Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 15 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Monday, April 28, 2003
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 6:00 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: Honourable senators, today the committee will hear testimony on Canadian coastal defence and security.
I am a senator from Ontario and I chair the committee.
Also present is the distinguished senator from Nova Scotia, Senator Michael Forrestall. Senator Forrestall has served the constituents of Dartmouth for the past 37 years, first as their member of the House of Commons and then as their senator. Throughout his parliamentary career, he has followed defence matters and served on various defence-related parliamentary committees, including the 1993 special joint committee on the future of the Canadian Forces.
Let me introduce the other senators who are here with us. Senator Jane Cordy is from Nova Scotia. She was an accomplished educator with an extensive record of community involvement before coming to the Senate in 2000. She is also a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, which recently released a landmark report on health care and is now studying mental health. She was also recently elected vice-chair of the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association.
Senator Joe Day is from New Brunswick. A successful lawyer and businessman, he was appointed to the Senate in 2001. Senator Day is deputy chair of both the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs and the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. He also sits on the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications and the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. He was recently elected to the Canadian NATO Parliamentary Association as one of its councillors.
Senator Banks is from Alberta. He is well known to Canadians as one of our most accomplished and versatile musicians and entertainers. He was appointed to the Senate in 2000. Senator Banks chairs the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. Currently, that committee is studying nuclear safety and control.
Our committee is the first permanent Senate committee mandated to examine security and defence. Over the past 18 months, we have completed a number of reports, beginning with ``Canadian Security and Military Preparedness.'' That study, which was tabled in February 2002, examined the major defence and security issues facing Canada.
The Senate then asked our committee to examine the need for a national security policy. So far, we have released three reports on various aspects of national security. The first, ``Defence of North America: A Canadian Responsibility,'' was published in September 2002. The second report, ``For an Extra 130 Bucks....Update on Canada's Military Financial Crisis: A View From the Bottom Up,'' was published in November of 2002. Third and, most recently, is ``The Myth of Security at Canada's Airports,'' published in January 2003.
The committee is continuing its long-term evaluation of Canada's ability to contribute to security and defence in North America. As part of this work, the committee has been holding hearings on the federal government's support of the men and women across the country who respond first to emergencies and disasters. However, the committee has decided to give priority to an ongoing evaluation of Canada's ability to defend its territorial waters and help police the continental coastline.
These hearings update an earlier report, ``Defence of North America: A Canadian Responsibility,'' published in September 2002, which found Canadian coastal defence efforts to be largely ad hoc and fragmentary.
Our first witness this evening will be Mr. Peter Haydon.
Mr. Haydon, we are pleased that you could attend before us and are grateful for the paper you have prepared for our consideration. Welcome to the committee. I understand you have a short statement you would like to make. We look forward to hearing it.
Mr. Peter T. Haydon, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Foreign Policy Studies, Dalhousie University, As an individual: Honourable senators, my remarks will be to remind you of the things that are controversial and need to be talked about.
Depending on where one sits today and what one reads, it might seem that Canada's ability to ensure the security of its huge maritime domain, with its ports and waterways and all the associated infrastructure, is very much in doubt. Reading earlier testimony before this committee, I sensed that many people saw the present situation as something new and something that requires new thinking and some new approaches.
From my rather pragmatic approach, this is a little radical; in addition, it ignores recent Canadian history. Not only has Canada been deeply involved in defending its coasts and ports on several previous occasions, but also it was very good at it and was able to coordinate those actions with those of the United States. In other words, we have been down this path before.
The first thing to ask is this: What are the realistic threats to homeland security at sea? One fact stands out immediately. Those who would use violence against Canada are no longer just the military forces of another state; the new aggressors may have had military training and may use military equipment, but they are much more likely to be members of terrorist, criminal or other subversive groups motivated by the desire to inflict terror and instability.
We cannot afford to overlook the fact that Canada's relative emptiness outside the main population centres provides many easy venues for supporting and launching terrorist and criminal activities against not only our own citizens but also those of the United States.
With terrorist threats to North America now a reality and international crime on the rise, we have rightly come to look at the maritime dimension of homeland security in a new light. Most people now accept that our national security can be challenged in many ways and in many places. For the most part, our cities, transportation systems and national infrastructure are vulnerable because we simply have not put in place all the processes and systems to guarantee their safety. To do so would be unreasonably expensive.
In the contemporary security environment, there are a number of easily identifiable maritime concerns. These essentially are the safety of shipping, including cargos, using Canadian waters, especially the cruise ships, which are attractive terrorist targets; the vulnerability of port complexes and their related transportation networks; security of offshore installations; safe and legal operation of the fishery; security of isolated and remote communities and installations as well as the security of the uninhabited areas of the coast; and finally, the security of undersea cables, now almost entirely fibre optic, and their shore-side terminals.
To some, this concept of security seems like a siege mentality; however, the reality of the present situation is that being secure requires not only a reduction in vulnerability but also having the necessary capabilities to respond to an incident or a crisis. Another benefit is that being seen by others to be able to respond quickly and efficiently acts as a deterrent.
The heart and soul of an effective maritime security system lies in knowing just what is happening in all the waters under national jurisdiction — a huge undertaking, but one that can be managed. If potential threats can be contained at sea rather than on land, then the security problem is much easier to solve.
To exercise control over our waters, three criteria must be met: First, we must know exactly who is using those waters and for what purpose; second, we must maintain an unequivocal expression of government authority in those waters; and third, we must be able to respond quickly and effectively to violations of the law or to threats to national security. Those are really motherhood statements and are better known by the phrase you will hear frequently — ``surveillance, presence and response.'' That is a concept that has withstood the test of time.
This leads to a logical question: Is it absolutely necessary to exercise full control of all Canadian waters? Unless one can actually respond to all challenges to national security, then one's sovereignty at sea probably could be held in doubt. To respond in that manner would be prohibitively expensive and would not be easy to justify under the present circumstances.
A compromise which I think is of interest to this committee is to maintain a balance of capabilities that allows the government to carry out full surveillance and still make timely and appropriate responses to incidents. By continuously gathering information, the surprise factor can be reduced, thereby allowing a timely response to be made. Maintaining a selective presence in those waters by random patrols thus has both deterrent value and reduces response time.
How do we make it work? This is where we need to do some thinking. As well, we can also draw on a little history.
From my rather academic perspective, an effective coast defence system needs the following structure. It needs a national strategy or policy administered by a single department or agency that in turn is responsible to a national decision-making and oversight body, which is then supported by a comprehensive information-management system used by all participating departments. As well, it needs an integrated command and control system for the direction of operations and the direction of training, with a dedicated staff to assess performance and develop requirements for new and replacement capability. Finally, and most important, there must be adequate surveillance, patrol and response resources. Without those resources, the decision-making and information-management systems are absolutely useless.
Thus, we come to a first bottom line. That is to say, if the government wants an effective coastal security system, it must be willing to pay for the people and the equipment to make it happen.
The question on most people's minds at the moment is this: How effective is the Canadian system today? To answer that question, one needs to know precisely what needs to be accomplished and what contingency capabilities need to be maintained.
Rather than wrestle with obtuse notions of asymmetrical threats and fluctuating international terrorist threat levels, I shall address the question under the assumption that, to meet the broad security objectives I mentioned earlier, essentially in the context of exercising control over Canadian waters and being able to make the ports secure, the government needs to be able to do are the following. First, apprehend, quarantine, if necessary, and search any vessel and its cargo, including people; second, conduct underwater searches of ships, berths and access channels; third, conduct explosive ordnance disposal, EOD, operations; fourth, control all movement on the water and ashore within the confines of a port or in a specified coastal area — that is, basically shut down the system, which may be necessary; fifth, transport specialist teams, such as JTF2 and the RCMP teams, to remote locations and offshore installations; sixth, provide physical security for buildings, structures and facilities, such as land line terminals, bridges, locks, radio stations and all the infrastructure that makes the shipping system work; seventh, gather, analyze and disseminate intelligence and operational information; and finally, detain and interrogate suspects.
This is basic police work in some respects. However, if you are going to use the whole system to make it secure, the above steps have to be taken.
These requirements should be self-evident; if not, we can always talk later about scenarios, to give them more detail.
Assuming that everyone is comfortable with that, how well is Canada doing? As far as I can tell, there is no overarching national strategy or policy for homeland security. Some might argue that the current defence policy serves that purpose, but I strongly disagree. The security problem today is much broader than the mandate of the Department of National Defence. One of the functions of a national strategy is to develop the economic resources and the manpower of the state to sustain its security forces, regulate the distribution of authority between various government departments and establish procedures for coordination, international cooperation and liaison, in particular, with industry. Industry has to take the leading-edge role in applying technology.
In my mind, the national decision-making oversight body does not exist. There are some who would say that through the Interdepartmental Maritime Security Working Group, IMSWG, you could have this. However, for a number of reasons, I do not think this is right. First, because so many departments are involved in the structure, it is necessarily complex and rife with what I will call cultural problems — or, to use Graham Allison's term, ``bureaucratic politics'' — not least of which is the prevailing emphasis in government today on business management rather than performance or delivery of services. This is a syndrome amplified by the lack of a common purpose. Nobody has a single torch they can all follow and say, ``We will do this.'' Second, the IMSWG has no authority and thus cannot direct that actions be taken or equipment purchased, which is essential if there is to be a good system. Third, as with many such committees, the tendency is for departmental commitment to wane once the political emphasis begins to decline. Fourth, and last, the committee has no international cooperation mandate.
The information-management system is essentially there. It is not perfect, but it works. It can meet the requirements of an operation across a wide spectrum of users, but only at the regional level. That naval system has not materialized fully into the national system. This needs to happen if we are to have an effective system. As well, the information- management system is not universally used by all departments. It is a function of choice to use it rather than a function of necessity. We can talk later about information and the management of information.
Although command and control organizations exist regionally, they do so largely because the navy has the necessary infrastructure and invariably takes the leadership role by default. Again, a major obstacle to better integration is the business management culture within the departments where administrative efficiency is invariably rewarded over operational effectiveness. Again, there is a lack of a common vision, which is one of the major hindrances to the whole process.
At the moment, I find it difficult to assess the surveillance and patrol resources because we are working in a unique period where the majority of the naval force is deployed or committed to deployment in the Arabian Sea with Operation Apollo. Thus, the brunt of the contingency capability for coastal defence falls mainly on the narrow shoulders of the 12 maritime coastal defence vessels, MCDVs, and whatever capabilities can be garnered out of the other departments, in particular the Coast Guard.
It is fair to say that enough capacity exists today to respond to a single emergency, but the capacity to sustain operations for any length of time certainly does not exist. The MCDVs and the handful of Coast Guard vessels are slow and of limited endurance. The naval vessels are somewhat hampered in their operations by weather conditions. This is not ideal. To patrol Canadian waters and have an effective response capability under a full range of weather conditions, one needs a modern warship with an integral helicopter. Even then, there are limitations today on how far north the frigates can operate. This is something else that must be looked at for the future.
Also, one must bring into question the ability of the Aurora fleet to carry out the over-ocean surveillance missions and the cost of doing so. At present, the full capability for this is not being used.
If, for instance, a requirement arose today to maintain full control over the approaches to the Gulf of St. Lawrence or the Strait of Juan de Fuca with a companion requirement to operate a quarantine anchorage, I do not think it could be done. I do not think the resources are there to mount that level of capability.
The maritime coastal defence vessels that would have to pick up the patrol and response activities are manned by reservists, and the reserve is not a bottomless manpower pool. The regular force does not have enough people today to take over those vessels without taking ships out of the Arabian Sea and paying them off, which would be stupid. The Coast Guard has little additional capability to offer, and naval teams would probably be required to carry out specific security tasks. The one thing that does seem to be in existence is search teams to examine cargos in the ports. That is a painfully slow process. Hence, it becomes a question of government priority as to what capabilities will be funded.
In conclusion, let me offer some suggestions on the types of initiatives I think need to be provided to produce an effective coastal security structure. First, there must be an overarching strategy, and it needs to be developed with one department named as lead agency. I am afraid this must be DND, despite the fact that it does not have the full security mandate, simply because DND has the contingency planning expertise and a command and control system.
Second, there must be a decision-making and oversight body with direct and immediate access to cabinet on operational matters. De facto, this body must be parliamentary. A Canadian co-chair of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence should also be a member of the committee, simply because, as in the 1940s, much of what Canada plans to do and eventually will do must be coordinated with the Americans.
The navy's information system needs to be adopted universally. This can be done. Much of this is an education problem, but there are some hardware requirements. DND must also do some work on the command and control system to make it a national command and control system for coastal security activities. In this respect, the regional security operations that are essentially functioning on an ad hoc basis at the moment need to be formalized and to be funded if necessary.
The essence of my concerns over resources comes down to a single question: What is the politically acceptable degree of risk? Clearly, it is unrealistic to acquire the complete capability, because it would be unaffordable and would take many years to put in place. Hence, the common sense approach is to make the best use of what exists today and to make provision for systematic enhancement in specific areas.
Here are some things that we should be thinking about. Is it reasonable to rely on the naval reserve to provide the lion's share of the coastal and military support capability? I do not think so. As I said earlier, the reserve is a limited resource and does not have a rapid call-out capability. If a rapid response or a standing patrol capability is needed, it will have to be provided by the regular force or reservists on long-term call out.
Can we rely on the Coast Guard vessels to augment the military capability to be effective surveillance, patrol and response resources? Again, I do not think so. To be blunt, the Coast Guard are merchant mariners and have a completely different range of skills than those required for national security tasks. However, they can provide the means of transportation. They can drive the bus, in other words, for some of those tasks, but a unionized Coast Guard lacks the operational flexibility of the navy.
Then we must ask: Should the navy take over the Coast Guard's constabulary mandate inasmuch as it exists? The answer is no, because the navy does not have the resources to do it at the moment. However, I can foresee a day when this might be considered, but the shift would have to be accompanied by an increase in naval manpower and almost certainly a shipbuilding program to produce a new kind of coastal patrol vessel, one that has the capacity to stay at sea for two to three weeks, in any kind of weather, and go North. Here, the Danish experience with the Greenland patrol vessels might be worth examining.
The final question is this: Is the Maritime patrol aircraft fleet being adequately managed? No, it is not. It is a resource that is being squandered.
That, honourable senators, is enough. Perhaps I am not as pessimistic as you might have expected. My limited optimism is largely a function of my experience as a Cold War contingency planner. As I said at the beginning, we have been down this path before and we did it well. In rebuilding an effective coastal security system, the first thing we should be doing is defining what has to be done in terms of the tasks and the coordination. We should then determine the degree of political risk. Once these are known, it is merely a matter of matching existing capabilities with the work to be done and building on that with a clear vision to the future.
Senator Forrestall: You said a number of interesting things. I confess to some awareness of your views in a general way. My question is perhaps somewhat prejudiced by that.
You say ``no'' to the reserves. You are not suggesting that the reserves can be replaced, or are you?
Mr. Haydon: No, I am not. There is a function for the reserves, but we should not be relying on the reserves to do rapid response tasks. They are civilian sailors who have other jobs and who are not always available to turn out at the drop of a hat to do something. Collectively, as a nation, we have been lucky in the past because, with the higher levels of unemployment, there have been more kids willing to come into the reserve and take a two- or three-year contract. That is probably declining now.
Senator Forrestall: Is the vessel they serve in an adequate vessel for this type of work?
Mr. Haydon: No, it is too small, and its limitations on sea-keeping capabilities limit the seas it can function in. Forty years ago, when I was a young sailor, we used the old World War II frigates, which were nearly twice the size of this vessel, and even then it was a rough ride on the Grand Banks. You need a vessel that has been engineered to meet those water conditions under all forms of storm.
Senator Forrestall: Should that vessel have some ice reinforcement capability?
Mr. Haydon: If we are to take the northern waters seriously, they must. If on the other hand we are to sweep the northern waters aside and not worry about them in the belief that only adventure tourists will use them, then we do not need it. If changing climatic conditions and the potential that those waters might become more used in the longer term are of concern, there is a need to patrol them more frequently.
Senator Forrestall: As climatic changes affect the ice limits in our North, that passageway becomes more attractive for longer periods of the year and it becomes more truly a third coast that we must look at with almost as much concern, because the opening of that passageway will attract the type of development that masks the type of difficulty we are trying to defend against.
Mr. Haydon: I think the scientific community is not yet unanimous on when that might happen. There are some who will say it is happening immediately; others are saying this is just a small pendulum within a bigger one, and things will change again. The research is incomplete, but, clearly, we cannot ignore the North, no matter what happens.
Senator Forrestall: I tend to agree. At some point, you have to cut off developing technology, because of the A, B, C and D planning required for the structure that will house it and be its host.
Would you see it being a ship as big as 2,000 tons?
Mr. Haydon: That is a question for the naval architects. It is for them to determine how much endurance the ship needs, how much equipment it has to carry and whether or not it carries a helicopter. I think 2,000 tons may be a lot on the small side. I think you are looking at a bigger vessel altogether.
Fuel is a major factor in ship design, and if you want a ship to spend several weeks in those parts of the world, it will have to have large fuel tanks.
Senator Forrestall: Are there any other countries in the world, to your knowledge, that use the navy to ensure national security in a total, absolute way within their national waters? Does anyone else do that?
Mr. Haydon: The Norwegians do it. The Malaysians certainly do. The Singapore navy is for its own national security.
Senator Forrestall: That is a harbour.
Mr. Haydon: They have some interesting security problems. They have submarines.
There are those states that maintain navies both to support their foreign policy and to do national security, and those states that keep navies largely for national security. I think we are unique in the geography and climate that we face.
Senator Forrestall: Finally, what kind of relationship should Canada adopt and work from in order to enjoy an amiable relationship with the United States on the question of homeland security from a coastal maritime point of view?
Mr. Haydon: From what I understand, at the co-face levels, the relationship with the Americans is remarkably good, the cooperation with the Coast Guard, the U.S. navy and so forth. Several initiatives are now ongoing that will see more Canadians involved as a liaison at that level of homeland security. The lack that I see at the moment is at the political level. We have always had a complex relationship with the Americans, whereby we can agree to disagree at one level yet cooperate brilliantly at the next.
What has to happen is that much of the concept development and the planning process has to be brought back into the Permanent Joint Board on Defence and worked the way we did in the 1940s when we developed a continental security plan. It worked effectively, met the political requirements and provided the umbrella under which the military and other planning could go on smoothly.
Senator Forrestall: Should the navy have some police authority on board all of its vessels?
Mr. Haydon: If the navy is going to be used increasingly for this kind of work, there will have to be a system of deputizing certain naval officers under the other acts that give authority to arrest and to search.
Senator Forrestall: Would you deputize a person or an office? Would you pick a person or a job?
Mr. Haydon: That is a very good question. Because missions change while ships are underway, you have to deputize the ship as an instrument of the government, an extension of an existing act that it may not be before. A warship is already an extension of the sovereign state. It is just that it does not have certain authorities. Therefore, you would have to treat it like rules of engagement, in a way, and say you are now authorized to undertake certain other acts.
Senator Forrestall: It should be done, I agree. I was probing as much as anything else that point, whether should it be done and how it should be done. Someone has to think about it, and I have not run across any literature, frankly, on how that would happen.
Mr. Haydon: It would be interesting to see what kind of authorities the individual officers and ships of the U.S. Coast Guard have, because they have those necessary authorities.
Senator Banks: When you were talking about the size of ships that are required, I was reflecting on the number of my friends and neighbours who sailed around the North Atlantic, the North Sea and elsewhere in Corvettes, which were called ``sardine cans,'' I think, and which were much smaller than the frigates you talked about. However, we would rather not put anyone back into that position again.
Do you think that whatever ship we come up with, assuming one comes up with such a thing that would serve the needs you talk about, must perforce have a helicopter capability in order to be fully functional?
Mr. Haydon: It would be preferable. The helicopters are capability multiplied, to use the buzzwords out of the Department of National Defence. You can do so much more with a helicopter because it acts as extra ears and eyes. As long as the weather conditions are suitable, you get an enormous extra kick from a helicopter. It would be a pity not to plan a helicopter into any new such ship.
Senator Banks: It makes a bigger ship by definition.
Mr. Haydon: Yes.
Senator Banks: A couple of times you used the phrase, ``We have been down this path before.'' Just to elicit a response from you, there is a criticism made that military people are always planning the next war based upon having fought the last one, and, as you also said, this is not like the last one. The threats that exist now are not the same that existed during the Cold War. You said we did very well during the Cold War and during World War II.
Are we in danger of not having a clean enough piece of paper when we look at what we ought to do here about thinking of a navy or a police force in the sense that it used to exist rather than the way, without any preconceptions, it ought to exist?
Mr. Haydon: The basic task of the Cold War was to control the waters around continental North America and back and forth between Europe. The threat in those days was largely from Soviet submarines, but the concept of being able to exercise control over our waters applied because we also had the Soviet fishing fleet and the intelligence-gathering vessels. We needed to know where they were and, if necessary, to keep them out of certain areas. The concept of keeping those waters under surveillance and of responding to an intrusion by some other undesirable person or undesirable ship is not vastly different then than it is today. The technologies have changed enormously, but the basics of function, of knowing who is using your waters and for what purpose is a continuum.
Senator Banks: We are looking for a different kind of attacker now, are we not, or at least an additional kind? In those days, we would have been looking for conventional naval forces mounting an attack or doing surveillance that we did not want them to do. Now we are looking for someone hidden inside a container in the third row behind the stack of a freighter.
Mr. Haydon: That is just part of it. You are also looking for a vessel whose purpose is not immediately clear. You are looking for a vessel that may have been hijacked by its crew or taken over by someone else, a vessel that is not necessarily keeping to its promulgated route plan. You are looking for the unknown. In that respect, from an intelligence analysis position, you are looking for the same thing. You are looking for something that is not quite right and only by looking at everything can you decide what is not quite right.
Senator Banks: You talked about the wisdom — and it is a view that we share — of having surveillance and enforcement and interdiction capability that can, when necessary, work in smooth cooperation with the Americans, and the Mexicans, I suppose. Yet it is clear that, in the case of the United States, their navy has the job of looking after things that are far away from the shores. Closer in to shore, the littoral activities are more police-oriented and are handled by the Coast Guard who can deliver all sorts of people; it is a military organization. How much sense does it make for us to do otherwise, if we want to be able to integrate?
Mr. Haydon: I think we need to know what the American philosophy and procedures are. By the same token, we have to be able to go through an information-sharing process on shipping as a whole with whatever agency the United States is using at the time. In the closer-inshore waters, that is the U.S. Coast Guard. I understand from recent discussions with people in Halifax that there is a growing working relationship between the U.S. Coast Guard and the naval forces in Halifax because it is necessary to be able to work together, even if it only goes to the point of being able to communicate between two ships and to know where one ship's responsibility ends and where another's begins.
For instance, if a vessel suspected of smuggling drugs comes up the coast, you may want to transfer the surveillance of that vessel from an American authority to a Canadian authority when it comes in. There needs to be a mechanism for doing that. Cooperation is fundamental to effective management.
Senator Banks: Who exactly do you think should do that? You have said on the one hand that it is not a good idea to militarize the Canadian Coast Guard because, as it presently stands, the staff are unionized and are, effectively, merchant seamen. On the other hand, you say that the navy ought not to assume the constabulary role. With respect to the constabulary role within, say, 15 nautical miles of the coastline, who ought to do that? If the Coast Guard cannot do it and the navy ought not do it, then who should?
Mr. Haydon: I made mention, perhaps too quickly, of some regional maritime security organizations that are interdepartmental. I have forgotten the acronyms being used on the coast now; they are probably tucked away in my notes somewhere. There are interdepartmental committees at the operational level on the coast. Information may come in via a Coast Guard net from the U.S. Coast Guard to Transport Canada. The key things are centralized command and control, and centralized intelligence analysis. Those things are fundamental.
Senator Banks: Does it make sense to you that defence and security of our coastline ought to be within the purview of the Department of Transport?
Mr. Haydon: No, not whatsoever, senator.
Senator Cordy: Thank you for appearing before us today. You have given us a lot of information.
Following up on Senator Banks' questions regarding the Coast Guard, you have spoken about the lack of flexibility of the Coast Guard, in part because of being unionized and also because of response times and those types of things. Should the Coast Guard role change? Are you saying it should not change at all, or are there ways in which you say the Coast Guard could change?
Mr. Haydon: If one goes back into history, the Coast Guard has become the amalgam of a number of fleets, including the RCMP fleet and various others. Tasks have all been rendered into a single force. The Coast Guard as we now see it is essentially concerned with safety, with inspections and with search and rescue; it provides a platform for fisheries inspections officers and other people to carry out their departmental mandates.
It is probably wrong to say that the Coast Guard has a constabulary function, if we mean constabulary as a law- enforcement function. In terms of national security, the Coast Guard does not have a mandate that I am aware of at the moment. It certainly has a constabulary function with respect to marine safety and the aids to navigation and all that.
The Coast Guard provides a very necessary service in providing safety in its broadest sense. It is probably misleading to look at the Coast Guard as a potential security agency. To take the Coast Guard as it now exists and try to turn it into a paramilitary Coast Guard, along the lines of the United States Coast Guard, would take decades to do. You would have to educate a whole new generation of officers, perhaps two generations, in a new culture.
If you were looking for a better way of building a mousetrap, it would make much more sense to tell the navy that they need to take on part of that function. I do not think you can do that without providing the navy with more manpower and probably more money.
Senator Cordy: That is for defence?
Mr. Haydon: I mean for defence, yes.
Senator Cordy: One certainly sees on the east coast of Nova Scotia the current role of the Coast Guard in terms of marine safety. Is it a good fit then being in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, rather than being in DND?
Mr. Haydon: I would stick my neck out; I think no. I think the Coast Guard should have stayed with Transport Canada. It makes much more sense that way because Transport Canada has responsibility for safety in a number of other areas. It is an awkward fit, but that is a very personal observation. I have not done the research to know; that is just a gut feeling that that is probably the way it should be.
Senator Cordy: It has not been with Fisheries and Oceans for all that long; has it?
Mr. Haydon: No, it has not.
Senator Cordy: You talked about exercising control over Canadian waters using three criteria summed up in ``surveillance, presence and response.'' How are we doing in those criteria currently?
Mr. Haydon: That is a very good question. Surveillance is fascinating. It is partly done by electronic means; people go out and take radar pictures of what is going on in the ocean. It is also done with a great deal of voluntary reporting of ship movement. It is also happens that someone says, ``Oh, I saw so-and-so over there.''
You have all these information sources coming in at the moment into a central analysis agency that the navy runs on each coast. However, it is only partial information. A contact from an airplane is just a small blip. Until it has been actually sighted to be the SS Whatever-It-Is, you do not know that it is the SS Whatever-It-Is.
I mentioned in the longer paper that downstream there must be a centralized control of intelligence. Hence, when someone says, ``We need to know what the name of that ship is, because it is reporting erratically, or its position is erratic,'' this is where you do the tasking to go out and send a pair of eyeballs over the contact and get a precise definition.
One of the ironies is that although you can track a container box across the ocean and know exactly where it is you cannot do that with a ship yet. There are no automatic transponders between the ship and the satellite system. This is something that perhaps can be done quite easily, but again it requires compliance. As long as you are working on voluntary systems, you always have to be aware that there is someone who will not comply with the requirement.
Senator Cordy: Are we responding quickly to violations of the law? If a ship is not following the laws of the land, are we responding quickly enough, or are we responding in all cases?
Mr. Haydon: Again, that is a very good question. I get the feeling that we do not know what we have not caught. How do you know what you have not caught until you increase your level of surveillance and get a higher threshold of information?
Senator Cordy: When you were talking about surveillance, you talked about intelligence gathering. In those committee meetings where we have had government officials before us, they all talked about the need to share intelligence. Nevertheless, we see situations where, perhaps if intelligence gathering had been shared, certain scenarios may not have played out as they did. How do we ensure that departments and various agencies do indeed share intelligence?
Mr. Haydon: This is where you have to come back to the two top instruments. One is the national policy that directs that that happen, and the other is the oversight committee that says, ``This will happen,'' and oversees it happening. It has to be that firm, not some kind of a special parliamentary committee or whatever that simply says that the departments are not sharing information. They then need the power to say, ``You will share information.'' There are some concerns with sensitive third-party information, where we may want to protect the source, but I do not see why that cannot be accommodated. It serves nobody's interests for everyone to play their cards close to their chest and only give out the minimum amount of information they think necessary. To do this job properly, it has to be, insofar as is practical, complete information sharing and pooling.
Senator Cordy: I agree with that. When you talked about the national maritime policy and the development of one, you said that that should be done through the Department of National Defence, that they should be the drivers of the bus.
Mr. Haydon: They should be the custodians of the policy, yes, because they have the education and the machinery to do that.
Senator Cordy: What role would the Department of Transport play? It seems from what we are hearing that Transport is currently taking the lead on issues related to maritime security.
Mr. Haydon: It is one of those difficult ones where it could probably happen, but there is some very complex interdepartmental coordination. I am not sufficiently well versed in the education of Transport Canada senior people to know if they have any depth of experience in contingency planning and these complex scenario developments that you need to build this kind of concept.
Senator Day: Mr. Haydon, thank you for being here. I have two or three questions to help me understand the points you were making. Are you familiar with a report of this committee, entitled ``Defence of North America: A Canadian Responsibility''? Our chairman referred to it at the beginning. Have you had a chance to review the report, Mr. Haydon?
Mr. Haydon: Yes, I reviewed it when it first came out. I picked up some pieces in an editorial I wrote somewhere, although I cannot remember where. I essentially agreed with your maritime findings on this one. I did not go beyond that, however.
Senator Day: I wanted to refer you to the various maritime findings. If there are any points where you feel that we were off the mark, we would certainly appreciate you writing to us about them after you have had a chance to refresh your memory. That would be helpful to us, because we are going on from there. We will be looking at what we had recommended.
The Minister of Transport was in Halifax a while ago and made a number of announcements in relation to marine and maritime security, many of which reflected recommendations we had made previously. We were pleased to have contributed in that manner, but if there are others that have not been implemented, for whatever reason, and you feel you can recognize why they should not be, we would be pleased to know about that.
One recommendation that we made that has been implemented, or is in the process of being implemented, is notification to Canadian authorities of ships when they are leaving home base and are within 24 or 48 hours of coming into Canadian waters. Are you satisfied that that information is being shared with all of the responsible departments and Canadian authorities that need to know, or should know?
Mr. Haydon: With all due respect, senator, I do not think I am the right person to answer that question, because that is a very technical question. I believe you are going to Halifax at some point, and that is the place where you should ask that question. From my discussions with the people in Halifax, it is getting much better. My only reservation on this whole concept of voluntary reporting is that every now and again someone forgets to send in a report or someone deliberately does not send in a report, and these are the difficult things to track.
Senator Day: Our understanding from our previous trip to Halifax, and also to Esquimalt, was that the navy had an established intelligence-gathering operation at each location. I am wondering if that facility that the navy has in place is being used to help coordinate this intelligence, or are we creating yet another intelligence branch for marine shipping?
Mr. Haydon: They are using the existing naval system, and it is such that, in fact, they can now take a laptop computer down to the RCMP office and plug it in and get a direct contact between the two facilities.
Senator Day: Thank you.
We had a discussion of the role of the constabulary role in Canadian waters versus the traditional deep-sea, navy- type role. Are you aware of any countries in the world that use their navy for national water patrolling? Is that a typical role for the navy in any countries of the world that you are aware of?
Mr. Haydon: A great number do it.
Senator Day: Does it function well?
Mr. Haydon: Yes. The Australians are a good case study, because they use the navy, as we do, for both domestic and foreign policy. The Dutch, I believe, likewise do it. A number of other navies around the world take on both roles. As I said previously, a number of navies are just purely used for domestic security.
Senator Day: In those countries that do both, that have the traditional international navy and use the navy to patrol and act as constabulary within their coastal waters, do they have two types of navy personnel, or can they move freely from one to the other without difficulty?
Mr. Haydon: For the most part, that is correct that they move freely. You always get specialists in certain fields. Someone who is an expert in mine countermeasures would probably spend most of his life in that one specialty, as an underwater EOD specialist would specialize or a clearance diver would specialize. Naval aviators tend to spend their time in the air, although in the old Canadian Navy they used to be cross-trained and occasionally given the right to drive a destroyer.
Senator Day: At the present time, we tend to use — and you are not too happy with this — the maritime coastal defence vessels and the naval reserve to do a lot of the coastal work, as is my understanding. You feel that that is not the best solution, as I understand your presentation.
Mr. Haydon: Yes, that is correct. There is one other factor in there that I did not raise, which I mentioned in the longer paper. If you take one of those naval reserve vessels away from its primary function, which is training, to do the coastal patrol function then the training suffers. What you are really facing there is too many tasks and too few resources. There is a need to look at this and balance this. As I said at the beginning, it is a slightly different time at the moment because you have so much of the fleet committed to the Arabian Sea. In fact, it is not dissimilar to 1950-55 when it took almost the entire Canadian Navy to keep three destroyers in Korea. The focus of a major government commitment like that does tend to distort the rest of the tasks.
Senator Day: If we had a maritime policy that gave equal importance to our international obligations and our coastal defence, then it is less likely that we would rob one to the other, I would assume.
Mr. Haydon: I think so. I would hope so.
Senator Day: I would hope so, too. The problem now is that we do not have that stipulated in a maritime defence policy.
As I understand your testimony, then, you indicate that the navy in the coastal defence role at the present time is not properly equipped for that; you would not recommend that role at this time. However, in the event the navy got more ships and more personnel the role could, and most logically would, be undertaken by the navy. Do I understand you correctly?
Mr. Haydon: I do not see why it should not be. There are very few specialist tasks required in that concept of security that are not already within the basic box of skills that naval people have.
Senator Day: My final question goes to the fundamental issue of having a maritime defence policy as part of a greater defence policy. The fact that we are closing shipyards and are not acquiring new ships — when you say we need new specialty ships to do this role, if we had it defined in our policy we would not be closing shipyards presumably, unless you could find one somewhere else that fits very peculiar North American needs, which I doubt.
Second, the government recently announced the acquisition of this new radar that follows the surface of the water. I have forgotten the precise term. I will not even use the acronym because I cannot think of the right words anyway. Is all of this piecemeal? Are these things just happening for reasons other than an overall policy direction?
Mr. Haydon: If I may address the question of the radar first. As far as I know — and there are other people who I think can give you a better answer than I can, but it is a good question — the radar has been on the drawing board as research and development for a great number of years. It is something that someone has wanted to do. Even at the present level, it is still a prototype system, to see if it works, and it will move on from there. There has long been concern on the shipbuilding side of it that there is a need to integrate long-term fleet requirements with shipyard capabilities. This goes back, and I and many others have written papers on it, saying that you have got to look at a managed fleet with routine replacement rather than use the shipbuilding projects as political instruments to inject cash into local economies. You have got to almost take shipbuilding out of the political environment and say, ``We need to replace a whole range of ships over a period of years, and you need to have a sustainable shipbuilding policy whereby a ship of some sort would come down the slipway, say, every 15 months and thereby keep one or two shipyards in business.''
Senator Day: Would you see that as part of a national defence policy or national security policy, or as a separate industrial policy?
Mr. Haydon: I think all of the above, including a national industrial policy. This is where all of these things need to be brought in together. A national policy at the highest level would begin to do that.
The Chairman: Mr. Haydon, the model you describe in the paper you have given us sounds like it will take a long time to put in place. If you were thinking about adapting the policy principally to the assets that we have available to us now and trying to come up with what I would call perhaps not a short-term fix but a medium-term fix, something that if you decided on in the next year could be up and functioning in three or four years, how would your views change?
Mr. Haydon: That is a good question. There must be a political acceptance that is like a higher degree of risk in the interim period. At the same time that you are looking at how to do more with what exists, there must be some real progress made in long-term development of new capabilities, new platforms and new levels of cooperation.
They have done some interdepartmental simulation work in Halifax that was explained to me. It sounds good, and they are looking at how they would manage specific scenarios. The ship that was searched the other day for anthrax in fact comes into that sort of scenario. They are looking at the next stage of saying, ``If we had to do this, how would we best do that?''
The capabilities exist but they are not the ideal capabilities. As was done many times in the past, a little bit of ingenuity and initiative and you have to solve the problem with bailing wire and chewing gum until you can get the long-term thing in there. My feeling is that if you added people and extra money into the operations budget and the training budget, it would make an enormous difference in the short term.
The people problem seems to me to be the most complex one to solve. There may not be enough regular force people to have a quick response capability while also mounting a very complex operation in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea.
The Chairman: Given the length of time that procurement takes in this country, it makes almost any planning of this sort problematic.
Your comments on shipyards and matching the shipyards to the needs of the navy seem to be premised on the capacity to remove the politics from sourcing. In a million years, you do not think that is ever going to happen, do you?
Mr. Haydon: Unfortunately.
The Chairman: Why go down that road then? If politics were to be part of sourcing, why would you not plan for that?
Mr. Haydon: I agree. That would be an optimum way of proceeding. However, that means you must come to a political understanding on the basic requirement to replace the ships first. If someone then says, ``We are agreed this must happen,'' you go forward with it. If you use two, three or four shipyards, so be it.
The Chairman: Canada has five or six and we do not have enough work for one.
Mr. Haydon: No. I do not think there is not enough spare capacity in the international system to buy offshore.
The Chairman: Do you not think the capacity is there?
Mr. Haydon: Not for the kind of specialist vessels that would be under consideration, no.
The Chairman: We have seen some remarkable vessels that were built in Korea and that have come to work in the Canadian Arctic. They are doing some very unusual tasks. The problem seems more political in that it seems that we are shipping jobs offshore. However, they come in at better prices and with good quality.
Mr. Haydon: At the risk of sounding flippant, there is the commercial way of doing things and the navy way of doing things. There would have to be an education process within the navy and a leap of faith that would go back to Second-World-War-type philosophy for them to just take that design holus bolus and not try to Canadianize it by putting in a particular radar set or that galley equipment and everything else. You would have to say, ``Buy that off the shelf.'' There is an education process that needs to be considered.
The Chairman: What I am working around is that it seems to me that navy budgets often seem to be subsidizing regional development. Would it not be cheaper all around not to have them subsidizing navy budgets? We could then have a good regional development program and a good naval building program and never the twain shall meet.
Mr. Haydon: Ideally, that would be good.
The Chairman: You commented on the Permanent Joint Board of Defence. Parliamentarians scratch their head at the mention of this board. It is not one with which we are particularly familiar. We find that there is a fair degree of respect for it among the military. The idea or concept is one of having some form of parliamentary oversight committee — and I mean oversight in the true sense of the word where they would actually have the capacity to say yes and no. Do you think that fits into a Westminster parliamentary system?
Mr. Haydon: I do not see why it should not.
Realizing that there was a need, at times, to get information directly from senior officials in the department without subjecting them to the normal constraints of the departmental advice that goes up to the minister for approval and back down, the idea was talked about in the corridors during the 1994 defence review. It was also seen that there was a need to examine more closely certain decisions on their way through to deployments and so on. That was one of Senator Rompkey's concepts at the time. It died a natural death because it was clearly not going to happen.
I advocate going back to it so that we can try something new. If you look at the nature of the potential threat, you will not have all that much time to make an effective response. You may have to hustle to get things moving. At the moment, I am not sure that we have the capability within the Westminster system to move that fast.
To be a little innovative again, something new must be tried. Some of my colleagues have gone so far as to say that we should have some sort of a national security committee or council. That may be a little drastic.
If honourable senators cast their minds back to the defence policy of the 1950s and early 1960s, there was a cabinet defence committee that had a great deal of authority and could deal quickly with issues as they came up. That is not a bad model to use, although perhaps it should be slightly broader than just a pure cabinet committee. In responding to some of these types of acts, individual freedoms and liberties may have to be constrained to solve a problem that is of a nature in a certain area.
The Chairman: Some of us on the committee were around in 1993 and 1994. The answer to the proposal was ``over my dead body,'' which is why it has not been pursued. That is also why there is perhaps some scepticism among parliamentarians about the Permanent Joint Board on Defence. We remain curious as to its impact.
To switch to another topic, Mr. Haydon, you said there was no way to track vessels. We recommended in the report of which you have a copy that transponders be attached to vessels over a certain size. The government seems to have responded positively to that suggestion. Why would that not resolve the problem and, in fact, reduce it so that vessels that were not transponding would then become vessels of interest on which you could focus?
Mr. Haydon: That would help to no end. The problem is that, again, it is a function of voluntary compliance.
The Chairman: Not if you want to come into a Canadian port.
Mr. Haydon: Agreed. However, some vessels pass close to shore without coming into Canadian ports.
The Chairman: Those would then be subject to greater scrutiny, is that not correct?
Mr. Haydon: Yes, you would have to do that. Certainly, the transponder concept would reduce the problem.
The Chairman: It seems to me bizarre that we can have quite a complete picture of what is happening in the air when there is a remarkable number of aircraft at any given time, all of which are moving very quickly, and yet we do not have the same complete picture of what is happening at sea. Are there technical reasons why we cannot do that?
Mr. Haydon: Not to my knowledge. I keep coming back to the issue of compliance. If someone has malice aforethought, they will not turn on their transponder, or they will refuse to report in accordance with the normal way. Therefore, as you said earlier, it is the non-compliant vessels that need to be checked. To do that, you must have the means of checking them.
The Chairman: Senator Cordy raised the question of sharing intelligence, as did Senator Day. Almost invariably, the committee is confronted with a corporate position when we ask these questions of the government. We are told this: ``Everyone cooperates and everyone shares. We all know each other so well and we all get along terrifically. All my colleagues know everything they need to know and I know everything I need to know. You should rest assured, senator, that there are no problems in this area.'' Do you have any views you would like to share with this committee as to how we could get a better picture than the corporate one we currently receive from the government?
Mr. Haydon: You must look at specific instances where information is not shared. There was a situation in Halifax some time back where DFO flights done by provincial airlines were recording a great deal of data. It took quite a lot of convincing to have that data shared. Once that data started to be shared, everyone said, ``We should have done this before.''
As I mentioned earlier, very often there is an education process in there. All the owners of information need to understand that in this particular situation everyone benefits by sharing. Nothing is to be gained by not sharing your information.
You will always find unfortunate situations where someone says, ``I do not think I want to let go of that piece of information.'' That is a judgment call on an individual. Again, it is an evolutionary process. We will see that become better and better.
We must have faith in the system. It is evolving at the moment. From my discussions in Halifax, I was most impressed with the way progress was being made at that level. They were not giant steps. They were small, positive, forward steps. Perhaps one of the requirements is to speed it up somewhat. That comes from a higher collective view of what the objective is.
The Chairman: At risk of oversimplifying it, the navy's position with regard to the matter we are discussing appears to be that they are much more interested in and involved in projecting force a long way and that they have very little or no interest in what is happening next to the coast, that that is someone else's problem. Would you care to comment on that and perhaps speculate as to why the navy has this view?
Mr. Haydon: That is an interesting observation, Mr. Chairman. You are correct; that is exactly what it is. The issue goes back into Canadian naval culture, whereby that navy has always been a foreign policy navy — a blue water navy, if you wish — and the coastal chores have always been seen as secondary obligations. If you look at the management of the naval budget in the 1950s and 1960s, when they had their own budget, the blue water were the pride of the fleet and the coastal requirements were very difficult to get up onto the funding list — until they came along, with the pushing of the Americans in 1959-60, with the need for strategic ASW and the linkage there into the SOSUS system and the fact that there were some significant Soviet submarines in the eastern seaboard. Then, all of a sudden, the priority came up, because there was a clearly identifiable threat.
Senator Banks: It would be nice if, as you said, we could have 20 or 30 specially designed ships and the crews to man them, but that is a long way off. For the sake of this question, I will assume that there is at least a degree of urgency at the moment. Let us assume that you are the king, there is a degree of urgency, and that we must do something quickly and practically. We do not want to spend gazillions of dollars. Looking at the resources that we have, we see that the Coast Guard has 47 ships — if I remember that number correctly — some of which are substantial, some of which have ice-breaking capabilities, and some of which have helicopter capability. They range in size from those big ones down to inshore coastal ships, not counting little whiz-bangs.
For the sake of getting a reaction, I propose that, if you arm and train 400 marines or maritime police and put them in varying numbers on those ships, without changing the capability or the infrastructure of the ships all that much, in the short term you would solve the problem relatively cheaply. You would then have a constabulary and an enforcement capability that goes beyond safety and fisheries on those orange ships. Thus, someone who was doing something wrong or posing a security threat in the sense that we are talking about would not, when an orange ship is coming, say that there is nothing they can do, because that would no longer be true.
I am sure that you are already thinking, ``This is clearly a landlubber talking.'' However, could we not do something like that quickly? We will not spend the $70 million or $80 million that would be needed to get up what we are talking about. In any case, that would take a very long period of time. It seems that putting that kind of capability on those 47 ships — if that is the right number — could at least solve the problem in a fairly short space of time and with less expense.
Mr. Haydon: I do not see why that could not be done. The answer you will get from the Coast Guard is that if you take one of their vessels some part of one of their tasks will not get done.
Senator Banks: Pardon my interrupting. For the sake of the argument, if we have a vessel in the Beaufort Sea or standing off the nose and tail of the Grand Banks, and it happens to be an orange one rather than a grey one, if it has the capability of interdiction and doing something about it, it seems to me that it is not asking too much to say to it, ``Just a minute, instead of fixing up those buoys or checking on that Portuguese fisherman, there is a guy over there you need to look at because we think he is hijacked because he is way off his purported course.''
I know we will get the reaction you were talking about, because we will always get human reaction. There is inertia. Nobody wants to move. However, someone must solve the problem somehow.
Mr. Haydon: The concept of putting some naval parties on non-naval ships to do tasks like that has been well used. The British used it extensively in the Falklands when they deployed all kinds of merchant ships with naval parties on them. We would have worked that way in the Cold War on several occasions under the various MOUs we had between the navy and largely Transport Canada, so that we could double-task those vessels.
Senator, that is not outside the realm of possibility, in my mind, anyway.
Senator Banks: I have one last question. The chair referred to this. We have heard about the Interdepartmental Marine Security Working Group that, if I read you correctly, you do not think is much of a working group. It is a group but it is not working. Did I read that correctly?
Mr. Haydon: I believe it is working, but I am not convinced that it is working at all the problems that need to be worked at. It does not have the authority to direct that things happen. It is a staff committee that produced a memorandum to cabinet back in, I believe, November or early December that made some changes. Again, there is no sense of urgency or importance to that committee.
As I also mentioned, I think there are some pieces of international coordination and coordination with industry that need to be done. That committee is doing a number of coordination activities, but I am concerned that it is not doing some of the more important ones.
Senator Forrestall: I share some concern about the working group. Perhaps what I am concerned about is the rate at which we are developing that group. It could be that group by any other name. Many of the players would be the same players in whatever group you brought together.
There is a ship lying 10 kilometres off the entrance to the Port of Halifax that will seize the attention of the world in a way that is very difficult for us to imagine. My suggestion is the potential threat. What has happened with respect to the history of that ship in the last 30 or 40 days and certain of its crew members suggests that if we do not put in place something or someone that can act — and act quickly — we are in for an awful lot of trouble.
I believe, and I believe that most Canadians believe, and I believe it is an international belief, that each country has a responsibility to export clean, secure and safe things, whatever they are, things that people do not have to worry about.
Is there a capacity to take the maritime group and imbue it with statutory authority? It does have customs, health and transport. It has everything.
If you look at the Egyptian-registered ship lying off Halifax Harbour now, and if you were to ask me who is in charge of everything, would I look at the RCMP? Would I look at National Defence? I am not sure who is on board that vessel this afternoon. I do not know who will be there tomorrow. How do we take control of that? I am not being alarmist; I am just saying that this is a potential major threat. What is that ship carrying, and where is it going? Where is the cargo now? Where are the items that caused this anthrax? Where are the containers that held it?
Mr. Haydon: You put your finger on one of the problems that I see, and that is the need for executive authority somewhere in the system. My idea that you would have some kind of a parliamentary committee is not that popular, but somehow you have to transform that interdepartmental committee, which does not sit at a terribly high bureaucratic level, into something with teeth, so that someone can say, ``This is bad.'' There has to be an avenue by which such urgent matters can be taken into cabinet, decisions made and directives given.
Senator Forrestall: I mean immediate.
Mr. Haydon: You cannot afford to wait 10 days.
Senator Forrestall: Which is what we have done.
Mr. Haydon: That is why some real thought has to go into how this can happen. I went back to the structure of something like the cabinet defence committee of the 1950s and 1960s because that had that kind of mandate, but we were looking then at areas of responsibility in one department. This is multi-department. It will be very difficult.
Senator Forrestall: At one point, we looked at, for this type of operation, the bringing together of a small number of distinguished Privy Councillors who had left the immediate political scene, or judicial or other areas, bringing them together and imbuing them with the authority of real-time oversight. The point is that there is a way, and we have now defined it. If we learn nothing, we had better learn how urgent, and we should learn that from what lies off our coast tonight.
The Chairman: As a parting question, if I could, professor, would a committee chaired by a deputy prime minister that was a national security committee of cabinet that had representatives from the Solicitor General, Defence — along those lines — fill the bill?
Mr. Haydon: That would be a good step. My only caveat is there would have to be a clearly defined linkage down to an executive staff that would make it happen.
The Chairman: Would the executive staff be Privy Council Office? Clearly, a cabinet secretariat within a cabinet system can perform that function. The problem from our perspective is that it is not just a military problem. We see the same problem in terms of borders, the security service and the police.
Mr. Haydon: That is the correct level it has to work at. My only thought is perhaps it would be a very good thing to try it and see because progress is only made when you try something.
The Chairman: Professor, on behalf of the committee, I thank you very much for appearing before us. Your paper has been instructive. We have enjoyed the dialogue and hope we can come back to you for further advice.
We usually think of our best questions 10 minutes after a witness has left the room, so if we could write you when we do think of those questions, we would appreciate your assistance. Thank you very much, and we look forward to meeting with you again.
Our next witnesses this evening will be Rear-Admiral (Retired) Bruce Johnston and Commodore (Retired) Hans Hendel, consultant with Canadian Forces Staff College.
Gentlemen, welcome to the committee. If you have an opening statement, we should like to hear it.
Rear-Admiral (Retired) Bruce Johnston, As an individual: Honourable senators, I should say that Commodore Hendel and I have, in the past, worked on this issue together, some years ago.
I appreciate this opportunity. As to my personal background, I commanded ships on both coasts. From 1989 to 1991, I was the director general of military plans and operations in National Defence Headquarters for the Oka crisis and the Gulf crisis. That was a busy time. From 1991 to 1994, I served as deputy chief of staff operations for the Supreme Allied Commander (Atlantic) and then as the commander of Maritime Forces (Pacific) from 1994 to 1996, and, of course, as the regional search and rescue commander.
I must tell you that I was very impressed with the recommendations of this committee for the defence of Canada's territorial waters. To help you understand why I was so impressed, I should like to share with you a little background from the 1995-1996 time period. The first excerpt I will quote is from a policy document that was developed in 1996 under my direction with Commodore Hendel's assistance.
From a maritime perspective, the defence of Canada and of national interests means, fundamentally, sovereignty operations and the assistance to other Government Departments. National sovereignty requires the ability to provide maritime presence in our contiguous waters, which includes surveillance, patrol and response capabilities.
That is a familiar refrain.
This implies the systematic observation of the maritime area of responsibility, the physical presence of a force with the mobility and size to demonstrate commitment, and the ability to monitor, interdict and eliminate activities detrimental to our maritime interests. Only the navy has the ability to conduct large scale surveillance operations, to provide the capabilities, including essential command, control and communication facilities to coordinate this activity, and to support and enforce surveillance operations throughout our maritime areas of responsibilities.
After the unification of the Coast Guard fleet and the fisheries fleet and in response to an editorial by the Victoria Times-Colonist, I provided a response of my own. I will quote one sentence from that response, but it is one I would like you to take to heart:
In today's political climate —
And bear in mind, this was written in 1995.
— sovereignty is all about law enforcement, which depends on surveillance and that is the job of naval and maritime air units because quite frankly only we can do it.
The navy has never had responsibility for maritime surveillance. The navy's mandate is to generate and maintain the capabilities to conduct surveillance. Of course, the navy and the air force provide assets to an agreed level to other government departments, such as fisheries, to assist in their surveillance responsibilities.
I recall, in the late 1980s, as I was preparing the documents for cabinet approval of the coastal defence vessel project, that I was very concerned about the signal we were sending with the closure of Summerside and the retirement of our entire coastal defence aircraft fleet. Many of you will recall the Tracker fleet, which originally flew from Bonaventure. Those aircraft provided excellent service to fisheries for surveillance.
When the government introduced cost recovery from one department to another, however, the Trackers were priced out of the business. Today, the cost charged to other government departments for Aurora or Arcturus aircraft, beyond the agreed level, approximates $30,000 per hour of flying. On that basis, it is easy to see why the Department of Fisheries contracts out this activity to provincial airlines. Hence, not only do the navy and supporting air force units not have the responsibility for surveillance, but also we are being priced out of the business.
In that regard, I believe we are likely to see the imminent retirement of the three Arcturus aircraft, which have the potential to be the most effective surveillance platforms in our inventory.
Who is driving the bus? That is an excellent question. I would argue that the navy and the air force own the bus but are not mandated to drive it. They are only allowed to provide the bus to other government departments at exorbitant rates.
Who should drive the bus? Admiral Buck, in his testimony, observed:
Before September 11, it was easy to separate military concerns from civilian security concerns. This is no longer the case.
I would argue that it has not been the case for some time. As I wrote in 1995, in today's political climate sovereignty is all about law enforcement.
In the end, the distinction does not matter, as you need the same bus to defend against both threats. There is only one licensed driver of the bus and that is the navy.
I end this short statement by fully endorsing the recommendations of the September 2002 report. I believe that Recommendation No. 1 and Recommendation No. 2 under ``The Committee Specially Recommends'' need to be strengthened with respect to the conduct of surveillance. The objective must be that the normal output of maritime surveillance conducted by the Department of National Defence should be sufficient to meet the needs of all government departments.
I was struck by this statement in your September report:
The defence of North America must be as important to Canadians as Americans.
One could add, it must be seen to be as important to Canadians as Americans.
While I have been perhaps remiss in not articulating my support for much of the present work of the IMSWG, our overall progress in the area of maritime security has not been impressive to date. Thank you.
The Chairman: Thank you.
Commodore (Retired) Hans Hendel, Consultant, Canadian Forces Staff College, As an individual: I should like to start by giving you a little information as to what I can bring to the discussion here, which is based on my last three years experience at the Canadian Forces College where I have been contracted as a mentor, if you will, for our two most senior courses. One course concerns the operational level and is called the Advanced Military Studies Course. The other course is the National Security Studies Course, which in fact is here in Ottawa today, and that runs for about six months and covers all aspects of national security, both in terms of the local and the international in the broadest sense. After three years of listening to subject-matter experts and, indeed, very senior students at the senior colonel, junior brigadier-general level, I have learned a great deal about national security that I may want to share with you here today.
I had very little time to prepare for this, but I have reviewed your report of September 2002, and I have also reviewed the minutes of the proceedings of your committee's April 7 meeting. I should like to start by offering some observations on both of those documents, as I went through them as a basis for carrying on the discussion and questions later.
First, on your report ``Defence of North America: A Canadian Responsibility'' — by the way, we did not collaborate for this particular session — I have a similar support for the recommendations that you made on the maritime front. In particular, however, I should point out that I think your Recommendation No. 3 will prove to be quite controversial. That is the one dealing with the multi-departmental operations centres at Halifax and Esquimalt. I will get back to that later because it comes up again.
With respect to the general recommendation of this report calling for a recommendation for a policy to secure our ocean approaches and coastline, I would again agree completely, but I would point out that there is a larger question here, which is the need for a national security policy for which the maritime part is but a component. We can re- examine this question in more detail later, but I would state that this question is on the front burner for many academics within Canada, and we at the college have looked at this in some detail at the National Security Studies Course. In short, we have concluded that there is very much a need for such a policy at the strategic level — a general security policy not a defence policy, not a foreign policy, but a general security policy of which sub-policies such as maritime security can flow.
With respect to the record of proceedings of April 7 meeting on this committee, I also have a few observations that you may wish to pursue in the question period.
The first one is on Senator Banks' questions of who is driving the bus. That is an outstanding question. I believe it was raised in the context of the Interdepartmental Marine Security Working Group, which was discussed earlier here today, which has 17 members of various departments and agencies trying to work the problem. It is absolutely appropriate to ask who is driving the bus. I can get into that a little more later. I suspect the various answers provided so far to that question on April 7 certainly were less than satisfying. It is, however, a question that must be answered in policy and implemented through strategy. In military terms, it is a question of command and control, and there is a need for a command system designed specifically for the maritime security mission.
This leads to my second observation regarding the chair's puzzlement over the apparent duplication of command centres. Again, I believe it was Senator Banks who said ``Here a centre, there a centre, everywhere a centre.'' Actually, it gets worse. You were talking about the operational level, I presume, but at the strategic level, it is overlaid by yet other centres such as the one at CSIS, at the RCMP, the one at DND and the one at OCIPEP, among others.
That aside, I should like to return to your Recommendation No. 3 for the multi-departmental command centre. While this recommendation, in my view, makes much sense, if it is properly thought out and acted upon, it will likely cause much anxiety, for it is potentially threatening to the existing order of things. During the questions, I can provide you a conceptual framework that might be a basis for further work in this regard that has been explored at the college.
My third observation has to do with the civilian fleet and particularly the Canadian Coast Guard. First, I would agree that the Osbaldeston-type studies ought to occur regarding civilian fleets but with the caveat that first there must be a policy — a policy that in part provides our Coast Guard a new mandate, a mandate worthy of the name ``Coast Guard.''
Anecdotally, when you mention the Osbaldeston report, naval colleagues go apoplectic with fear that somehow our navy will be turned into a Coast Guard, or conversely that the Coast Guard, with all its problems, will be subsumed by the navy with concomitant budgetary implications. I personally am not that concerned on that issue because I think Canadians clearly understand what a navy is for. It is not for lobbing cruise missiles at lobster poachers at Burnt Church. However, the Coast Guard is another matter. An armed Coast Guard is a much more cost-effective means of interdicting vessels of interest close to our shores than the more costly destroyer or frigate, as Admiral Buck mentioned on April 7.
That concludes my opening remarks. I hope they stimulate some discussion.
The Chairman: You referred in your remarks to Recommendation No. 3, which was greater cooperation and coordination with U.S. counterparts. Did you intend Recommendation No. 6, which was the establishment of multi- departmental operations centres at Halifax and Esquimalt capable of collecting, analyzing, et cetera?
Cmdre Hendel: The latter is correct. It is mentioned as No. 3 in my document.
Senator Day: It is the second No. 3.
The Chairman: We have different documents, but we are on the same page.
Senator Day: I should like to go to that recommendation No. 3, if I could, but first let me thank you and ask you to thank the Canadian Forces College for bringing the class on national security studies to the Senate on Friday. I enjoyed very much the session I had with the officers in the afternoon in the Senate Chamber. It was very much appreciated that you recognized the Senate. We talked about some of our reports at that time. We appreciate that. If you have any feedback from any of your classmates with respect to any of the reports that I gave them at that time, we would certainly appreciate hearing from you at any time in that regard.
Cmdre Hendel: I can tell you already that the feedback was extremely positive. It was viewed as a very useful session.
Senator Day: I should like you to expand on our second Recommendation No. 3. Both of you were here and heard the discussion that we had in the earlier session in terms of the existing naval establishments in Halifax and Esquimalt with respect to communications and gathering of information and the understanding of our previous witness that the expanded maritime information requirements that were announced by Transport Canada and the Minister of Transport, Mr. Collenette, in terms of ships notifying Canadian authorities that they are coming into our waters or will be coming into our waters within a certain number of hours is being gathered by Esquimalt and Halifax, depending on which coast you are at, and presumably those navy establishments are then disseminating that information. Do you not see a possibility of those establishments at Esquimalt and Halifax growing into multi-departmental information gathering points and potentially growing into a command and control centre for naval operations and shipping operations?
Cmdre Hendel: I think there is a great potential there. Much has already been done. The problem, if there is a problem, is that there is no formal mandate and, therefore, there is no plan of how you develop this. On the initiative of my erstwhile boss to my right, contacts with other government departments were made in this regard as long as 10 years ago vis-à-vis the RCMP, the Coast Guard, the Vessel Traffic Management System and so forth.
At the operational level, there is clearly the desire to get as much information into those centres, to fuse it, to share that information with the relevant other government agencies and departments that have a stake to play in national security in terms of the surveillance and patrol and control of our shorelines, but that is essentially not formally mandated. Clearly, whenever someone goes to those centres from National Defence Headquarters or elsewhere for other government departments, the reaction is one of surprise. They are impressed by what is there and the potential for it to be used for not only defence means but for security writ large.
Absolutely, I say that that recommendation is right on the money. However, the difficulty will be that the other government departments and agencies who also have valid reasons for their own centres for the other aspects of their mandates will find it difficult to provide the staff, the expertise and the connectivity in terms of communications, in particular, data systems and so on, so as to properly fuse all information there.
Senator Day: We can make it happen though.
Cmdre Hendel: That comes back to my overriding recommendation here that somehow we need to address the issue of a national security strategy, which derives from policy. The days are gone when you can have a defence white paper and a foreign policy white paper and try to meld them together.
If you take the clock back about 10 years, as honourable senators will recall, there was a special Senate parliamentary committee that looked at the entire question of security in the post-Cold War era. That report, in my view, could have been the basis for a sound security policy for Canada.
As honourable senators will also recall, the two white papers that immediately followed were separate. The defence white paper came out before the foreign policy white paper, which some found rather interesting. In today's environment, where we are about to undergo a regime change in this country and where the issues of terrorism have focused our attention on security writ large, would it not be perhaps useful to resurrect such a combined House of Commons and Senate committee to lay the groundwork for a security policy for Canada that could then be turned into a strategy that can be given to the operational level? I am sure they would be more than willing to implement that strategy for Canada and Canadians.
Senator Day: Mr. Johnston, did you have a response to that?
RAdm Johnston: Wishing does not make it so. In the time frame we were on on the West Coast, in the 1994 white paper we recommended an increased emphasis on sovereignty. I believe we took it seriously. We implemented regimes of sovereignty controls. We brought Auroras in from 800 miles off the coast, down to the coastline. We made a division between the amount of time we spent flying operationally doing patrols and training. In the past, there was almost 100 per cent training. We brought in the RCMP. We had a coastal watch program. The 1-800 number for coastal watch rang in my operation centre. We had an RCMP liaison officer. We moved the operation centre up to co- locate it with the rescue coordination centre so the Coast Guard and navy operation centres could talk together and ask questions like, ``We have a vessel traffic management radar at Tofino, looks out 50 miles, why can I not see those contacts in my headquarters?'' The short answer to all of this in many respects was, ``It is not your job.'' I personally believed it should have been.
In many respects, I am not convinced that we need a new national security policy. What we need is a mandate for the Department of National Defence to put in the fundamental underpinning for the whole issue of maritime security, which is responsibility for surveillance.
Enforcement, in many respects, is much easier because you know what you are dealing with. You can sit down in a committee format beforehand and set out how you will coordinate, who will take the lead role, et cetera. However, someone must ring that bell that something is taking place and fundamentally ensure that everyone is informed, brought together and the lead government department, if it is RCMP, gets on board a ship or helicopter and off you go. I do not think it is necessarily rocket science in that context.
Senator Day: If we had what Mr. Hendel was just referring to as a maritime security policy and if the role of the Armed Forces was spelled out in that, then you would not have this difficulty that you have pointed out so clearly to us of the death of the trackers, of the cost recovered between departments, because you would have a defined role and this would be part of the defined role.
RAdm Johnston: When you have a defined role you have to then take that role in the context of your other roles, make priorities and establish a balance of where you employ your assets.
I do not have a great deal of difficulty at the moment with ships being deployed in the Middle East. I have a bit of difficulty with Aurora aircraft being deployed in the Middle East when we have so few assets to conduct basic surveillance at home.
In the context of what you might all call priority roles, such as maritime security, I could see very different decisions being made as to the price you have to pay for taking this asset and sending it offshore. The entire Canadian Forces today is almost like foreign aid. It is something that you give to others to do things for them. It is difficult to justify to Canadians the importance of those assets, such that if they stop doing something someone will pay the price. It has been very instructive to see the direction this group has been heading and perhaps making some changes there.
Senator Day: With respect to your recommendation to add to — and I think it is a good recommendation — the recommendations we have made, your suggestion is that it should be part of the normal output of maritime surveillance, as opposed to being asked from time to time to do it.
When we were out West, we visited with a maritime air unit. We were told that because of a lack of operational planes not only were they lucky to get to the North once a year but also they were not doing surveillance along the West Coast of the United States frequently enough to, say, see a ship loaded with illegal immigrants. A ship such as that could easily approach the coast between the times they were there.
Do you confirm that to be your understanding of the situation at the present time?
RAdm Johnston: I believe it was somewhat better going back six or seven years. Certainly, there is a scarcity of resources. In the post-9/11 climate, I am not that fussed about the North right now. There are many more immediate problems to the south — to wit, the entrance into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
We have the Buffalo aircraft, which is probably the best surveillance aircraft for the West Coast, for all those inshore passages, inside Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlottes. It is an aircraft that flies low, slow and sees things. Once we get the new search and rescue helicopters fully deployed, I would hate to see the Buffalo fleet perhaps be paid off. I would far rather see those resources.
The two surveillance dimensions, as you heard, are entirely different on the East Coast and the West Coast. We can elaborate on that. However, right now they are really short of resources out West.
The coastal defence vessels, by the way, are much more useful out West than they are in the East. On the other hand, in the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes, the coastal defence vessels are ideal.
Senator Day: Finally, I should like to hear your thoughts on the role from a ship asset point of view. We heard Admiral Buck indicating that the navy's traditional role is a deep-sea role and an international role, and not so much a coastal defence role.
Mr. Haydon finally came around to say that he felt we could go either way, as long as there were the proper assets and a proper, defined role for each. He indicated that he felt that if the navy had the proper number of personnel and the proper equipment they could operate like Australia, which looks after both coastal defence and deep-sea activities. Could you comment on the most desirable way for Canada to go?
RAdm Johnston: It depends on priorities. I used to like to talk in terms of sovereignty operations, theatre operations and contingency operations. Between sovereignty and contingency operations, to my mind your responsibilities at home are your first responsibilities. The resources you need for that are dedicated to that. What is left over is available to the government for deployment on contingency operations, if that is required. There is really not a contradiction at all.
Cmdre Hendel: It is a policy decision. If it is an issue that we are not able with our deployed forces and our forces at home to do sufficient surveillance and patrol of our own coastlines, and if it is an issue of getting more of that capability in a reasonable time frame, then it is quite reasonable to throw some money at that problem and, perhaps, give our Coast Guard an interdiction, boarding and arrest capability, perhaps in conjunction with the RCMP. I believe they had something similar some time ago. If memory serves, Coast Guard cutters that I remember seeing — and I believe they were called R-boats — were armed. At some point or other, our Coast Guard was a coast guard. However, I believe that has atrophied over time.
If there is a short-term requirement on the basis of a threat assessment that says, ``We need to do more vis-à-vis the coastal patrol and interdiction, and we also do not want to give up our international role in terms of reflecting Canadian values and interests abroad,'' then probably the most cost-effective way of increasing that local requirement is to use the Coast Guard, stand up a new capability, expand the MCDV fleet, or something of that sort.
In the balance of things, once the staff had done their work and you decided on how expensive a frigate with a helicopter is versus a series of smaller vessels, then perhaps you must put up with that less than 100 per cent capability. Yes, they do not have the endurance or reach and they can be uncomfortable. However, for the purpose of the kind of things you will probably do in the contiguous waters off our coast, out to 24 miles, if you have a couple of Coast Guard cutters up and down the coast, perhaps on other duties, and the policy was such that you respond to a call from the operation centre in Esquimalt to intercept such and such a contact in such and such a position, then you put aside what you are doing and go out there and do it. That is certainly a cost-effective and reasonable approach to the problem in the short term.
Senator Day: I understand that, at the present time, the maritime coastal defence vessels are manned primarily by reservists. Would you see that as a potential expanded role for reservists?
Cmdre Hendel: There is no reason why it could not be. There is a bit of a misnomer here. Some people call these vessels minesweepers, while others call them training vessels. I was there when the requirements for these vessels were written. They were to be multipurpose vessels. They were not perfect vessels by any means; they were a compromise. They had three roles. They were to play the mine counter and route survey roles. They had the training role because we were going to do away with the fourth squadron of destroyers, which are expensive training platforms, and we were going to buy some simulators. Thus, there was some element of training required. They also had the coastal patrol role. Those were the roles under which the naval architects designed those vessels. Are they perfect for anyone of those or in combination? No. We did not have the money. They are very useful.
RAdm Johnston: That is in today's context where the emphasis on coastal patrol is fairly modest. If you ratchet that up to a significant level and those vessels undertake a serious responsibility in coastal patrol, the operational tempo would go up and the demand on the reservist would increase. A reservist who is on a ship fulltime is really no different from an active member of the navy. That is really where Mr. Haydon was coming from, to a degree. You must be somewhat careful about how much of a demand you can place on the reservist who, after all, theoretically, is contributing a certain modest amount of his time each year to naval duty.
Senator Forrestall: I want to draw on your combined experience. We have the dilemma in that we need some kind of an organization, a body that can be the linkage, the executive command for this group. Thus far, we have a maritime role being participated in by virtually 16 different government departments, including National Defence, the Coast Guard, and Fisheries and Oceans. If you had to describe the bus driver, and it was not going to be the navy, how would you describe the body that would run this type of whatever it is we are trying to do to satisfy our neighbours, to send them good, clean product and what not? How do we put this together? How do we sort it out in our minds? Who should be on this? How do you get the political, departmental, public mix that is appropriate and that, above all, is quick?
Without dwelling upon it, we have off the coast right now a potentially serious situation. I am not sure who is driving that bus. I know who owns the vessel that is alongside. I do not know where that vessel is tonight. I do not know what progress is being made. There is a blanket of secrecy. That does not bother me. What bothers me is that there is nobody who I could turn to and say, ``Hey, is everything okay?'' Are you in charge? Do you have control of this situation?''
I do not really need to know the details; I just need to feel safe. By the heavens above, I do not feel very safe with the maritime group they have in place now. I do not know who the policemen in that group are. Who should have the authority to arrest and to speak to Canadians? Who should have the enormous responsibility of deciding what Canadians should know or should not know?
Do you have any concept or any ideas? Have you sat around and mused about what would work best, most efficiently, and with the capacity to reassure not just Canadians but our neighbours to the South that the maritime product we are offering, as with the air product, is clean, safe and in good working order?
Have you any idea as to who would be the members of this group and how they would be selected?
RAdm Johnston: There was a comment made in the earlier session about the PCO. First, the IMSWG is an outstanding body to review the whole marine infrastructure and the security of marine infrastructure. We have a huge amount of infrastructure that needs to be coordinated, and the best way to spend the money must be determined. That particular body does need to get together to assist government departments to plan perhaps how to answer your question when this committee meets at some later point.
You are in the middle of an incident, which is obviously the situation in this particular case. If I look at the Oka crisis, we had daily PCO meetings chaired by the Clerk of the Privy Council. It was an issue of national importance. That is obviously where you could go for your answer. Is that the body? I am not sure. It is the only one I know of in the context of today. I find it very difficult to conceive of creating a body for the purpose of being able to answer that question. When does that full might of government come to bear on a problem? If you are at a stage where the urgency or the importance seems to be less than that, I could see where it would be very difficult. I do not have much more to offer.
Senator Forrestall: You are suggesting that the group that is together now and is working on this is perhaps what we will wind up with; is that correct?
RAdm Johnston: I do not think so at all. This is a staff function that the IMSWG is dealing with. This is bureaucracy coming together to plan for the future, with all the difficulties and challenges that bureaucracies face in doing that.
We said that what we had in the Oka crisis was an operational interface with cabinet through PCO on that particular event.
Senator Forrestall: A committee at PCO is all cabinet ministers. They have enormous responsibilities in running their own departments, working on the development of policy, the implementation of a legislative program. A cabinet minister is a pretty busy bird. To ask him in, he will spend another four hours a day on this problem. The greatest prime minister in the world who works 12 hours a day is not helping his people very much if he spends eight of the hours looking at agriculture and not the other 27 different areas of responsibility that he has.
I have difficulty with that as a concept, particularly inasmuch as this would be permanent. I do not think that we are looking at something that would be passing, that would be in place for three months.
RAdm Johnston: I do not think, too, that you can underestimate the present capabilities, of which National Defence is a part, in the local area for those entities — RCMP, National Defence, probably less so the Coast Guard, the port authority, the City of Halifax — to come together and plan how to deal with that eventuality. If it actually involves the physical force and the removal of the ship from the harbour, that obviously is a decision that may have to go to a higher level. I do not know, in terms of how you have had to deal with this issue and seek information, whether you found that capability in Halifax recently. It does not sound like it.
Senator Forrestall: It is a closed door to me. I am not allowed in that door for a variety of reasons.
I continue to have a concern about who is in charge, who is driving the bus, whatever the phrase is.
RAdm Johnston: You must bear in mind at any point that the direction in which that bus should be heading to a degree may determine who is driving. The bus fundamentally to me is the ability to know what is going on off our coastal waters. How you move toward enforcement puts, if not a driver, someone in the co-pilot seat who has the enforcement responsibility, and the bus has to get him to the right spot at the right time.
Senator Forrestall: It has to have a driver, and the chair knows whom I would suggest. Let us resurrect the Halifax Rifles. You would be amazed at what they can do.
I thank you for coming. The more we know of your reaction to what is happening, the easier it is to understand the importance of correct and proper change, not just change for change's sake.
Cmdre Hendel: If I could add some perspective to this from my view, when you get the IMSWGs and the ad hoc cabinet committee chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister on public security and counterterrorism, as I believe it is called, it is symptomatic of something. It is symptomatic of the fact that something in the world has changed, that something that has an impact on Canadians has changed. The existing structures and policies are not able to deal with it. On the basis of that, the government naturally reacts. It is probably reacting well, in my view.
There are two questions in terms of driving the bus. We could easily find a bus driver if we knew where we wanted the bus to go. There is a policy vacuum. I do not think Mr. Manley, given his agenda these days, is in a position to go to his special committee and say, ``Right, have we got our policy structure correct? In what areas do we need to streamline our policy, in terms of jurisdictional issues, in terms of sharing-of-information issues, in terms of issues involving cooperation across government and between government and the U.S.? Where should we be driving our policy? Should we develop a new policy?''
If he were to ask those questions of something like an IMSWG, then perhaps that group could come together and say, ``Okay, here are the areas of my policy stovepipe that if we change we can come up with something that is more workable,'' and we can then say this is where we want the bus to go.
You can appreciate that in this group, probably, if my experience teaches anything, each one of those individuals representing each one of those agencies or departments will feel naturally constrained by the laws, statutes and regulations that apply to that particular department. The individuals will be happy to explain those to their colleagues but will not be in a position to say, ``Yes, I think we could probably change this.'' That level of oversight and senior direction is not there. This ad hoc cabinet committee is probably not able to provide it. That is one part of your question.
The other part of your question is what I would call the execution side. If there is an issue or event, I am much happier that the current system would be able to deal with it. If there were a crisis, the right kinds of things would happen, perhaps under the lead of the Clerk of the Privy Council, perhaps under the lead of the CDS with existing arrangements that are continuing to evolve and be fine-tuned between the various agencies who are working very hard to coordinate their efforts.
Senator Forrestall: I have a final observation. If it is as important that it be seen as important to Canadians as it is to our friends to the South, how in the hell will we do that under these circumstances?
RAdm Johnston: That is a very good point. I am glad I do not have to sit down with my former colleagues, the United States navy, and have them say to me, ``Our Coast Guard looks over the first 200 miles and then the navy takes over. How does it work in Canada?'' I would say, ``I can tell you about outside 200 miles, but you do not want to hear about inside 200 miles.''
Senator Forrestall: I guess not. Thanks very much.
The Chairman: Now that we have had the obligatory mention of the Halifax Rifles, we can move on.
Senator Forrestall: Did you notice that I did not raise that with Mr. Haydon?
The Chairman: The restraint astonished me.
Senator Forrestall: It was absolute restraint and control.
The Chairman: Let the record show.
Senator Banks: Admiral and Commodore, thank you for being here today and for being such interesting witnesses.
Admiral, you said that only the navy has the capability to provide the surveillance, but that is not quite true. The Coast Guard does have a certain amount of surveillance capability, and they do have a bunch of ships from time to time out there that can see things or could be easily made to see things. They do have a certain capability, do they not?
RAdm Johnston: My point is that if you want to rely upon either the navy and the air force or the Coast Guard, you would probably pick the navy and maritime air.
One of the challenges with the Coast Guard — and I appreciated your earlier question to Commander Haydon about 400 armed rangers on board Coast Guard vessels — when we were working on the surveillance and sovereignty issue a few years ago, it was extremely difficult even to get Coast Guard vessels. It was impossible. We did not have the mandate to enforce it, that is, to require them to report what they saw during the normal conduct of their other responsibilities.
On the West Coast, many of the vessels are very small. On the East Coast, buoy tenders and that sort of thing work in very localized areas. Icebreakers are certainly up North, but not in a particularly high-threat area. Certainly, the Coast Guard can contribute to that surveillance picture, particularly, if they are mandated to do so, and, of course, for vessels doing fisheries enforcement, it is much the same thing.
They can certainly be integral parts of the overall surveillance capability as we move forward, and to me that is where the emphasis should lie — that is, trying to get everyone involved in the maritime dimension contributing to surveillance because the navy, the air force and the law enforcement agencies can take care of the actual enforcement aspect.
Senator Banks: Can they? As long as the surveillance were in place, do we have no shortfall with respect to enforcement?
RAdm Johnston: I think we have no shortfall as far as enforcement outside the most outrageous scenarios, and given where our focus is in terms of the potential threat, which is primarily to our marine infrastructure, large terrorist events.
When you come down to what we were concerned with in the 1994 to 1996 time frame, drug smuggling and illegal immigrants, it gets a little more challenging. The best way to deal with that is, again, with surveillance and some sort of air response because helicopters do not always have to fly from ships. They can certainly fly from shore bases as well. It would be difficult to justify that level of resource from an enforcement perspective.
Cmdre Hendel: I am not so certain that we have the enforcement capability, and I would be surprised if Admiral Buck, if he were asked that question now, would be quite happy with the resources available to him, either through Coast Guard or his own ready duty ships. More needs to be done in that regard, if we are going to be serious about it.
As Admiral Johnston said, the West Coast is full of fiords and bays and so forth. You need a significant resource to revisit these areas, to keep a presence, and if it is in an orange hull with a white stripe around it, yes, the Coast Guard, if it were capable of coast guard and would eventually build up a presence in the community, and the people would realize it is there and there would be a level of deterrence and so on.
In the case of a single significant event, probably there are enough resources to marshal to deal with it, but the future has a habit of being unpredictable.
Senator Banks: You said in your opening remarks, Commodore, that the Coast Guard — I think I am quoting you correctly — is not really a coast guard. Give us a paragraph on that.
Cmdre Hendel: I mean that it has no intercept, board, inspect, arrest and seizure capability, which I think you need. Without that, it can give the navy or whoever is driving the surveillance bus some information, but that is all it can do. We heard in your previous testimony that if a Coast Guard cutter happened to come across an illegal act, it would be impotent to do anything about it, and that is a shame. I do not think Canadians are aware of that.
Senator Banks: It seems a less than efficient use of expensive resources.
Cmdre Hendel: Absolutely.
Senator Banks: You mentioned, Admiral, the air aspect of surveillance, and you said that the Trackers and other military aircraft were priced out of business, and that when that kind of service is needed it is now given to Provincial Airlines. Would you tell us more about that? I had not heard that before.
RAdm Johnston: One of the announcements by the Minister of Transport in Halifax in January with respect to the package of security initiatives was to increase the budget for surveillance by the Department of Fisheries. There since has been a RFP out to industry for some 4,000 to 5,000 hours per year of surveillance capability, multi-engined aircraft, radar, IR sensors, computers on board, and that is going out to industry. It is likely that Provincial Airlines, who has had this contract for some time —
Senator Banks: Is that the name of a company?
RAdm Johnston: Exactly, Provincial Airlines. It is headquartered in Newfoundland. That company provides the primary air surveillance resource to the Department of Fisheries, and that information is also funnelled down to the navy, to that intelligence coordination centre. The difficulty is that they are primarily interested, of course, in fishing vessels, and it is difficult, certainly for the navy, to try to divert that aircraft to look at a military contact of interest.
The reason that is being executed by Provincial Airlines is, as I mentioned, this whole issue of cost recovery. When you cost out the operation of a National Defence aircraft, you have to cost out how much it costs to buy it, the fuel, the salaries of the crew, the cost of the base, the runways and the complete depreciation on the aircraft. That is why the costs are so huge.
Senator Banks: That is cost accounting. If those resources exist within the military and are not being used, it is not like we are losing $30,000 an hour.
RAdm Johnston: I always decried in my own operation that, when an Aurora took off from Comox, if it turned right and flew for me, it cost nothing, but if it turned left and flew for Fisheries, it cost $30,000 a hour.
Senator Banks: That is absurd.
The Chairman: If I may, Admiral, Provincial Airlines has the same costs to operate their aircraft. Can you tell the committee why the military aircraft costs out more expensively than the civilian aircraft?
RAdm Johnston: The three Arcturus aircraft, which were probably delivered around 1993, were purchased in response to the 1987 white paper that we were going to buy more maritime patrol. I am guessing, but I think it was over $300 million to acquire those three airplanes. You then have to depreciate that $300 million over a particular period of time. You also have to take into account the share of the resources for Canadian Forces Base Greenwood to function, and you can imagine how much that base costs to function, so that gets factored into it. The salaries of the crews as well as the support and maintenance people, the spares, repair and overhaul all gets costed into this. If you want to look at the total cost of a resource, it is significantly more, obviously, than Provincial Airlines. When you compare the cost of actually having it take off and fly for a hour, there is not that big a difference.
The Chairman: I do not understand. Every item you mentioned that was going to come on the military list also arrives on a civilian list. They have to have a hangar and a base, pay rent to be there, maintain the plane and pay their crew. I did not hear an item that Provincial Airlines did not have on their list.
RAdm Johnston: They would not pay $300 million for three airplanes.
The Chairman: Fair ball.
RAdm Johnston: I am not sure what the crew would be in a Provincial Airlines flight, probably two — I am guessing — compared to what you might find in an Aurora or an Arcturus. The cost for rent and landing rights at a particular airport would pale by comparison with the cost of maintaining Base Greenwood. That goes on and on.
Senator Banks: I will continue along the chairman's line. My apologies to Provincial Airlines, because business is business, but if the government is actually writing a cheque to them for — how many millions of dollars did you say?
RAdm Johnston: I could not speculate. It is for about 4,000 or 5,000 hours per year, which is probably $15 million or $20 million.
Senator Banks: If the government is writing a cheque for that amount to a private business, would it not make sense to have the military aircraft do that job and save the $15 million, which is otherwise leaving the Treasury? The military airplanes are sitting there anyway. Greenwood exists and the pilots are there; are they not?
RAdm Johnston: They are there. As I mentioned in my remarks, we will probably get rid of those three Arcturus aircraft because we do not think we can afford them any more and we do not have a role for them.
Senator Banks: I have one last question, just for fun. Let us assume that it is a while ago, when you two gentlemen were CDS and deputy CDS. To be fair, I will not ask the question in terms of three weeks, but presume there is a new and unforeseen ``clear and present danger.'' Presume someone comes to you and asks how we can improve our situation — while also convincing the world and our friends that we have improved our situation — with respect to interdiction of ships and assessment of threats to the security of our coastline. I am talking about threats conventional and unconventional, symmetrical and unsymmetrical. How would you respond given existing resources and a time frame of six months to one year? What would you do?
RAdm Johnston: If the object were to satisfy our friends to the South that we were approaching the situation with the same degree of diligence and severity as they were, that could be done in a lot less than six months. Basically, it means a reorientation of priorities. One recommendation might be that the government bring home the ships from Operation Apollo. The war against terrorism begins at home, so let us bring home those ships and airplanes. Before we can deal with issues of increased activity off our own coasts, we must take care of the operational tempo that these ships are obviously suffering from. You cannot just bring them home and turn them right around to send them out again. You have to establish some normalcy there.
I would try to take advantage of the Provincial Airline hours. When I say the navy and the air force should be driving the bus, the Provincial Airlines resource could easily be incorporated into the military arsenal from a tasking perspective. Many of the pilots are ex-military anyway. They can fly very capably. As long as we are spending that money, we can utilize that particular resource.
That would be the essence of my response — bring our assets back into the primary operational theatre, which is Canada. As I say, conceptually it is not difficult.
Cmdre Hendel: I am tempted to agree, in general. It depends on what kind of statement you want to make to our friends down South.
Senator Banks: Incidentally, I am asking the question in terms of Canadian national interest, period. I am talking about satisfying not anyone else but satisfying our needs, our interests, our security.
Cmdre Hendel: I appreciate that, but satisfying Canada's interest in that regard may entail satisfying our friend's interest in his or her national security. If it were a demonstrable thing that you needed to do, I think the Department of Defence could come up with a number of options. There are sufficient resources around, I believe, to make a splash, if you will, to evoke a reaction like, ``Holy cow, they can do something!'' As the RAdm Johnston said, there are enough resources that, for a short period of time in a concentrated area — like a choke point in the Strait of Juan de Fuca or the Gulf of St. Lawrence — one could cobble together some kind of capability. You could have some visibility that might even be somewhat effective for some short period of time.
The surveillance problem on our coasts, though, is enormous. The areas of responsibility are huge, with the bays along the coastline. Against a determined and clever opponent, we are very vulnerable.
RAdm Johnston: There are very capable people in uniform today who can make those assessments of where the resources need to be deployed. If we are looking at 9/11 types of threats and major terrorist incidents, if that is our focus, perhaps we need not worry so much about the small bays and inlets. I think it is imminently doable.
In Canadian commentary, a perception exists that Canadians do not think they have a problem and that, therefore, we are perhaps spending too much time worrying about the U.S. perception of Canada. Personally, I think we do have a problem and it is workable.
Senator Cordy: Thank you for your interesting testimony. You have been very open in your dialogue with us this evening.
Commodore, I would like to talk to you about Coast Guard and your comments about the increased role or changed role that you would perceive the Coast Guard having. The first question is whether the Coast Guard should be moved from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans?
Cmdre Hendel: The Department of Transport is one reasonable place for it, in my view. You might even explore the idea of giving it to Defence in some kind of an arrangement, without making them military folks.
In the military, when we conduct operations involving more than one area of expertise — let us say with army and air force and navy — we create a command and control system that respects the individual capabilities and expertise of those various components. We call those who control the operation ``component commanders.'' Conceptually, there is nothing wrong with the Coast Guard being an additional component commander within a command system that is mandated by a policy that says, yes, under certain circumstances, the Coast Guard component commander will respond to the needs of the particular mission.
In fact, if you think about it, we do that today with the search and rescue mission. If there is a Coast Guard cutter in a good position to respond to a search and rescue incident, the rescue coordination centre, as part of the overall command centre in Esquimalt, for example, will task that particular Coast Guard vessel to go and do that rescue. It is conceptually not that difficult to think in those terms.
Would there be implications in terms of statutory issues and legal issues and so on? Probably. If there is a will, they certainly can be overcome.
I am talking about a Coast Guard with a responsibility for more than fixing buoys and navigation systems, but I am not talking about the high end of the United States Coast Guard cutters, which are, more or less, warships. That is not what I am getting at. I am talking about the capability of the Coast Guard to conduct, intercept, interdict, search, seize and arrest.
Senator Cordy: If they came across a situation, they could intercept, whereas now they cannot. Is that what you are suggesting?
Cmdre Hendel: Absolutely. If they independently have a mandate to do so themselves in a certain contiguous zone around Canada, and if they have the capability, then they would do so on their own.
Senator Cordy: Their main role would continue to be marine-safety inspections and search and rescue, as you just explained, but, in addition, they could in fact board a ship, if need be?
Cmdre Hendel: Exactly. For a small delta of incremental investment, there would be a much greater capability in terms of reach, for instance.
Senator Cordy: Our previous witness talked about the fact that the Coast Guard, because it is manned by unionized personnel, could possibly have a lack of flexibility or be unable to respond. Are those things that you think could be overcome?
Cmdre Hendel: If, at the ministerial level, someone would ask those questions, then a number of options would be forthcoming. Yes, the bottom line is that those issues could be resolved — perhaps not under existing arrangements, but the world is changing and statutes can change as well.
Senator Cordy: Did you want to comment on the Coast Guard?
RAdm Johnston: On your last question, it is no picnic being on station on a search and rescue cutter on the West Coast. The weather is actually worse than it is off Halifax. I do not personally understand the problem with the union side of it.
I would perhaps recommend to the committee as a research activity, perhaps for staff, to look at the Chilean experience. The Chileans operate with submariners, surface warfare officers and aviators, and they also have the maritime directorate. Officers who serve in the maritime directorate look after all the functions of our Coast Guard in terms of ice breaking and buoy tending, navigation aids, charts, hydrography, and the maritime directorate also looks after ports and customs and the transport functions. The Chileans incorporate all those activities within a single arm of their navy. It may not be the ideal model for Canada, but as an examination it may be useful.
Senator Cordy: Commodore, you talked about the need not only for a national Maritime policy but for a national security policy. How do you see this being developed? Who would be in charge of developing it? Would it be the committee you talked about earlier under the Deputy Prime Minister, or cabinet ministers? How do you see that developing or starting?
Cmdre Hendel: That is certainly an option, if that committee can find the time to give the strategic direction to a support staff that would develop the policy. However, the question becomes: Hand it over to whom? Hand it over to Defence? It is more than a defence policy. Hand it over to a working group? That is not very satisfactory. Hand it over to Foreign Affairs? That is not very satisfactory.
I guess the point is that the world has changed, and maybe the existing structures even at that level are no longer completely appropriate, and maybe we would need to invent something new. Maybe we need to expand the role of one or more departments, or collapse one or more departments. I do not know, but I think it is certainly worth looking at.
Mr. Haydon mentioned that he would think it would be going too far to have a national security council as a group of subject-matter experts across a range of security issues. I do not necessarily share that view. The system seems to be groping for that kind of capability, ergo these ad hoc committees and working groups and so on. There is a vacuum, so the system is trying to fill that vacuum. I am not suggesting we need to follow the U.S. model of a national security strategy and all that, but certainly a body of expert knowledge across the issues that all touch on security at large, which has many components, including economic ones.
Certainly, at the ministerial level, the government's decision to have Mr. Manley stand up this interdepartmental cabinet level committee is an outstanding step in the right direction, but he has to use existing departmental bureaucracies that all consider themselves so constrained by existing regulation, et cetera, that they cannot seem to come up with this fresh new approach to national security. We have, on the one hand, folks telling us they are doing policy coordination, and others are saying we will have a plan, and again no one is driving the bus.
Senator Cordy: Admiral, you talked about surveillance, and we heard from earlier witnesses that, to make the security system work, we need surveillance, patrol and response capabilities. You have said that surveillance has to be strengthened. You suggested more resources, and you also suggested that we should be concerned or prioritize so we look after our needs at home before we send some of our Auroras and whatever off to other areas of the world. In what other ways can you see strengthening surveillance? How do we go about doing it?
RAdm Johnston: I do not think I said we need more resources. It is really dedicating the resources that we do have to the challenge at hand, and that will require some organizational changes, as we discussed. Short of that, there is not a lot that we can do. Without the change in mandate to actually put someone in charge, there is not a lot we can do. The high-frequency surface radars, for example, will provide a lot of information on a lot of contacts of ships at sea. Verifying those contacts and deciding which are vessels of interest and looking at them and identifying them, if that is the case, is where the real challenge comes in.
What we have not heard yet is whether we really have enough information exchange between the U.S. and Canada, et cetera. There is a tremendous amount of information there that is primarily brought to bear today on enforcement problems as opposed to the wider surveillance problem. To utilize that other information that is either satellite driven or driven by some sort of electronic intercept requires matching information of some description in our own theatre of operations. High-frequency surface wave radar, HFSWR, will be very useful in that context because it provides a source that can be matched with a source, and I believe there are plans to put much more capable fusion equipment in those surveillance centres that exist today.
When you talk to the people doing this job in Halifax, they will tell you that, while they can produce a recognized maritime picture, we are not recognizing a lot of it at the moment. The capability is there to handle a lot more information than is presently available.
The short answer is that we need to move forward in terms of organizational changes, bearing in mind that the navy and air force together have put a tremendous amount of effort toward putting these fusion centres together in Esquimalt and Halifax. In recognition of the mandate to be useful once the time happens, incident driven, or potentially that the greater mandate would some day arrive, during the vast part of my naval career, we were destined to sends our ships off to the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, and we did not have to worry too much about the capabilities of our own headquarters. Thankfully, that has changed greatly over the last few years.
Senator Cordy: In Nova Scotia, for example, the coastline, with all the inlets, is just phenomenal, and we do not have people at all the little inlets and bays around the province, and that goes for all the coasts in Canada. Much of the information we have has been from volunteers, people phoning in and saying, ``I am going to land,'' or someone on land saying, ``There is a boat that has just landed.'' Increased surveillance, it seems to me, would at least let us know that these vessels are in our waters, but is there anything else that we can do?
RAdm Johnston: Again, I am probably not the best one to ask right now. I have difficulty extrapolating from the 1996 time frame to today and the coastal watch program I mentioned. The RCMP were visiting these small bays and inlets in small boats. The small fishermen may be tending crab pots or whatever, and the rigid, inflatable boat with the RCMP officer would come up to him and say, ``Next time you see something, first thing you do when you get ashore is pick up the phone and phone this particular number.'' Working with the people who live and work in those areas is where the naval vessels would come in handy, because they have the fast patrol boats that can deliver the RCMP into the small communities to talk to the fishing boats, and the helicopter, of course, could perhaps land in the small town and do briefings and that sort of thing. The awareness of the local population was a huge part of that initiative. My sense is that it is probably still going on, but I cannot tell you for sure.
Senator Cordy: We are gathering a significant amount of information because the new technology enables that. How do we ensure that the information is shared with the people who may need it?
RAdm Johnston: That is a fairly happy story. The initiatives that you have heard before, like CANMARNET and others, will ensure that happens. The real challenge is this: Who reads it at the other end when it gets there? To that end, you will have to look into those individual operations and centres. That was always the challenge I felt when I was the commander on the West Coast. I was the only one I knew who was reading all that stuff because I was on the receiving end as well as on the dissemination end. I was the one who had the level of interest to actually ensure my people paid attention to that information and we made decisions about what to go and observe.
Not everyone is resourced to the same level. Many organizations function on a contingency basis, where you call in more people, et cetera. This is where the multi-department fusion centre has a significant amount of potential, because it serves as an intelligence centre for everyone and also provides the command resources to execute.
The Chairman: Assuming that we had a policy that was based along the lines of the recommendation of the report that we put out regarding coastal defence, assuming that there was a clear mandate, one of the weaknesses of this report is perhaps that it has no clear mandate. We thought there was, but when we later read it we concluded we were not as clear as we should have been.
Can you reflect back on your Oka experience? The impression we get frequently is that Canadians generally in government pride themselves on an ad hoc approach. When a problem comes up, we will pull together the right people, solve the problem and move on. One of the issues that the committee is interested in is whether there is enough ``ad hocking,'' that what we really need to do is stand up a permanent group that does deal with these issues, and the only place that we have seen so far that seems to make sense is in the Privy Council office. Do you have views on that?
RAdm Johnston: During the Oka crisis, bearing in mind that the first Gulf War was happening simultaneously, I was not a terribly happy camper. The Chief of Defence Staff and PCO were focused 90 per cent on Oka, because of the huge challenges, and the rest of the Department of National Defence was focused 90 per cent on the Gulf crisis, and I was caught in the middle. That is neither here nor there. On both those, however, what we benefited from was that our entire structure for crisis management was 110 per cent mobilized. The Department of National Defence was 100 per cent focused on operations from the middle of the Oka crisis, the beginning of the Gulf War, right through until it was all over.
PCO met in conjunction with National Defence and Foreign Affairs every morning at 8:30, chaired by the Clerk of the Privy Council. We had huge resources to deal with the situation that we had. The results were extraordinarily successful, and we also had some very good people, obviously in General de Chastelain as the CDS at the time, so we were well served. The real question is: How can you ensure that you are just as well served perhaps on a crisis of slightly less dimension? I, too, can think of no other home for an organization like that than PCO.
The Chairman: PCO has the capacity to morph into different structures. When you think back to the early 1970s when national unity was of particular importance to us and the place of Quebec in Canada was of importance to us, the clerk at the time, Gordon Robertson, moved from being clerk to secretary to the cabinet for federal-provincial relations, and then Senator Pitfield ran into the position of clerk and ran PCO. A group was set up of significant size that dealt with the federal-provincial relations file.
What it did not have was a minister separate to whom it reported. They both reported to the Prime Minister, but that was before the days of deputy prime ministers. These days, deputy prime ministers are serviced out of PCO. It gets complicated when that individual is also the Minister of Finance and there is a leadership campaign going on.
I put the question to you, and I would be happy to hear you views as well, Mr. Johnston, but a model that provided for a second clerk or a second secretary to the cabinet playing a similar role to what Gordon Robertson played, that function continues in PCO, but not at the same level and not with the same size of staff simply because the problem does not exist any more. If national security is going to be a problem into the foreseeable future, and assuming we start with a policy along the lines that we are sort of edging towards here, is that the sort of machinery of government or mechanism that appeals to you?
RAdm Johnston: Sounds good to me, Mr. Chairman.
I think Cmdre Hendel has spent more time reflecting in this area perhaps than I have, certainly since Oka.
Cmdre Hendel: When we debate the issue of a national security policy and structures to support it at the college, most folks say this is a good idea. We bring in subject-matter experts from across Canada and elsewhere, and when we ask, ``Why do you not do that?'' we get the response that that is not the Canadian way. I reflected upon that for some time and that is not a flippant response. There is a time and place for an ad hoc approach. Certainly, as I said, the ad hoc committee that the Deputy Prime Minister is chairing is an outstanding response to the post-9/11 environment. Ad hoc, it is fine for crises. Once a crisis has developed, there is no other way because it will be unique and extremely important. Therefore, the structure you put in place to manage that needs to be fairly unique to that particular crisis.
If you had other machineries of government, perhaps you could get into a situation where, with proper, sound policies and strategies you prevent some of these crises from happening in the first place.
I worry that if you look at what has been happening at the senior levels of government and within DND and the extreme pressure that appears to be on everyone — officials, political authority, senior officers and so on — we seem to be always in a position of averting emerging crises. To me, that points to the fact that there may be some structural problems here and that if we could set up some more permanent structures to deal with issues such as national security then perhaps some of these crises would be averted.
As honourable senators are aware, we used to have a cabinet committee on foreign defence policy. That is probably not enough any more because security is much beyond national defence and foreign affairs these days. It is a much larger problem. Something in the order of a network of experts that are working that great big complex problem, with all of the legal and jurisdictional issues that are incumbent upon it, would at least be able to have in place the knowledge base and the network of connections and interpersonal understandings so that if a smouldering crisis were to be identified it could be solved without getting into the full crisis mode.
I agree with you that there is a lot of room for ad hoc deployment and Canadians seem to have a special talent for it, and I do not mean it disparagingly.
The Chairman: I do not know what your answer is, sir. Let me put the question again. I was not advocating one role or the other. I was simply observing that we appear to ``ad hoc'' from crisis to crisis. They seem to be coming along frequently enough that some people are arguing that, perhaps, we should have a permanent secretariat that deals with it. The issue of who is driving the bus has come up repeatedly today. You could also ask the question: Who is getting up each morning and saying, ``Canada is a safe place''?
One of the points that the two of you have made is that people get up and say, ``I am handling my mandate and following what the legislation for which I am responsible. It is not my job to worry about something outside that. It is not the navy's job. So you will not get the information.'' Nobody is taking the broader picture and saying, ``Well, I think I will look at that.''
If the answer is, ``Yes, we are best to ad hoc our way through,'' that is an interesting answer. With regard to some crises, for instance a natural disaster, it will probably go to National Defence. If it is a terrorist event, it will probably go to the Solicitor General. If it is a serious enough problem, we know it always ends up on the Prime Minister's desk. It always ends up in PCO, if it gets to be important enough.
If that is going to be the case, does it make sense to institutionalize that? Or are we better going along as we are going?
What I heard you say at first was that ad hocery is a good thing, and it is the Canadian way. However, at the end of your answer I heard you say that maybe we would be better off with the structure. Perhaps I did not hear clearly. Would you take another run at that?
RAdm Johnston: You heard me salute.
The Chairman: Let the record show that you saluted.
RAdm Johnston: In the Oka situation, we had a clear indication of how a crisis could be managed. To replicate that capability at another level down is a first-class idea.
When Sir Brian Urquhart was Undersecretary General of the United Nations, he used to talk about muddling through. He used to say that, perhaps, it was best for the United Nations to muddle through. Most of us at this point just do not think you can muddle through. I am not sure if that is ad hocery or not.
Cmdre Hendel: I believe that the security piece is so complex and so important that ad hocery is no longer appropriate. Some kind of structure that puts it together at the top needs to be put in place. It needs to be at a senior level. We must get above the stovepipe level.
Having said that, in my view, national security writ large, including the international piece, is such a complex beast that even with the best minds putting together that kind of structure you will still be forced occasionally into a crisis- management mode where ad hocery is the appropriate way to go.
The Chairman: I understand you now.
Thank you both for appearing tonight. We have run over time. We ran over time because we found your testimony so interesting and helpful. We are grateful for you attending here on short notice. We are grateful for your candid views and opinions.
If there are any questions or comments, please visit our Web site by going to www.sen-sec.ca. We post witness testimony as well as confirmed hearing schedules. Otherwise, you may contact the clerk of the committee by calling 1- 800-267-7362 for further information or assistance in contacting members of the committee.
The committee adjourned.