as Mr. Manley has argued, by engaging and working with the Americans rather than avoiding dealing with them. The idea behind this is to work with the Americans to give better protection to Canadians in Canada, in cooperation with the United States, in the case of natural disasters where we have to respond, but also in the case of terrorist attacks, whether they be on the American side of the border or the Canadian side.
There are many types of terrorist attacks that might be on the United States but would have a similarly great effect on Canada. A radiological or nuclear attack on Detroit would have an impact on Windsor. The spreading of small pox or some other biological weapons in United States would know no borders.
We cannot assume that what happens south of the border is of no concern or interest to us. The impact can easily come across the border, as was shown on September 11. Canada was not specifically attacked on September 11, but we certainly felt the impact on the Canadian economy and with respect to the border.
We must look at the defence of these threats on a continental sense, not on a national sense.
Senator LaPierre: If that is the case, sir, why are you not having discussions with Mexico? Why are you not having discussions with Russia, which borders us on the North? Why are you not having discussions with the rest of Latin America, which is essentially part of the continental defence system. People can easily come from Costa Rica or Central America or Mexico to invade the Americans, as they can from Canada.
Why are we singling ourselves out in this process? Surely, you ought to have multilateral discussion on the security of the continent.
Dr. Calder: There may be, at some point in the future, reason to have discussions with those countries beyond the normal discussions that we have now.
There are facts of politics, geography, history, economics and communication systems that bind Canada and the United States in a way that does not bind us to Russia. There are certain objective facts out there, to the extent that we are inextricably bound with our southern neighbours, which is not true with other countries. Therefore, an attack on the United States, in many ways, would be a direct attack on Canada.
Senator LaPierre: When Mr. Trudeau was asked about free trade, he said: ``Why do you want free trade? You sell 85 percent of your goods to the United States. You have a margin of freedom of 15 per cent. Why do you not use it to diminish your utter and complete dependence on the Americans?''
Can we not say the same here? Can we not find allies in Mexico or the Caribbean? I know they do not have the strength, the will or the power of the United States. However, would it not be a good military strategy to spread the concern, instead of depending on only one person who has the power to annihilate you without batting an eye?
Dr. Calder: Senator, we are doing that. For example, there is the NATO alliance, of which we are members. NATO is, in fact, on an alliance-wide basis addressing some of the same issues. Efforts are being undertaken alliance-wide to improve capabilities to respond to nuclear, biological and chemical attacks. NATO has acted in response to September 11 and is addressing the question of terrorism.
There is no doubt, for example, that if there were a major attack against the United States or Canada using some form of weapon of mass destruction, not only would we help each other, but also we would assume that the NATO alliance would help us, as we would help them. In the same sense, we have NORAD and NATO, the closeness of our two countries suggests that we have to have a particularly intense relationship with the Americans.
Senator LaPierre: One last question — and I asked this of a previous witness. I am very much concerned that the Americans are calling this exercise ``Northern Command.'' It is not the ``American Internal Security Command.'' It is the ``Northern Command.'' Perhaps because of where I come from, I am accustomed to being aware that words mean more than they are meant to mean.
Consequently, when the Americans talk about the Northern Command they mean me as well, within the structure of their own security. Consequently, they are envisaging, in the long run, that the Armed Forces of my country will become, to a very large degree, subservient to the needs of the United States. They will convince Canadians that this is necessary in order to protect themselves, just as they are beginning the process of convincing Canadians that we will have to participate in this most immoral war in Iraq, where hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens will die. More and more, I find the rhetoric of our government and of others leading us into that direction.
Consequently, words mean something. Why do words not mean something to those who are drafting the national security policy of my country?
Dr. Calder: As one of the previous witnesses pointed out, the Americans have Central Command, which covers Afghanistan. The Americans have a right to call their commands anything.
Senator LaPierre: I understand, but I find that a rather simplistic answer to a very important question, with all due respect.
Dr. Calder: Frankly, senator, I detect no desire by the Americans to take over the Canadian Armed Forces or to integrate them. They do have a desire to work with us, and they do have a desire for us to be able to defend the northern part of this continent.
Senator Atkins: When you speak about Northern Command, NORTHCOM, and its whole concept, does it require any additional bilateral agreements between the two countries?
Dr. Calder: Strictly speaking, no. The Americans have established Northern Command to cover the defence of the United States. We are not invited to participate; it is essentially U.S.-only. We actually do not have to do anything in response to that.
We were concerned when we learned initially that the Americans were discussing changes in the command arrangement. We were concerned that this would somehow undermine, weaken or subsume NORAD. The Canadian views on the subject were put to the United States quite forcefully by the previous Minister of National Defence. At the end of the day they came up with the structure of double-heading the commander of NORAD and NORTHCOM so that our interests in NORAD were protected. In that sense, we do not have to respond to anything.
We are discussing what we have called a planning and monitoring group though it may end up being called any one of a number of things at the end of the day. We have been discussing it with the Americans, not as something that we have to do — in fact, we do not have to do it at all — but as something, which it occurs to us, that would place us better to serve Canadian interests and protect Canadians by establishing this, and investigating exactly the type of areas that Senator Wiebe, for example, has pointed out in his questioning. We have to fill in the gaps of our planning with the Americans so that we are better able to cooperate together in an emergency.
Senator Atkins: Is there any discussion with the Americans regarding collective training of land forces?
LGen. Macdonald: We do have agreements with the Americans to exercise and train all of our forces from time to time. The air force conducts exercises in Canada that Americans attend. We also attend theirs. Similar arrangements exist for maritime and some land forces as well.
Senator Atkins: I was thinking more of the army.
LGen. Macdonald: There are some, but I think they are less intense than the maritime and air cooperation that we have. LGen. Jeffery would be able to give you more specifics on that later this afternoon, if you wish.
Dr. Calder: We tend use each other's training areas to some extent.
Senator Atkins: Dr. Calder, when you appeared before us in the fall, we talked about the white paper. As I recall, you put forward a pretty strong defence that the paper stands up very well, even today. Do you still believe that? Are there plans to review the white paper? If so, in view of what has happened in the last few months, where do you see any changes coming, if any?
Dr. Calder: Not everyone would agree with me, senator, but I would argue that the policy part of the 1994 white paper is still largely, if not entirely, valid. In other words, the part of the white paper that sets out the roles and missions of the Canadian Forces, the fact that it is the mission of the Canadian Forces to defend Canada, to defend North America and contribute to international peace and security, as well as the fact that we need multipurpose combat-capable land, sea and air forces, the fact that we do search and rescue, aid of the civil power, assistance to the civil authorities, fisheries patrols, sovereignty patrols, peacekeeping, peace enforcement, humanitarian assistance, I think all of those general policy objectives would remain valid. If you subject them to scrutiny, they give the formulations that we need to move ahead.
The challenge for the department is a challenge of matching those roles and missions, which I do not think people really want to change. I do not think people want to get out of NATO, NORAD, the UN or peacekeeping. We must relate those roles to the military capability that we currently have, determine whether it is sufficient, and then relate that to the budget. Is the budget sufficient? I would argue that, while the policy is sound, we have a problem with the relationship between the budget and the program. I think the minister, as you probably know, has recently spoken out on this. We, in the department, either need to get more defence spending or we need to cut back on the Canadian Forces. We basically have two options.
To deal with that essential relationship between the present and future Canadian Forces and our budgetary situation, there is currently underway what we are calling the ``defence update'' which looks precisely at this relationship. We ask questions about what more we need to be able to do the job properly, or, alternatively, if we have to live within our existing budget, we look at what we must stop doing. At the moment, this is a program update rather than a full-blown, end-to-end policy review.
Senator Atkins: I was surprised this summer when the Chief of the Defence Staff said that he did not see National Defence getting any increase in its budget. This committee, in its travels, has been quite surprised by some of the testimony and some of the research that we have found in terms of the shortage of personnel and the lack of updated equipment. Possibly not if I were a general, but if I were a middle officer in the forces, I would find that depressing. It sends a message, in my view, that would be very discouraging to many of the people who are serving this country, and doing it very well. They seem, however, to have to do it with one hand tied behind their backs.
I know we will be hearing from LGen. Jeffery later on. When you look at the white paper, I am sure the objectives have not changed very much. How will you deal with the personnel who are trying to make a decision about remaining in the service or finding a second career, if they are getting that kind of message?
Dr. Calder: That is a very good point, senator. There is no doubt — and the committee has seen this in its travels — that there are pressures on the system with respect to equipment and in the operating and maintaining of that equipment, and there are personnel pressures. Those are exactly the types of issues with which we are dealing.
One must say that the Canadian Forces have been operating at a fairly high level. We have been going places in the world we never imagined we would be, like Afghanistan. We have deployed a significant number of people on pretty tough missions out there. There is a real problem. That is exactly what we must address in this update. We must bring a balance between the budget and the forces and ensure that it works.
The chief is probably pessimistic about defence spending. A lot of us who have been in this business for a long time tend to be pessimistic. It goes with the terrain.
LGen. Macdonald: If I may add, I think we have done, without any modesty, a terrific job of spreading our defence dollars across the level of requirements that we have to balance, while addressing the issues. We are stretched, but we are keeping our heads above water on many equipment, personnel, infrastructure and other issues. We clearly need to assign more resources to those areas.
One area where we have not compromised is in our attention to the personnel resources that we have with the Canadian Forces. We have always been able to field personnel who are highly qualified, highly trained and professional. We repeatedly hear from our allies about how impressed they are with the quality of our individuals. I am sure you have met many of them on your travels. Our quality of life initiatives have been very successful over the last few years, and we continue to pursue those. We have embarked on a fairly aggressive recruiting campaign, as you know. Our retention rates are better than they were a few years ago.
There are some positives, but they relate to our focus on individuals themselves. We must find a better balance between our human resources funding and the funding we need for equipment, infrastructure and operations. Our dilemma is to find a way to balance those various demands.
Senator Atkins: I agree.
The Chairman: As a supplementary, the issue Senator Atkins is talking about is based upon visits that we have made to over a dozen bases in the last eight months. No one disputes that great steps have been taken in terms of quality of life. The sort of answer we get back from the people about whom Senator Atkins was talking, who are at that point where they can sign on and finish off their career or they can move out, is that they want to move out. They do not want to move out because they do not like being in the Armed Forces; they do not want to move out because the pay is bad; they want to move out because they are not allowed to be soldiers, sailors and airmen. They want to move out because they do not have enough parts to fix the planes they are working on; they are not getting enough flying hours. If they are tank drivers, they get two days a month to drive a tank instead of 12 days a month to drive a tank.
Senator Atkins: They cannot fire in the range.
The Chairman: We hear stories of people being trained on anti-aircraft equipment — there are 12 people going through the course and there are two missiles. Two people are going to get a chance to actually fire it, and the rest will hold up broomsticks and see what happens.
I do not mean to be facetious. There have been people who have clearly been very dedicated to their jobs, but they are heading for the door because they do not feel that they have the opportunity to do what they signed up for. I believe that is what Senator Atkins was coming at.
LGen. Macdonald: I do not think we disagree with you. Our resource situation is such that those are real problems that we are facing. Obviously, people join the Canadian Forces to do those kinds of things: a pilot wants to fly airplanes; a tank driver wants to drive tanks. We pride ourselves in the professional training that we give them and the calibre of service they provide.
We have clearly faced significant challenges in a number of areas, in recruiting and retaining people. The ups and downs of the economy affect that dramatically. Our quality of life program has demonstrated a better retention than we have experienced before. We are faced with demographic challenges. With the baby boomer generation, we are at the point where we are losing a lot of experienced people at the older end of the service. Because of the reductions made in the mid-1990s, we have a gap in our demography. We had a very low level of recruitment over a period of several years, and now that gap is going through the system. If you want an experienced sergeant, you cannot go out and find one on the street today. You have to start with training a private, and 12 or 15 years later you have your experienced sergeant.
We face all of those situations. People will ultimately make choices. Some will make their choice because they do not feel they are exercising their occupation as effectively or as fulsomely as they would like to. Some make choices because of the operational tempo we have experienced in the last several years. Some make choices because their spouse or significant other cannot be employed at the places where they are posted, or they get tired of moving around with the family.
These are choices and pressures that the military has faced forever. We are trying to address those through our quality of life program. We are trying to address those in getting this better balance I mentioned between how we spread our budget around. If we had more resources or were able to focus on fewer capabilities, we would be able to spend more in providing some of the things you cite as examples that we have to address.
Senator Atkins: Having said all that, you have to know that the officers and men that we have met as a committee have been very impressive. That is why it is more worrisome. When you talk to them, you hear that many of them are at that career stage. They are the future generals. Some of them are your replacements. They will have to make tough choices.
It is because they cannot go in the field and fire 1,000 rounds of ammunition. They use this example. Whereas in 1994 they were firing 1,000 rounds, now they are firing 150. We have heard all kinds of examples like this. It really is quite a startling thing to hear. I hope there is some way you can address it, because otherwise you we lose some really good people from the military.
LGen. Macdonald: Some of the things that we do, to be more economical or more efficient and save resources, are the kinds of things that you cite.
For example, the advent of more modern simulators with higher technology affords us the opportunity to train pilots on the ground in simulated environments at the expense of them get tingreal airborne flying hours. That makes sense to us. They get better training; they are more qualified; they can handle a non-threatening situation in a non- threatening environment more competently when the time comes. We use smaller calibre rounds for practice, rather than large calibre ones. We have simulators for training various army formations in order not to have to actually deploy all of them to get the real training.
We do a lot of that. It is for the sake of better training and efficiency, in many cases, and that shows, but it is at the expense of the real deal that many people relish.
Senator Cordy: I wish to follow up on Senator Atkins' questions. LGen. Macdonald, you have done an excellent job in showing us that you have the same picture in your mind as we have from travelling from coast to coast visiting with members of the Canadian Forces. Indeed, they are very high-quality, hard-working personnel.
Some of them have said to me that it is frustrating working under those conditions to hear comments by the powers that be that if they got the funding both this committee and the House of Commons' committee have suggested they would not be able to spend that money, or that they are not expecting to get money. Some of the members of middle or lower ranks in the military are wondering whether those in charge are actually pushing forward to get large amounts of money from the minister.
LGen. Macdonald: We are certainly of the opinion that additional resources would be helpful. Clearly, we are working for the minister in providing some options and proposals that he can make to cabinet, to the government, to identify our situation and hopefully to seek additional resources. There is no secret that we would be able to use additional funding.
The absorption rate, if I can call it that, of funding is something of a limitation for us. We have some large spending projects or some spending on operational, ongoing activities on which we can spend relatively large amounts of money, hundreds of millions of dollars, quickly, efficiently and effectively. However, there are some projects that take years to evolve. For example, if we were to decide to purchase a new sealift vessel that would allow us to deploy our forces by sea and replenish our ships at sea, a uniquely designed ship would take several years to develop, design and procure. Hence, even if the funds were available immediately, it could not be spent immediately. We have a number of projects in the hopper that we can progress with as quickly as possible, but it does not ramp up immediately. Of course, we cannot plan for that kind of spending without having some expectation of the allocation being available to us.
Senator Cordy: Predictability of funding would certainly be an asset for you?
LGen. Macdonald: Yes, it would.
Senator Cordy: Getting back to what you said this afternoon, you said that Canada has undertaken discussions with the United States to consider improvements to better protect Canadians and Americans in a changed security environment post-September 11. The anniversary of September 11 is fast approaching. Many Canadians are thinking retrospectively and saying, looking at the military, ``What in fact has happened since September 11, 2001 and September 11, 2002, to make our country militarily a safer and more secure place?''
LGen. Macdonald: Dr. Calder may have some comments as well. Certainly from a NORAD or aerospace defence perspective, there have been some fairly significant and dramatic changes. On September 11, there was an immediate increase in the number of aircraft that were provided for alert purposes; that is, to intercept suspect aircraft or targets that were potential threats. We maintain a higher level of capability than we had on September 10. Throughout NORAD — and this is in the United States and in Canada — some 25,000 sorties of various aircraft have been flown since September 11 to address security of our airspace, which is an incredibly significant effort. Our protection of our airspace continues at a fairly high level. We are more ready than we were from a point of view of providing the quantity of defence than we were on September 10, because of the increased threat.
NORAD has also recognized and is actively working on providing some protection against what we call the internal threat. NORAD has traditionally been focused only on threats that approached North America from outside our perimeter, whereas obviously the September 11 threat originated from inside the perimeter, which was not something that NORAD was mandated to do. However, it was able to at least respond to that threat in some element. There is continuing cooperation to ensure that we exercise ourselves more frequently and more rigorously on specific threats like hijacked aircraft. Those exercises are ongoing. The Kananaskis G8 summit, while not an exercise, sort of tended, in one way, to coalesce our thinking in that way and helped us to evolve the processes and the cooperation equally.
From both a maritime and a land perspective, you would probably be best to ask LGen. Jeffery and VAdm. Buck when they come later this afternoon. I think VAdm. Buck will be able to give some specific examples of how, on a Pacific and Atlantic perspective, the maritime forces are continuing to cooperate in a more rigorous way from exchange of information, talking about having a longer range of identification and better surveillance of maritime vessels and traffic so that they can work together with the United States to prosecute or at least monitor vessels. From a land perspective I am not aware of anything I can identify that is specific, but the fact that we have had these discussions and that we are now in serious negotiations with the Americans will, hopefully, as a result of them starting up NORTHCOM on October 1, put us in the position where we can have a group in place that will very much progress the potential of cooperation in these areas.
On what I would call a joint perspective — not army-navy-air-force specific — we have increased our nuclear, biological and chemical response team capability. We continue to do that with funding from the budget of last December. Our Joint Task Force 2 or anti-terrorist troop is also being doubled in capacity. That takes a long time to do, but we have certainly started on that. We have increased not only our ability to share intelligence domestically and internationally but also our funding to the communication security establishment that does our signals intelligence. The Office of Critical Infrastructure and Emergency Preparedness has had significant additional funding added to address cooperation. This is obviously a DND organization, but it must address cooperation federally and provincially and with civil agencies. There is a lot of work to be done, but a lot has been accomplished.
Senator Cordy: Is there cooperation and a lot communication between first responders, civilians and the military, in between a crisis situation? I know that OCIPEP is part of the military.
LGen. Macdonald: OCIPEP responds to the same minister. There certainly is a lot of facilitative cooperation, with OCIPEP being the catalyst for that. There is more cooperation or communication between the military and civil agencies than there has been in the past. There have been fairly significant exercises where many government departments, federal and provincial, have participated. The military has been part of that and I think that will only get better as we go. In fact, the group with which we propose to cooperate with the United States will eventually, we think, evolve into this military-civil cooperation area where we can find better protocols, better means to facilitate and to increase the communication, and to work with our southern partner to find better ties between civilian agencies on both sides of the border.
Additionally, within Canada we have a footprint of Canadian agencies or headquarters in military headquarters located at various bases and wings across Canada. Regional cooperation is increased. The regional commanders who have responsibility for various areas of Canada have raised the level of awareness in their relationships with the provinces that they work with and other agencies. As I said before, there is a lot of work to be done, but we have recognized the value and the need to increase the level of cooperation and communication.
Senator Cordy: Did you say there is a process being put in place now with the Americans that civilian authorities communicate with one another a little better?
LGen. Macdonald: Within the United States, that is very confusing. Within Canada, we are much better organized. Between Canada and the United States, there are many links between civilian agencies, RCMP to FBI, and immigration to immigration. All of those are there in various strengths. One would hope that, eventually, there will be a more consolidated way in which Northern Command or the military in the United States will find liaison with the civilian elements of homeland security. Contributing to that, we will find the bilateral coat for that in what I would call a more strategic way as opposed to these more tactical links that exist.
Senator Cordy: Getting back to Northern Command for a moment, when you were here before you said that it was important that we be aligned closely with Northern Command. In fact, when we, as a committee, were looking at Northern Command, we thought that Canada may be part of it and had asked questions of the Americans about whether it would be based on a NORAD model. However, the Americans have gone ahead with Northern Command on their own.
That aside, will we have closer cooperation? You talked about discussions between Canadian and American military officials. Is there currently and can we look forward to more cooperation between navy and land forces?
LGen. Macdonald: Yes. I think that the very thrust of what we call the planning and monitoring group will facilitate that dramatically. The effort that we are trying to establish would be a formalization of the information sharing and the surveillance cooperation, the contingency planning, and the evaluation and exercising not only of maritime predominantly but also of land forces.
We already have considerably high levels of cooperation, especially with maritime forces. As you know, a Canadian ship can integrate into an American task group very conveniently and can interoperate with the American ships seamlessly, which is unique to Canada when you compare other allies. There already has been a great deal of cooperation, but this would bring better organization to it. This would allow us to look at both coasts, for example, and have a more complete picture, from a national perspective, of the maritime capabilities forces and threats that we could ultimately then decide to bring to address binationally. It is an opportunity for us to exploit the already good relationship between those services and leverage it to a better capability overall.
Senator Day: I have a point of clarification on your last answer, LGen. Macdonald. Apart from the planning and monitoring, do you envisage increased activity between the Canadian and the U.S. navies and armies?
LGen. Macdonald: I would best leave that for the two environmental chiefs to address when they appear later. However, from the point of view of formalizing their response to a terrorist threat or to a natural disaster, which are different events in many ways, the responses often call upon the same kinds of capabilities. Therefore, you can develop contingency plans that address a variety of possibilities. In the context of organizing, exercising and evaluating their response, yes, I would envisage increased activity.
Senator Day: Do you envisage increased joint exercises?
LGen. Macdonald: In the context of addressing those contingencies, yes, I do.
Senator Day: Apart from the proposal that we have talked about previously when I asked about this group — it may be called the planning and monitoring group, or it may be called something else.
LGen. Macdonald: It is an awkward name.
Senator Day: Yes, but perhaps when we are dealing with something new that is good because it requires some explanation and so we can talk about it. Do you see other ways in which we might be able to participate in Northern Command or influence the Northern Command structure other than that at this time?
LGen. Macdonald: I do not think we presume to go beyond the current mandate that has been given to us for negotiations. The context of it is to develop a capability to, in fact, find better areas of cooperation for planning and monitoring. One could hypothetically speculate on the future evolution of that, and I will not do that now, but the simple answer to your question is, no, we are focused on this initial step.
I could go back to Senator Cordy's question about integrating into Northern Command. We never believed that that was a serious possibility. Northern Command is an American command filled with American personnel. We would not expect them to invite a foreign country to join their command any more than we would ask a foreign unit of the American forces to join our Air Force, for example. The thought of actually being part of the structure of Northern Command is not what we contemplate but rather working closely with the personnel of Northern Command to our mutual interest, to advance our own interests in the context of North American security.
The Chairman: Just on that note, this committee was so attuned to that because Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld went out of his way to raise that suggestion with us in a variety of ways when we met with him. Had he not raised that with us, we would not have been talking about it, but because he did, we also raised it.
Dr. Calder: At the time that you met Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, they were still playing around with a number of different ideas that then crystallized with the announcement of the structure they had developed. At that time, it was a work in progress.
The Chairman: That is a fair response. They had not presented their proposals to the President or to Congress at that time, so that is a fair response.
Senator Day: Continuing with the series of short questions that I have, gentlemen, it is my understanding that the office responsible for matters Canadian, or for Canada, in the United States had previously been through the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for military issues and that that has been delegated down to the commander of Northern Command. If that understanding is correct, will that result in a change in Canadian influence or Canadian importance in military matters in the United States?
LGen. Macdonald: You refer to the Unified Command Plan assignment of Canada to Northern Command as opposed to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff where it was before. There were a number of countries that were not assigned anywhere previously — and Canada was one of them. Rather than assign them to a Central, European or Pacific Command, they were allowed to fall under the responsibility of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
With the formation of Northern Command, Canada has been assigned to that area. I think that ultimately will be a positive event, in that it will focus more specifically the concerns of homeland security in an area that has the specific mandate to do that, rather than referring to us being part of an area of responsibility of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I do not think there is anything ominous about not being associated with the Chairman or being associated with the Chairman. It is an attempt by the Americans to create a more specific focus of activity on homeland security by assigning to Northern Command. I do not think there is any loss of influence. In fact, it may be a much more positive development for us.
Dr. Calder: To add to that, senator, the commander of Northern Command has been given the responsibility to deal with us in terms of bilateral cooperation in his areas of responsibility in respect of homeland defence, et cetera. All other issues in our relationship with the Office of the Secretary of Defense in the Pentagon on all other areas would maintain the status quo. For example, my area of the department would deal with the Secretary of Defense's office — our materiel organization would deal with theirs. All the other Canada-U.S. military and defence issues would be handled as they have been handled in the past.
Senator Day: That is helpful. How will the permanent joint board on defence be handled now? Will representation on that board be through Northern Command?
Dr. Calder: No. As far as we are aware, there would be no change. There is a current structure whereby we have a Canadian co-chair and an American co-chair, appointed by the Prime Minister and the President, respectively. That would continue, as far as we have thought this through, exactly the way in which it works now.
Senator Day: Concerning September 11 and on, it is my understanding that NORAD had to change its method of operation in respect of information that it was receiving from the Federal Aviation Authority, the FAA. Is it the same in respect of information that NORAD thought it needed, in a North American sense, from NAVCAN? Was there a requirement for a change in operation in that respect?
LGen. Macdonald: There has been an increase in the amount of information and the need for NORAD to have more immediate information based on domestic air traffic. There was never any lack of accurate and timely information from traffic or potential air threats that came from outside the perimeter of North America. However, we are talking about better and timelier information from domestic air traffic, and that applies to the FAA in the United States and to NAVCAN in Canada.
Senator Day: There was no regulatory change required, and that information was made available.
LGen. Macdonald: NORAD has a long-standing, high level of cooperation with both NAVCAN and the FAA. Everyone recognizes that it is in our mutual, best interest to share that information as effectively as we can.
Senator Wiebe: I cannot let these two gentlemen leave without a question about the reserves. It is my understanding that for the first time in the history of this country a complete unit of reservists, if they have not left, will soon leave for a rotation of peacekeeping in Bosnia. I am extremely pleased to hear that news.
The general public — the taxpayer — has the concept that the greatest amount of our military budget is for the purchase of equipment such as jets and ships, et cetera. In fact, the greatest portion of our budget is for wages. I do not know the exact figure, but more than 60 per cent of the defence budget is spent on wages. It costs the same amount of money to train a reservist as it costs to train a member of the regular forces. Why are we not directing more of our policy towards the reserve side of the army, especially for land forces? The navy has done a tremendous job in integrating the reserves with their coastal defence vessels and with the work that they do. Is this an area at which policy people and you are looking in regards to land forces?
LGen. Macdonald: I think that the reserves have been under study of some kind since there have been reserves. Personnel related costs — that is, wages, pensions and statutory costs and so on — are about half of our defence budget. That has been more or less relatively constant over the years. It has gone up and down a bit but as the numbers of people have decreased so has our defence budget. Costs for personnel have increased in some respects, as well.
The reserves certainly are a tremendously valuable portion of our Armed Forces capabilities. As you quite rightly suggest, a company of reservists will be joining the Bosnian rotation this fall. That is the first time a group like that has done that, although they have done it in smaller formations. It is quite a significant achievement for the reservists to do that.
As you also suggest, senator, it costs just as much to train a reservist to the same level of capability as a regular force member. The requirement for the army is to make sure that they spend their reserve funding in the most effective and balanced way. It would be inappropriate to have too many reservists, who generally tend to be people who flow through the reserves. There is a high attrition rate. Often young people try out the reserves for a few years and then move on to something else.
The numbers of reservists to be trained then are higher than the proportion in the regular force. Reservists often transfer to the regular force. That is a great deal for us but it forces a regeneration of experience in the reserves. It is always a matter of ensuring we have the foundation of regular force personnel that have the requisite experience and reserve personnel working together with, obviously, the necessary training, but in a sustainable way.
You can never compare the militia or army reserves directly with the air force or naval reserves. Air force reservists generally employed in small numbers, or even individually in augmentation roles or specific roles. The navy reserve is unique in that our maritime coastal defence vessels are staffed essentially by navy reserve personnel. The army reserve, the militia, operates like the army in units across Canada, augmenting or supplementing army operations, domestic emergencies or whatever here at home. It is difficult to lump them all together as the reserves.
The most significant study is our land force reserve restructuring project, which is ongoing, to try to establish, once and for all, the specific mandate and role of the reserves and how they will be employed, and to establish them at a viable and sustainable level of personnel strength.
Senator Wiebe: To take your argument one step further, in case of a war, we will not be able to raise an army like we did in the First World War and the Second World War or in Korea because the technology and the training that will be required with this new equipment, is not same. In the First and Second World Wars and in the Korean War you handed a raw recruit a rifle, trained him how to march and sent him off to war. Most of them were able to drive a truck and that sort of thing.
The kind of equipment that you have now takes a tremendous amount of technical training to operate. The more people that you may have flowing through the reserves, even though they may not last very long or be transferred to the regular forces, means the greater the resource that you have to draw on in the event that our country is ever in a crisis. Using your argument, I would certainly say that it would be money well spent, from the Department of National Defence's perspective, to place greater emphasis on reserves than what we have in the past.
As you said, we have been studying reserves ever since the reserves were formed. The reserves have not gained that much over the years. In fact, we have closed down units, including my unit from Saskatchewan. We no longer have a brigade in our province. It is now amalgamated with 38th Brigade out of Winnipeg, which is an issue that concerns a lot of us in the Province of Saskatchewan. That is just an example of what is happening across Canada.
There is a tremendous cost effect. There is also, as you say, an ability to train more people even though they may transfer out of the reserves. In the long term, by increasing that route, we are certainly adding to the defence and security of our country. We do have a reserve unit going to Bosnia now. Most of the other units were supposed to have up to 30 per cent reservists in them, but most of the time, it was from 10 per cent to 17 per cent.
Reservists go through the same intensive training as the regular forces people do prior to assignment. They have to meet the standard. If they do not, they are dropped. We are sending over very well trained individuals on each and every one of these assignments, which was demonstrated in Afghanistan. Even with the limited resources that we have, we can be very proud of the job that our soldiers did in Afghanistan during the last while.
If we are short on resources, I think it is a matter of redirecting them and the reservists is certainly one way of doing that. I would like to urge you people to speed up that study process and make it work for the benefit of all Canadians at a reasonable cost.
Again, you have provided me a platform to voice my concerns in regards to the reserve. I do think that our country and the military is really losing out on a tremendous potential. In my involvement with the Canadian Forces Liaison Council I saw what the reservists can do. I saw what employers in the country think of their reservists. It is a win-wine situation for both.
LGen. Macdonald: We certainly support your positive comments about the reserves. There is no doubt that they are a terrific resource and that we need to ensure that we have sufficient numbers and that they are properly trained and encouraged to stay in the forces to perform their duties.
Again, the problems you identify are symptoms of resource availability. It is a matter of spending more on the reserves. We are talking mostly about militia. Spending more on the militia means that we spend less somewhere else. We continually seek that balance.
The Chairman: I have a last question that is out of context, General. The New York Times reports that the Pentagon is acquiring large vessels with a view towards shipping equipment toward Iraq. Are you aware of these reports, and is there any Canadian involvement in any respect with them?
Dr. Calder: Senator, we are certainly following stories like that quite closely.
Senator Forrestall: You mean there are others?
Dr. Calder: There are obviously a number of reports about what the United States may or may not do in the case of Iraq. We are not, at this point, involved.
The Chairman: I did hear you say you are ``not, at this point, involved?''
Dr. Calder: Not at this point.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Dr. Calder: I would add that whether we are involved is a government decision. It is first and foremost a foreign policy decision before it becomes a Department of National Defence decision.
The Chairman: On behalf of the committee, gentlemen, I would like to thank you very much. It has been a long hearing for you. We organized it that way because we knew that you had a lot of information to share with us, and we very much appreciate your assistance with this issue. I expect we will be coming back to you from time to time asking for more assistance. I want you to know that we are very grateful to you for coming today.
For those of you at home following our work, please visit our Web site by going to www.senate-senat.ca/ defence.asp. We post our witness testimony as well as confirm committee schedules. Otherwise, you may contact the clerk of the committee by calling 1-800-267-7362 for further information or assistance in contacting the members of the committee.
We now have before us a panel of two distinguished witnesses. The first is VAdm. Ron Buck. VAdm. Buck became Chief of the Maritime Staff on June 21, 2001. His operational career spanned his command of the Canadian Fleet Pacific and the Fifth Canadian Destroyer Squadron. Of course, he has also commanded his ownership, the destroyer escort, HMCS Restigouche. At the request of persons with disabilities, VAdm. Buck has assumed the role in National Defence and Canadian Forces to act as their champion.
We also have LGen. Jeffery, Chief of the Land Staff. LGen. Jeffery was born in London, England. He joined the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery in 1964. LGen. Jeffery was promoted to his current rank on May 1, 2000. As of August 8, 2000 he was appointed Chief of the Land Staff. LGen. Jeffery is a graduate of the Long Gunnery Staff Course (Field and Locating) in the United Kingdom, the Canadian Land Forces Command and Staff College, the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and the National Defence College.
VAdm. Ron Buck, Chief of the Maritime Staff, Department of National Defence: Honourable senators, it is a pleasure to be here today to discuss with you the role of the Canadian navy in the conduct of coordinated maritime surveillance operations in Canada's maritime approaches, as well as with our U.S. allies in their adjacent areas of operation.
[Translation]
As Chief of the Maritime Staff, my responsibilities consist of commanding the Maritime Forces and advising the Chief of Defence on all naval issues affecting security and defence, including the promulgation and implementation of an effective surveillance plan and the coordination of assigned operations.
I would first like to make a brief presentation on maritime coordination and afterwards I will be available to answer your questions.
[English]
As you can appreciate from your committee hearings to date, the area of domestic marine security involves cooperation and coordination not only internationally but also from a significant number of departments and agencies within Canada. Specific to the waterside, the Canadian navy works in close collaboration with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Canadian Coast Guard, Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and many others. There is also a very close coordination on a bilateral basis with the U.S. navy and with the U.S. Coast Guard.
In order for the efficient conduct of operations, especially in a multi-organizational operation, it is critical that activities are coordinated and based on common, shared information. This common, shared information allows decision makers to have a full appreciation of the situation and activities that may affect that operation. In a phrase, situational awareness is essential to successful decision making and subsequent operations.
Our objective as it relates to maritime surveillance is to ascertain what is approaching our waters such that we can take the requisite action before a consequence management is required. Situational awareness is achieved through the fusion or bringing together of information from various sources into one common picture. Within the maritime context, these information sources include government ships and aircraft as well as naval warships and maritime aircraft operating at sea and contributing to the picture, plus assets of many other government departments and our allies. Technical sources such as satellite imagery and radar, as well as both open and classified data sources, including, interestingly enough, the Internet, also contribute to the picture. The challenge really in many ways is in bringing this information together, sharing it appropriately and basically having the same view of what is happening.
I think it is important to note in the maritime surveillance role that ships are but one piece. In fact, ships are not the most cost-effective surveillance vehicle. Rather, ships are very cost-efficient and effective interception platforms.
Aircraft and wide area surveillance vehicles provide the best wide area surveillance coverage, which really is the objective. You need to ascertain what is going on and then develop a coordinated plan, normally using ships to allow for interdiction or interception.
It is with the benefit of situational awareness that commanders can make informed decisions and coordinate those actions. Those actions will then use the appropriate resources and employ assets to best accomplish the mission both at the national and international level.
LGen. M. K. Jeffery, Chief of the Land Staff, Department of National Defence: Honourable senators, I am pleased to have the opportunity to again speak to the committee. I wish to take a few moments to provide a perspective on security issues from a land force point of view and an overview of the Canada-U.S. army-to-army interoperability. You will appreciate that you have heard many witnesses who have addressed much of this subject, so I will keep my remarks brief and rely on your questions to focus on your areas of greatest interest.
In addressing this subject, I would emphasize that given my responsibilities as a force generator I am primarily concerned with the development of land forces and creating the conditions for success, while the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff is responsible for operational planning and command and control of operations, including the domestic operations.
Having said that, I will try to address most of the land force operational issues.
As the DCDS has previously indicated in his testimony before the committee, for most domestic security issues DND is not the first responder or the responsible department. Our challenge is to undertake sufficient planning to ensure the maximum preparation for uncertain tasks in unexpected places. Planning for domestic operations has historically focused largely on conventional operations, with consideration of the asymmetric threat and counterterrorism. Given the broad range of potential domestic support tasks, force commitments are general in nature. The priority focus is then the command and control aspect of our role in providing military support to civil authorities. In short, the army, with its regional structure, provides the principal operational and tactical command and control structure to respond to land-based domestic operations. The response will normally be a mix of regulars and reservists, with reserve units providing the general military response in local areas and regular units providing more mobile and specialist capabilities.
With respect to Canadian-U.S. army interoperability, planning has historically focused on the high-end requirement of conventional operations. This is being revisited and, as outlined by the VCDS earlier, a framework is being developed to guide cooperation for all potential operations. However, given the civil nature of initial response in both nations, and the realities of geography, the likelihood of major army-to-army combined operations is not high. Such plans, therefore, will be general in nature and provide the agreed modalities for nation-to-nation cooperation rather than detailed operational plans. Our challenge is to ensure that when the day comes the two armies can, if necessary, work together effectively.
Interoperability speaks to the capacity of Allied Forces to operate together effectively in the execution of missions and tasks. It involves a broad range of aspects including command and control — in particular, the development of agreed plans and means of coordinating issues, understanding of and agreement to doctrinal procedures, standardization of those technical areas critical to operating, and periodic training to develop and confirm the ability to work together.
Interoperability is equally important in the domestic and international forum, but most of our army-to-army interoperability has tended to focus on the international aspects.
A major component of interoperability and standardization planning is done in multinational venues that include the United States. Interoperability is not only a continental concern but affects all operations where we may work with other nations, whether they are traditional allies such as those in NATO or countries we may work under at the UN. Our allies are equally concerned about ensuring interoperability. As such, both NATO and American, British, Canadian and Australian armies, under the ABCA Standardization Program, have established extensive standardization programs. Our army is extensively involved, as is the U.S. military, in over 25 active working groups and numerous subcommittees and specialist panels within these programs. Products include standardization agreements covering both material interoperability and non-material areas of doctrine, tactics, training, tactical and procedural publications, equipment loans, interoperability guides, information-sharing and the sharing of lessons learned from both training and operations.
The primary forum for army-to-army cooperation is the Canada-United States army staff talks. These annual staff talks serve as a means to identify interoperability issues, share information and facilitate cooperation and collaboration. The most recent meeting in May focused on command and control interoperability, and our principal collaboration on doctrinal development relates to digitization, command and control and ISTAR — that is, intelligence, surveillance, target, acquisition and reconnaissance. There is also agreement to share information on homeland defence, and action is underway to produce a matrix of venues or activities for army-to-army cooperation in this area.
Separate from the staff talks, there is also a Canada-U.S. army reserve general officers conference to allow a better understanding of each nation's army reserve capabilities and to advance individual and collective training initiatives.
The army also sponsors a wide range of exchange and liaison officer positions focused predominantly in the United States. The exchange program maintains, augments and extends the level of knowledge and skills essential to the army. The program concentrates on areas such as material and doctrinal development, higher headquarters expertise, and combat function expertise. Exchange officers fill positions on the establishment of the host force and are employed in the same manner as equivalent members of the host force. The exchange program allows individuals to develop intimate knowledge of procedures, doctrine and techniques while sharing knowledge of our capabilities. Individuals returning from exchange positions are frequently deployed in positions where they employ and share the knowledge they have acquired.
Despite all of the plans and interoperability agreements, training is vital to developing and confirming the ability to actually work together. Given the proximity of Canadian and U.S. facilities, low levels of training go on across the border on a daily or ongoing basis. Canadian and American armies routinely use each other's training areas and facilities, and as many as 7,000 regular and reserve personnel train at U.S. facilities annually. There are in addition a variety of small unit exchanges. These are predominantly at the tactical level, providing exposure of personnel to subunit and below, to doctrinal and operational procedures, along with the equipment of each other's army. These mutual exchanges ensure that the experience, professional knowledge and doctrine of both parties are shared for maximum mutual benefit and ultimately to enhance their ability to interoperate.
Higher level training is conducted through a variety of for a, principally under the joint combined training program. The principal army focus is the biennial ABC exercises and periodic joint seminars, the most recent having been conducted this past spring in Kingston. This exercise, a combined interoperability demonstrator, or (CID) Borealis, addressed the technical aspects of digitized command and control interoperability and was a major step towards Canadian-U.S. technical interoperability. The next exercise is planned to be hosted by the United States in 2004 and will likely include a division-level command post exercise, and it will also focus on command and control.
In addition, the army, on occasion, participates in other joint and combined exercises such as Exercise MARCOT, which involves the Canadian-U.S. navy, air force, United States marine corps and components of our Join Force Headquarters.
Of course, planning for interoperability and achieving it are two very different things. The recently highly successful deployment to Afghanistan is a testament to our interoperability efforts. The ability of the Op Apollo battle group to fit seamlessly into the U.S. forces is indicative that in most of the interoperability areas we can make it work. It is this same interoperability that will be key to our cooperation security arrangement here in Canada.
Mr. Chairman, I hope that this provides some insight to the nature of the current land operational plans and the extent of activities underway to ensure interoperability by the army with the United States army. From an army-to- army perspective, we have good tactical and operational interoperability, comprehensive exchange and liaison, and cooperation on force development. However, continued effort is essential to maintain that level. The extensive transformation envisioned by the U.S. army as it exploits technology in the future, could serve to make interoperability much more problematic, which will require identification of critical work areas and investment.
Current land operational plans are adequate, and although much of this has been focused on conventional operations, there is considerable spill over to the domestic situation. With clarity on the evolving Unified Command Plan, we can expect this fidelity to improve, but land force responsibilities are unlikely, in my view, to change appreciably. The probability is that, as the forces of last resort, both the U.S. and Canadian armies' priority it is to be prepared to interoperate if called upon to do so as part of the national domestic group response.
I look forward to your questions.
Senator Forrestall: Welcome, gentlemen. It is always a pleasure to be in front of the brass.
I wanted to get into some fairly short but specific questions that, hopefully, will assist us in the preparation of our next report. You have talked about the need for information and a growing reliance on the exchange of information with our allies. You cite that as being part of the difficulty with the ever-tightening resource position.
In connection with that, in a general way — and you will see when I am finished what I am getting at — could you give me an anecdotal illustration of the coordination of the U.S. navy and the Canadian navy monitoring of vessels originating from the Orient heading towards North America, particularly towards Canadian ports?
VAdm. Buck: Certainly, senator. Since September 11, there has been tremendous focus on asymmetric threats. In fact, both the Canadian, U.S. militaries and, indeed, many other government departments have been focused on asymmetric threats for much longer than that. A good example is the one you just quoted.
Routinely, in a situation such as you described, there would be some piece of information, generally speaking intelligence, which would come from some source. Depending on what that piece of information was, and its source, that would dictate the route that it would be shared through.
Let us assume for a minute that it is an immigration issue. In that particular case, normally Immigration Canada, if there were a maritime component to this, would share that with the Canadian navy, Maritime Forces and other government departments who might well play a role, which would include the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and potentially the Canadian Coast Guard. As well, there is an international link, because surveillance is not just done locally offshore. There are worldwide arrangements to provide surveillance.
If something were heading toward the North American coast across the Pacific from Asia, effectively it could be coming to Canada, it could be coming to the United States or it could be going many other places. Let us assume for a moment that the intelligence indicates that it is coming either to Canada or to the United States. Through arrangements already in place, we would share that information with the United States or they would share it with us. In fact, the United States does some surveillance in some of its offshore territories, Guam, to be specific, is one. Depending on the routing of this vessel, it may be detected by another nation. That information would be shared, and as that particular vehicle would start to approach North America, depending on where it was going, either a joint search plan and action plan would be developed or, if it was proceeding specifically to one nation, generally speaking either Canada or the United States would deal with that.
Generally, what happens in this particular aspect is the shortest route to Canada is actually often up through not U.S. territorial waters but through U.S. approaches to territorial waters. Generally speaking, in that case there would be either aircraft or other overhead surveillance systems that would be used primarily. Depending on where it is decided interdiction would be appropriate that would dictate what maritime assets would be used; that is, specifically what ships. It could involve, and has regularly involved, both U.S. naval ships, Canadian naval ships, U.S. Coast Guard and, on occasion, when very close in shore, Royal Canadian Mounted Police vessels as well as the Canadian Coast Guard. There was an example of this type of cooperation approximately three summers ago on the West Coast, which was the summer of significant migration, involving some six vessels in total. Those plans exist and have for some time.
Senator Forrestall: Is cooperation between the our navy and the U.S. navy good in these matters because of mutual consent?
VAdm. Buck: It is a combination of operational-level agreements that are in place as well as the fact that navies and coast guards historically work together. We have done so for many years. That working together allows you, as LGen. Jeffery has stated, to develop a common operational doctrine and tactics. On the maritime side, in the Western world there are really two sets of maritime doctrine tactics: NATO and the U.S. variant of that, which is very similar. As we always work that on a day-to-day basis, those links and that connectivity is there.
Senator Forrestall: VAdm. Buck, is there a requirement to upgrade Canadian maritime regulations regarding shipping entering and operating in Canadian territorial waters?
VAdm. Buck: Clearly, the Department of Defence Canadian Forces is not the lead in this area.
Senator Forrestall: I am aware of that.
VAdm. Buck: However, through an interdepartmental marine working group that has come into existence post September 11, there are a number of efforts to do exactly that, and there are also a number of international agreements that are calling for more strict reporting requirements.
Senator Forrestall: Why have the Great Lakes become so important?
VAdm. Buck: One of the difficulties about internal waters, which is the Great Lakes that are shared between ourselves and the United States, is that your response time, if you have an issue, is much shorter because they are already in your heartland. There is much traffic moving in those particular waters and many jurisdictions are involved. They are not just at the national level, they are now, in some cases, at the provincial and municipal levels. It is a more complex issue because there are more players and there are many maritime units moving around. The net effect comes down to being able to share information so that you can pull the picture together so that you all have a common understanding of what is happening so that you can deal with it most expeditiously.
Senator Forrestall: What are the new U.S. regulations? Can you give us a brief indication as to what prompted the U.S. to implement these new procedures?
VAdm. Buck: There are not just new U.S. requirements, there are international reporting requirements. The main factor is the new requirement for reporting 96 hours prior to arriving at American or Canadian territorial waters — to declare yourself — and then there is more stringent reporting once you are inside territorial waters.
Senator Forrestall: The 96 hours would presumably cover transit from blue water to the lake.
VAdm. Buck: That is correct.
Senator Forrestall: Do the new U.S. regulations reply to all vessels operating in the Great Lakes?
VAdm. Buck: They apply to vessels that ultimately will either transit to a U.S. port or through U.S. waters.
Senator Forrestall: What measures should be introduced by Canada?
VAdm. Buck: There is work to ensure that there are parallel regulations in place, such that arrangements in the Great Lakes are consistent to better enhance the ability to deal with an incident, particularly when it involves a transit from one nation to another.
Senator Forrestall: Is that process underway?
VAdm. Buck: The process to put that in place is underway, but the Department of Defence, Canadian Forces, has the lead on that.
Senator Forrestall: What affect would the American tightening of security of their coastlines have on Canadian coastlines?
VAdm. Buck: We share information effectively, but at the operational level, any increased reporting requirement that the United States might impose to transit their waters would allow us to share that information and thus have it. Similarly, any increased regulation in respect of our waters would similarly allow us to share that information with the United States. It would allow a more timely reaction to any specific threat.
Senator Forrestall: How does the St. Lawrence Seaway handle these matters in respect of notice prior to entry?
VAdm. Buck: There are notice requirements prior to entering the seaway, and there is, for the length of the seaway, a strictly controlled regimen that has been in place for a number of years.
Senator Forrestall: The 96-hour notice would presumably place a vessel somewhere in international waters, correct?
VAdm. Buck: The ship would be in international waters; hence, there would be time to assess the vessel and any information relevant to it. As well, there would be time to develop a plan to react, if it were necessary.
Senator Forrestall: You talked about vessels at sea having a 30-mile visual capability. What is it for other vessels, other than the ancient combatant Sea Kings?
VAdm. Buck: A ship has a 12- to 15-mile visual range. For surface radar, or radar detection of a surface contact, a ship would have a 20- to 30-mile range. In any search, an aircraft, including the Sea King, extends that range extensively. In fact, Sea Kings are routinely used when we perform an interdiction or interception because, in fact, they allow us to have that enhanced range. The primary vehicle for wide area surveillance is the maritime patrol aircraft, the Aurora, which is a superb surveillance platform.
Senator Forrestall: How many surveillance flights are done, and where? How many hours of information can you get from an Aurora, apart from training flights?
VAdm. Buck: The issue, as it relates to flying hours and prosecuting a given incident is related to queuing — to knowing that something is out there. Flying continuously, or for that matter ships patrolling continuously, is an expensive way to have a radar picture, and that is all you will have. You will not necessarily be able to identify the vessel. The key is to have a specific piece of information and/or multiple sources that would allow you to see, on a radar screen, a radar contact and associate it with a specific identity, thereby knowing what it is.
The Chairman: Do the U.S. regulations apply to pleasure craft moving back and forth across the Great Lakes?
VAdm. Buck: I am not sure how far down in size they regulate, but I will obtain that answer for you.
The Chairman: Could you extend it down to places such as the Thousand Islands, where there seems to be a great deal of traffic across the seaway. Vice-Admiral, you told us the range of a Cessna. How wide is the radar range on an Aurora?
VAdm. Buck: I do not think I said anything about Cessnas but rather about Sea Kings. Aircraft radar depends on the altitude — the higher the altitude, the greater the range. In the Aurora, it is normal for the radar picture to extend potentially in diameter to 50-plus miles. However, it is 50-plus miles in a circle, so you begin to cover a huge area. The higher you fly, the greater the range. It also depends on the physical size of the contact. A small contact, i.e. a small fishing boat, would have a relatively short range, whereas a super tanker would have a significant range, well in excess of that.
The Chairman: Typically, what altitude would it cruise at?
VAdm. Buck: It would depend on the objective of the search. If you simply wanted to know how many contacts were out there, you would probably fly at a significant altitude of above 3,000 feet. If you were actually targeting a specific contact, you would probably shadow and come down lower and use some other systems in the Aurora associated with radar and electronic systems to try to identify the contact. Further, if you wished to positively identify the contact, you would actually fly a visual search.
Senator Wiebe: The majority of my questions today were to be on the interoperability of our land forces, and I thank you for answering many of those in your presentation.
However, I believe that I can speak for all members of this committee, and surely for all Canadians, when I say how proud we are of the conduct of your soldiers in Afghanistan. They did a tremendous job and they did Canada proud. I would ask that you convey the feelings of this committee to the personnel, if you could.
Following on that theme, I recently noted a comment in one our national newspapers that basically stated that our soldiers performed so well within the limitations of the Canadian army they actually did themselves a disservice by getting the job done in superb fashion. Given the present problems of the army, it was suggested that they performed so well that they may have given the government an out; in other words, the government can now say that the army can perform any task that has been assigned with the current resources that they have. My feeling, of course, is that it does not have enough resources. I would be interested in your thoughts on that premise.
LGen. Jeffery: I certainly will do my best to pass on the committee's comments to the Third Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
To address your question, I have read the same articles, with some interest. I suppose I would ask the question: Do people expect us to fail? We teach our soldiers, and we, as an institution, run as a profession on the premise that we do not put troops into harm's way and we do not undertake missions unless we have a high potential for success. Those are the kinds of decisions that my colleagues in the other services, the Chief of the Defence Staff and I make before we commit troops into battle — that they can, in fact, do the job.
However, one should not assume that because we have made those decisions that that necessarily means the whole institution is not without its difficulties. I will not go over that ground. I have already appeared before the committee and provided you that perspective.
In a sense, we have a ``can do'' attitude. It is our great strength. I would not want it to become a weakness, as well. I would hope that we as a senior leadership in the government are astute enough to recognize where the weaknesses are and do something about those.
Senator Wiebe: Thank you very much for that response. I appreciate it because, while your experience within our Armed Forces is far greater than mine, I certainly concur in what you say. I do not think that our Armed Forces have ever deployed any of our troops into any situation where they have not been well trained prior to taking on that task.
In terms of resources, part of our problem may be a lack of personnel and the inability to handle all of the requests that our government appears to be giving our peacekeepers in regard to rotation and proper time at home after serving.
If you were given a dramatic increase in budget, and it was directed directly towards the army, would you use that for training? Would you use that for increased personnel? How would you address that?
LGen. Jeffery: I have to place a caveat on my reply in that that is a hypothetical situation, and I am always a little uncomfortable dealing with hypothetical situations. The major areas that are of greatest concern to us are very much in the people dimension, first and foremost. We do not have enough people to maintain the levels of commitment that we have maintained historically. That is part of it. We have a desperate need for more collective training. We are working to do that, but resource constraints very much limit that. Sustaining the size of the structure as we currently have it, would be in the top three priorities.
That does not even deal with us moving forward. We must, as an institution — not only the army but also all three of the services in the Canadian Forces — modernize to be able to remain relevant to the defence needs of this country.
The first priority has to be sustaining that which we have, and then investing in the future. That would be my view as to where any additional monies should go.
Senator Wiebe: I will ask you a question I asked of previous witnesses. The concept of the general public of the cost of defence and security of this country is that the majority of the budget goes towards buying equipment such as planes, tanks or Coyotes. Yet, more than 50 per cent of our defence budget is spent on salaries.
It costs the same amount of money to train a regular army personnel as it does a reservist. With the resources that we have, why are we not putting more emphasis on our reservists than we have in the past? I might qualify that by saying I am extremely pleased about the fact that the entire reservist unit will be going on rotation in Bosnia. I believe that they will be leaving shortly. It is a tremendous show of confidence in the reservists and in their capabilities.
LGen. Jeffery: As I believe the committee knows, part of the department's strategy is to improve our reserves, including our land force reserve. A land force reserve restructure strategy was published almost two years ago. It charts a course for the future. Of course, there are resource issues here that have to be dealt with in order to be able to achieve that, but certainly the intent is inherent in that overall strategy.
We are continually looking for opportunities to use our reservists more and more. The example that you cited is, in fact, a full company of an infantry battalion that will be going into Bosnia this fall.
The difficulty, of course, is the question of how far can one go. Reservists are by nature part-timers. They are Canadian citizens who have other jobs. They have families and other pressures. Yes, they will come and answer the call. They will commit to doing what the nation needs, but when we are asking them to come back time and time again, the question ultimately has to be: ``How much do we really think we can get as a return on investment when we are asking reservists to go on a regular basis?''
This service is not answering the one big call in a lifetime such as World War I or II. This is a regular operation.
In regards to cost effectiveness, a well-trained reservist and well-trained regular soldier cost the same because the training requirements, if they are going achieve the same level, are the same. The difficulty in trying to provide this analysis is that the majority of our reservists are not at the necessary level of training to go off and do the specific operations we require of them. Much more long-term planning is required. The company that will be going into Bosnia this fall has been undergoing full-time training for six months.
When looking at it as a dollar investment, the amount of money required to train them is the same as regular forces. When we send them, we pay them exactly the same as we do a regular force soldier.
Senator Wiebe: Is it not true that regular army personnel also have wives and families? They are asked to rotate more often. Is it not true as well that a regular army personnel prior to deployment goes through that same intensive six-month training? If a reservist or regular personnel does not pass that training, he does not go.
LGen. Jeffery: You are correct, certainly in terms of your final statement regarding regular reserve personnel. If they are not successful in training, they do not go.
Yes, all troops going into operation have a level of training beforehand. However, we have a special challenge with a reservist. We must bring each and every individual up to the requisite level commensurate with rank and position prior to undergoing a significant collective training to get him or her ready.
That six-months of continual training has to be added to, in some cases, some quite extensive individual training to get certain individuals ready. Private soldiers are not a problem. The difficulty is with NCOs and officers. An old NCO asked me many years ago how long it takes to grow a Sergeant with 20 years of experience. The answer is 20 years. You cannot take a reservist and provide a relatively short amount of training and get that level of experience and maturity.
You noted earlier how well our troops in Afghanistan have done. Most people do not realize that the average age of those soldiers in that battalion was 32 years. That is a remarkably high level for an infantry regiment. It represents a remarkably high level of experience. You cannot get that out of reservists overnight.
I do not want to send the wrong message, senator. I am very supportive of the reserves, and am, indeed, trying to push our reserves to do more. However, we must all be realistic about how far we can get and how quickly we can get there.
Senator Wiebe: There is to doubt that we must have a mix of regular and reservists. That is very important. As was suggested in our last report, we are under resourced in this country in regards to our regular Armed Forces personnel, and we called on the government to increase that amount.
I would suggest that that same increase should be directed towards our reservists because we will be able to raise an army, navy or air force in the future as we did in the First and Second World Wars and the Korean War. During those campaigns, the training for the majority of our soldiers consisted of giving them a rifle, teaching them to shoot it and to march and obey orders. Then we sent them off to war. The equipment that our Armed Forces personnel uses today is of such high-technical quality that the training required on operate that equipment is certainly more complex.
If Canada were ever invaded, we would first lose our highly trained regular army personnel. Who would be there to replace that front line? Our first causalities would be our highly trained personnel. We must have adequate training in place for the reserves.
I would like to hear your comments regarding that. I will be recommending that more funds be directed not only towards our regular forces, but also towards the reserves.
LGen. Jeffery: Senator, I agree with your comments in terms of the challenge here. The nature of the business is such that a minimal amount of training and training on a rifle is not adequate any more. At the end of the day, the overall capability is very much dependent on the government's objectives and the amount of resources it provides to the Department of National Defence. My challenge, in the case of the army particularly, is to recommend the right balance between the two, in line with given tasks and resources.
As anyone sitting here would say, I would love to have both bigger. I think the balance we have now is not bad. It probably needs to have some more reservists, but without significantly changing the way in which the army runs, and that means changing the expectations of government and the resourcing of the army itself, you cannot substantially change that balance without causing significant difficulties.
Senator Day: Gentlemen, could you tell me what the term ``command and control'' means? I often see that used in your material, but what are you intending to communicate to me?
LGen. Jeffery: Generally, it would be the same in all Canadian Forces, but in its details the substance would differ significantly. Command is the ability to convey to subordinates the direction you want to go. If I worked for VAdm. Buck, his challenge would be to impart all elements of what I am supposed to do and, at the same time, provide me the motivation to be able to achieve it. In an army context, ``command'' is convincing a group of soldiers to charge a machine gun up a hill.
``Control'' is very much a technical issue. It is how you direct the many different parts of a complex military institution, and requires information. VAdm. Buck has talked about surveillance: understanding where an enemy is, where your own troops are, communicating that information, analyzing plans or changes to plans, and then communicating all of that in terms of direction to subordinate soldiers or organizations.
Senator Day: So it is command?
LGen. Jeffery: Command is a human issue; control is the mechanical or technical dimension of that.
VAdm. Buck: In a generic context, the concepts are obviously the same. I agree with LGen. Jeffery that ``command'' is vested in the commander. Control is the detail of doctrine, procedures, plans and systems that allow you to share information. Through that common doctrine, procedure and planning, you control more specific action, whether that action is to arrest illegal migrants, to arrest another ship, whatever that action is, down to the level of a specific engagement of a weapon. It is a range of things. It is a human being; it is plans and doctrine; it is also some very technical systems.
Senator Day: In military terms, you always hear those terms together. You talk about equipment as being ``command and control equipment,'' for example.
VAdm. Buck: There has been an historic difference in services. The association of command and control probably originated, to a certain extent, with the navy. In the very early days of digital systems in our ships, we tended to call them command and control systems. What we failed to appreciate is that they are more on the control side. It is a hierarchy of activity, starting at the top with the commander and the human being.
Senator Day: That is helpful, particularly from a navy point of view.
VAdm. Buck, as I understand it, you have operations centres at Esquimalt and in Halifax, one for each coast.
VAdm. Buck: That is correct.
Senator Day: You indicate that ships are not really good surveillance tools, that there are other surveillance tools. You try to take information in from various sources; the ship is more an interception tool.
VAdm. Buck: A ship is not a good tool for unalerted surveillance, that is, if you are not looking for anything specific. If you have some specificity to a target, a ship is clearly part of that surveillance pattern. However, its primary role would be interception.
Senator Day: We were informed in one of our hearings that there is really only one flypast up North per year now, if that. There are no naval ships going up there. We had hoped to send a submarine, but that will not work for a while. How do you gather information as to what might be happening in the Canadian North?
VAdm. Buck: Again, day-to-day surveillance decisions are made based on the level of threat assessment. For example, there are some tanker exclusion zones off the West Coast of North America where there is a very high potential for environmental accident. Those are more frequently patrolled because there is a higher level of risk and threat. In the North, we do not fly as frequently as we would clearly like, because of resources. However, whenever we have information on a specific issue, we do put the required activity to it.
It is true the navy has been absent from the Arctic for some number of years, given that the bulk of our warships are relatively thin-skinned. This summer, for the first time in a number of years, there have been two maritime coastal defence vessels in the Arctic — as we speak, actually.
Senator Day: We were left with the impression, and if it is wrong we should clarify it, that there are not enough Auroras flying. They might do the odd routine, but they are more often sent out when some unidentified vessel is reported. They go out and do an intercept at that time, to find out what it is.
VAdm. Buck: Your last point is absolutely correct, as it relates to availability of Auroras. Our fleet is stretched for a number of reasons. It has a routine domestic maritime surveillance commitment. It is also committed to operations in the Gulf of Oman and the northern Arabian Sea. The aircraft is also going through a large-scale modernization, which takes airframes away from operational service.
Senator Day: Given the information you have just told us about what your ships and the Auroras are able to do, are you satisfied that there is a sufficient amount of information to have an overall situational awareness of the area?
VAdm. Buck: We have, generally speaking, some of the best information-sharing connections with our allies, with the United States in particular, and with our government departments. If specific information is there, it will be assessed and the appropriate action will be taken on it. However, it is not a no-risk scenario. There is always a risk that something will appear about which you have no information. No nation with a large coastline has the resources to continuously fly or continuously monitor its maritime space. There will always be a level of risk assessment.
For example, even in the United States prior to September 11, the bulk of maritime surveillance off the U.S. coast was not a responsibility of the United States military. It was not a responsibility of the U.S. navy; it was a responsibility of the U.S. Coast Guard. At the time, prior to September 11, most of that coast guard surveillance actually was forward deployed away from U.S. coasts elsewhere.
We are not in a unique situation. We can always use more, yes. Certainly, as it relates to surveillance assets, they are stretched. We are trying to introduce a wider variety of surveillance asset, not just depending on one particular asset such as the maritime patrol aircraft or Aurora. We are looking at systems such as a prototype system in place on the East Coast called a high frequency surface wave radar system. We are looking at bringing that into operational service and building a whole system of radars on both coasts. We will be doing some trials to determine whether it would lend itself to Arctic use.
It is not just military pieces. In addition to military aircraft, there are aircraft that are contracted normally through the Canadian Coast Guard that do surveillance flights up and down the coast on a regular basis. That information we share and pull together in our operation centre.
Generally speaking, on both coasts, what we call the common operating picture actually clearly exists in both of those centres. If an action needs to be taken, while we will always have a role to play, it often is a coordination role. It often is to provide the vehicle to allow the interdiction. However, the lead department or lead authority generally will be someone else. It will generally be the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, if it is an illegal activity. If it is an immigration issue, it will normally be Citizenship and Immigration Canada. However, we ultimately pull the pieces together.
Senator Day: We read fairly frequently of sailing craft, such as one I recently read about in a harbour or a bay in Nova Scotia, that are intercepted and contain illegal drugs. In other cases, there are illegal aliens coming in. We hear about such things. On many occasions, these illegal aliens are detected because someone living along the coast sees seen a strange boat doing things that do not look familiar. Is that part of your surveillance, or does that just happen?
VAdm. Buck: No, that is actually part of our surveillance. There are what are called coastal watch systems in place on both coasts of this country, where citizens are made aware to report if they see something strange.
The issue at the moment is that without specific information, it is difficult — indeed, impossible — to physically search and assess every vessel. At the moment, there is no international tracking system where every ship, for example, can be tracked wherever it is. That system does not currently exist. There are some levels of such a system. They tend to apply more to large merchant ships, where governments, because they control trade, can impose requirements. The smaller the vessel, the more difficult it gets. Frankly, for someone who does not wish to report, that is also entirely possible. The key to that scenario is having specific intelligence or information that there is something that you need to assess and do something about in that particular vessel.
Senator Day: Since September 11, have you increased your contacts with other sources of intelligence and information in order to improve the picture, the situational awareness for each of your operational centres? What things have taken place since September 11 to help in the anti-terrorist activity?
VAdm. Buck: There have been two levels. There has been a level of increased military sharing of information on specific threats, both military and asymmetric. As well, there has been an increased ability to share information between departments and agencies of the Canadian government and, indeed, between departments and agencies of the Canadian and the United States governments.
Senator Day: Do you need more resources to do your job effectively, or are you satisfied you are doing it as effectively as reasonably possible?
VAdm. Buck: The systems that exist in our operation centres are, generally speaking, adequate to the task. The issue, however, is building electronic bridges to share information with other government departments. In some cases, there undoubtedly will be a bill for personnel, probably less on the military side but more for other government departments, to allow them to provide that same enhanced focus where they have a jurisdictional responsibility.
Senator Day: Is there a development of some sort of a marine strategy that involves all the different departments?
VAdm. Buck: Yes. Since September 11, there is an interdepartmental marine security working group, which involves all the concerned departments that are working to try to pull together a more common approach to ensure a more seamless surveillance picture.
Senator Day: Does that seem to be working well?
VAdm. Buck: We are making significant headway.
Senator Day: Is the navy part of that?
VAdm. Buck: The navy is part of that.
The Chairman: VAdm. Buck, could you clarify for us the 96-hour notification question? Does it apply to the Great Lakes as well? Would a vessel, for example, leaving Toronto for Buffalo have to give 96 hours' notice?
VAdm. Buck: To my knowledge, yes.
The Chairman: Is there an international standard of 96 hours' notice that applies to all ports?
VAdm. Buck: There is certainly now this requirement in North America. In that sense, it is international. Whether it has actually gone into effect in Europe and elsewhere, I do not know, but I can ascertain that for you.
The Chairman: Any port in North America requires a 96-hour notification before a vessel arrives. Is that correct?
VAdm. Buck: That is correct.
The Chairman: What happens if one fails to give the notification?
VAdm. Buck: Technically, they would be barred from entering the territorial waters. That is what should happen.
The Chairman: Let us talk about a ship coming from Buffalo to Toronto that does not give the 96 hours' notification. Let us assume that it is a 40-foot long pleasure craft. It leaves Buffalo, heading for Toronto, and does not say a word. Tell me what happens.
VAdm. Buck: The 96-hour reporting requirement from a Canadian perspective is entry into Canadian territorial waters from offshore. I will verify whether it applies to the Great Lakes. I am not sure on the Canadian side whether it does or not.
The Chairman: If the vessel were going from Toronto to Buffalo, it would apply?
VAdm. Buck: Yes.
The Chairman: What would happen?
VAdm. Buck: One of two things would happen. As there is also a vessel tracking management system in place, the vessel would be tracked. As it tried to enter U.S. territorial waters, it would either be turned away and denied entry into the U.S. port or it would be arrested.
The Chairman: Whose tracking system would be in operation, ours or the Americans'?
VAdm. Buck: It is a combination of both.
The Chairman: Where is it physically located?
VAdm. Buck: There are a number. They are called vessel traffic management systems, and they overlap. There are some Canadian and some American. Effectively, a vessel that is travelling through waters controlled by a vessel traffic management system is handed off from one to another. The vessel has to report.
The Chairman: Would you describe it as a seamless system, covering all of the Great Lakes, where people on both sides know where the vessels are?
VAdm. Buck: It is not seamless. Reporting requirements do not necessarily apply to all vessels. Again, it relates to such things as size of vessels.
The Chairman: Could you advise us, then, how far down it goes?
VAdm. Buck: I will.
The Chairman: If I understood the briefing I received from you earlier, it goes all the way down to pleasure craft in terms of the Americans?
VAdm. Buck: Yes, but I will clarify with some precision for you the exact American regulation.
Senator Wiebe: LGen. Jeffery, I know that much of our training in Canada is done up to the company level. Do we have the facilities to train at the brigade level? Is there any advantage for us to train at that level? To add to that question, do any of our NATO countries train at the brigade level? Is there any advantage to us being able to work together with them at that level?
LGen. Jeffery: First, the battle group and brigade level are important levels to undertake training. As I stated previously to the committee, my firm belief is that we must do more battle group- and brigade-level training. It is only by undertaking training at that level that you practice all the skills and develop the expertise to maintain the type of quality we have had, as you said yourself, in places like Afghanistan in the past.
It has been in the order of 10 years since the Canadian army has done any significant training at the brigade level. Over time, you lose that skill, that expertise.
The question relates to what kind of training, in a brigade context, is undertaken. Many years ago we used to spend a lot of time on exercises — lots of troops, lots of live firing. In this day and age, given what technology can do for us, that is not necessarily the case. We employ a variety of simulators to exercise the command and control of the battle group and brigade level to exercise the leaders. We are purchasing, and have intentions to establish in Western Canada, a manoeuvre training centre where we use laser-based force-on-force training systems where you do not have to use any ammunition at all. It is all instrumented. When you get into that type of environment, you can actually undertake battle-group and even some brigade training relatively quickly. You do not have to spend a lot of time doing it. The important thing is to achieve the objectives.
Many of our NATO allies are doing the same kind of things. The Americans have a couple of major instrumented range areas in the United States where they undertake that training. We do not participate in them or for the most part have not in recent years principally because they do not have the capacity to take us.
The British actually have, as I think you are probably well aware, a major training area in Suffield, Alberta, where they do battle-group-level training, although on occasion they do undertake some brigade-level training. We have not participated in them with any number of troops because of our tempo. We have not been able to take advantage of the opportunities.
One of the major challenges for us, given our tempo and resources, is to get a regular training regime that ensures that, over time, all parts of the army achieve training at both the battle-group and, ultimately, the brigade levels to maintain that expertise over the long term. That is an extremely important part of what we do. Without it, all that human and equipment investment is, in my view, largely for naught. Without that training, you do not have capability, you just have organizations.
Senator Wiebe: You mentioned the facilities at Suffield where the British train their troops. Do we have any other bases in Canada that could be used? I am thinking specifically of the one the Germans used up until a year ago in Manitoba. Would that be large enough to allow for brigade exercises?
LGen. Jeffery: The short answer is no. There are only two training areas in Canada that currently have both the size and the type of terrain that allows us to work at the brigade level. Both of those are in Alberta. One is in Suffield; the other is in Wainwright.
We have a number of smaller areas. Shilo, Manitoba, is one. It has the right terrain. It would be extremely difficult to exercise a brigade there even though it is attractive land.
Senator Wiebe: What about Gagetown?
LGen. Jeffery: Gagetown has the right size of area. However, given the topography of New Brunswick, it is mostly covered with trees. It is beautiful, but not practical. We tried over a number of years to fell trees to create a larger manoeuvre area and we created problems for ourselves. Realistically, we cannot make it into the type of manoeuvre area that we need, despite its size.
Senator Wiebe: I notice in your remarks that you say there have been a number of small unit exchanges with the U.S. You say that the U.S. does have facilities, but they would not be large enough or capable of accepting us working together with them. That means, then, that you have given joint training with the U.S. some thought.
LGen. Jeffery: Very much so. Not only some thought, but I have discussed it with my American counterpart. While, in principle, he would like to be able to offer us the opportunity to train at some of their major centres, the reality is that their training centres do no have the capacity to train even their own troops. He has drawn the line. It is not unique to Canada. He does not accept large-scale foreign troop training at their major training centres. Small unit exchanges are okay, but large ones of the sort that we would like to take the opportunity of accepting, he cannot permit.
Senator Wiebe: We have done this now for 10 years. Are we losing anything by not training at the brigade level?
LGen. Jeffery: Very much so. We have a generation of senior leaders now who have not operated even in a training environment. They have not undergone that kind of training. Over time, we are seeing an erosion of some of those key professional soldier skills that are necessary.
We are maintaining some of them by working in assimilated environments, but need to do some of it on the ground.
Senator Wiebe: Is there any possibility of renting facilities? The reason I mention this is I was involved with 38th Brigade Reserve Unit. They leased the facilities at Fort Ripley, Minnesota. I believe they took as many of their brigade down as they could. They said that down there, the size of the base was such that two tank battles could go on at one time and they would not interfere with each other. Have you considered that possibility?
LGen. Jeffery: In terms of the specific base you speak of, I have not.
Senator Wiebe: I am using that as an example.
LGen. Jeffery: We are well aware of the length and breadth of training facilities that are available in the United States. The difficulty is that most of the bases of which you speak are largely designed for what we call range firing. You could actually have two tank firing areas, but the broad manoeuvre where you are actually firing on the move takes a lot more space than most bases have.
I am only aware of one major base that will allow that to go on, namely, the national training centre of some deserts of California. There are some proving grounds, for example, White Sands Missile Range and that type of environment, but they do not actually do any major ground manoeuvres in that area.
Senator Wiebe: I imagine that increased resources would help us fulfil that need for training at the brigade level, or will the simulators do it?
LGen. Jeffery: First, simulators are the way of the future. There is no question about that. My firm belief is that we will get to a stage where we will probably be able to understand virtually all training in a virtual environment. We are not there yet by a long measure. Until one can actually replicate the sights, sounds, smells and emotion of battle, you cannot get there. What we have seen already, certainly in my time in service, is a shift from live fire training to an increasingly proportion of it being in an assimilated environment.
VAdm. Buck may want to talk about this from a naval point of view, where simulators have been used longer and in a more sophisticated environment. It is only that the last decade or so that we have been able to use simulators in a land environment. It will probably be another 10 years minimum before the technology will be at the stage where we can eliminate or reduce significantly the amount of live firing we do.
The Chairman: General, you mentioned there were some difficulties getting an invitation to go to the United States. Did you reciprocate and invite your opposite number to come up and train where we have facilities that are not being used?
LGen. Jeffery: As I said in my opening remarks, Mr. Chairman, we do receive requests on a fairly regular basis for training. I would not want to suggest to Senator Wiebe that we do not do training; I was speaking in the context of high-level training for the brigade and battle groups.
The Chairman: That is what I was referring to.
LGen. Jeffery: The answer is ``Yes, but in context.'' I asked him if we would be able to use facilities. His response, as I have articulated, is that, once we have a Canadian manoeuvre training centre on line of the sort that they have in the national training centre, and there would be an opportunities for some quid pro quo, without commitment, his response was, yes. Once we get to that point, he would certainly be more willing to consider those opportunities.
Senator Atkins: On our travels, generally speaking, we have found that military personnel are fairly happy with pay and with the efforts to improve the quality of life issues in the military. We found a lot of frustration, however, with training and with the lack of personnel.
I think you have a real challenge to present to your military, especially in the army, with respect to the whole notion of simulating because, as was pointed out to us, many people join the service for the excitement. There is tremendous frustration in many of the units because they cannot go out in the field and do what they thought they would be doing. Do you have any indication of a morale problem in that respect?
This summer, when the Chief of the Defence Staff made the comment that the military could not expect any increases in funding, he must have known something that we do not know. I would think that would send a wrong message to many of the permanent forces personnel who are trying to make career decisions. Would you care to comment on that?
LGen. Jeffery: I stated before the committee in the past that the Canadian Armed Forces are stretched. The army, specifically, is stretched such that we are effectively living beyond our means. At the end of the day, my challenge, along with my colleagues and the CDS, is to develop the best Canadian Forces army, navy and air force that the dollars that the government gives us will buy. In that context, I understand the soldiers' frustration and, indeed, I share some of it personally.
If we cannot obtain the funding then, at the very least, we must balance the equation so that the soldiers we do have receive the appropriate training — and that includes the excitement that you mentioned. Young Canadian men and women do not put a uniform on just for the pay. It is a unique life style. They do it because it is exciting and special. If we do not ensure that it remains special for them, we will not keep them. At the end of the day, however, money does not solve every problem, but it certainly solves many of them. If we do not have the money, then we have to find the right balance.
In respect of training, I take your point that you cannot, through the use of simulators, create realism and excitement. My comment to the earlier question was that in time we would get there. When we have a situation where we can put not just individual soldiers but whole units of them in a virtual environment, and they actually feel like they are in battle, then we will have something good. I think technology will get us there, perhaps not in my time in uniform, but it will get us there nonetheless. At that point, there will be realistic training without hurting soldiers and even without firing any rounds.
Senator Atkins: You have been quoted as talking about restructuring, which is part of the challenge, because of the resources and personnel. We went to the Airborne Training Centre, which, I have to tell you, is a very impressive operation and, in real terms, it was not that expensive. Military personnel at different bases tell us that there is a line-up for training. To maintain morale and offer excitement, that is the kind of training that you have to continue to support, even though the whole concept of military strategy is no longer significant in terms of using airborne troops.
LGen. Jeffery: I would agree in principle that we must find interesting, exciting forms of training, both individually and collectively. That could, and may well, include parachute training. However, we are facing such significant resource issues that no amount of money is insignificant. We are talking about difficult decisions, potentially, if the money is not there.
Senator Atkins: I believe that they suggested that operation costs about $4 million per year.
LGen. Jeffery: I do not have the figures at my fingertips Mr. Chairman. If the committee wants them, I could provide them. The centre is an embedded infrastructure with numbers of people, operations and maintenance costs, and it actually costs more than that, if the full package is totalled.
Senator Cordy: VAdm. Buck, you used the term ``intelligence queuing.'' I assume you mean ``intelligence to determine risk assessment.'' Is that your definition?
VAdm. Buck: I actually mean it in two ways. There is general intelligence that will allow us to assess an overall risk and then build an appropriate general surveillance plan. For example, I will use the West Coast tanker exclusion zones. With so much merchant oil tanker traffic, there is an ongoing potential threat to the environment. That causes us to focus on a greater surveillance effort in that particular area. When I use the word ``queuing'', I was actually referring to a specific piece of information that says something is coming your way, not in a general way but in a specific way, that has the potential to be a significant threat. In that queuing, as we call it, you now have some specific information that causes you to build a detailed plan to physically locate something specific and then build a plan to do something about it.
Senator Cordy: Earlier, there was a question about coordination of intelligence between government departments, which you said does occur. Who is in charge of that coordination of intelligence? Is there one department or is the department that receives the information responsible for disseminating it to the other departments? How does that work in terms of coordinating the information?
VAdm. Buck: Again, it would depend on the kind of information, its classification and its relevance to other departments. There is no simple answer to that question, and I am not trying to avoid the question. If it were a military threat, clearly that would be shared on military networks and between militaries. If it were a threat related to illegal activity, the RCMP, generally, would generate that information and share it with the departments that would take action on it.
There are in place, on both coasts, not only the maritime operation centres that we run but also interdepartmental working groups that deal with this on a regular basis. The desire now, however, is to enhance that capability, not just at the local level but across the nation on a national level.
Senator Cordy: There have been a number of articles about the future of the military, and particularly about the army. What will the army look like in 20 years time? Have you given any thought to what our future army could look like?
LGen. Jeffery: Yes, senator, I have. Indeed, I briefed the Chair several months ago on the army strategy that we have developed. We are working to move forward to what we refer to as ``the army of tomorrow,'' where we will see, over the next decade, significant changes in its structure and the way in which the army runs.
Those changes will be driven by a variety of issues, but the two dominant ones are the changing nature of land warfare and the proliferation of new technologies in the land environment. We are comfortable in society with many high levels of technology. From a military point of view, most people, particularly those who have been in the air and maritime environments for many years, do not realize that those technologies have not been resident, by and large, in land warfare — in armies — principally due to size and cost.
As size comes down and, in relative terms, cost falls, you are seeing many of those technologies being introduced into land warfare. That was a long-winded way of saying that the modernization that the navies and air forces of the world have seen over the last 50 years is only now starting to come about in armies. It is launching us forward a significant amount.
It is very difficult intellectually to get your mind around how to do all that. There is much hard work in developing the right types of doctrines, tactics, techniques and procedures. There is much work in training and developing soldiers and units to be able to operate in that environment.
Of course, doing that in an environment of uncertainty in terms of the international stage and a degree of uncertainty in terms of how many dollars are available is a challenge.
I would love the opportunity to talk to you about that in more detail, but short answer is yes, with more to come.
Senator Cordy: Do you have discussions with our allies concerning the future?
LGen. Jeffery: Very much so. I spoke earlier about the NATO and the ABCA fora. I would say that, of the two, it is the ABCA fora, from an army-to-army point of view, that has the greatest value. Our American, British, Australian and New Zealand allies are at the same sort of level in terms of armies — not in size, but in terms of quality and approach. We are all facing very similar problems. If we have the same problem, we are working to try to minimize the work and find many of the same solutions.
Senator Cordy: Thank you.
The Chairman: I would like to thank you very much, LGen. Jeffrey and VAdm. Buck. The discussion has been very instructive to the committee today. It has been very helpful in providing us information for the report on which we are working. We appreciate your attendance here. We look forward to having you back before us again before too long.
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The committee adjourned.