Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 8 - Evidence
OTTAWA, Monday, December 13, 2004
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 4:41 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: I call the meeting to order.
Welcome. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. Today, the committee will hear testimony relating to the review of Canadian defence policy.
The distinguished Senator Forrestall is here from Nova Scotia. He has served the constituents of Dartmouth for 37 years, first, as member of House of Commons, and then as their senator. While in the House of Commons, he served as the official opposition defence critic from 1966-1976. He is also a member of our Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs.
Senator Norman Atkins is from Ontario. He came to the Senate with 27 years of experience in the field of communications. He served as the senior advisor to Robert Stanfield, Premier William Davis of Ontario and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. He is also a member of the Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs.
Senator Joseph Day is from New Brunswick. He is the Deputy Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance and also of our Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs. He is a member of the bar of New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec and fellow of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada. He is also a former President and CEO of New Brunswick Forest Products Association.
Senator Jane Cordy is from Nova Scotia. She is an accomplished educator with an extensive record of community involvement, including serving as Vice-Chair of the Halifax Dartmouth Port Development Commission. She is Chair of the Canada NATO Parliamentary Association and member of the Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology.
Senator Tommy Banks is from Alberta. He is the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, which recently released a report entitled the One Tonne Challenge. He is well known to Canadians as a versatile musician and entertainer. He has provided musical directions for the ceremonies of the 1988 Olympic Winter Games, he is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and has received a Juneau award.
Senator Pierre Claude Nolin is from Quebec. He has chaired the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs that issued a comprehensive report calling for legalization and regulation of cannabis in Canada. Currently, he is the Deputy Chair of the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration. Internationally, Senator Nolin is the current Chair of the Science and Technology Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Association.
Our committee is the first Senate committee mandated to examine security and defence. The Senate asked our committee to examine the need for a national security policy. We began our review in 2002 with three reports: ``Canadian Security and Military Preparedness'' in February, ``Defence of North America: A Canadian Responsibility'' in September, and ``An Update on Canada's Military Crisis: A Review from the Bottom Up'' in November.
In 2003, the committee published two reports: ``The Myth of Security at Canada's Airports'' in January and ``Canada's Coastlines: The Longest Under-Defended Borders in the World'' in October. In 2004, we tabled two more reports: ``National Emergencies: Canada's Fragile Front Lines'' in March, and recently ``The Canadian Security Guide Book, 2005 edition.''
This committee is reviewing Canadian defence policy. During the next year, the committee will hold hearings in every province and engage with Canadians to determine what their national interest, what they see as Canada's principal threats and how they would like the government to respond to those threats. The committee will attempt to generate debate on national security in Canada and forge a consensus on the need for a military.
Our next witness is Mr. Martin Rudner. He is professor of the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. He is Founding Director of Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies at Carleton. He received his doctorate at the University of Jerusalem. He is the author of over 70 books and scholarly articles dealing with Southeast Asia, international development and intelligence and security studies.
Dr. Rudner, welcome to the committee. We understand you have a short statement and we are looking forward to hearing from you.
Mr. Martin Rudner, Director, Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, Carleton University: Thank you, Senator Kenny and members for the honour of appearing before you today.
I would like to use the time available to me to address issues regarding Canada's defence intelligence capabilities, and to prescribe what I see as an agenda for Canadian defence intelligence. It begins with a reminder that there is a part of a discussion out there today as to whether Canada should have a foreign intelligence capability. The answer is that Canada already does have a foreign intelligence capability. It has two: It has the Communications Security Establishment with respect to signals intelligence, and what is more important, it has its defence intelligence capability that is for the most part a foreign intelligence capability.
What does the foreign intelligence capability represent?
It represents a capability to discern early warnings, crisis and threats. It includes a capacity for what intelligence people call ``fusion,'' the capacity to bring together human source intelligence, signals intelligence, imagery intelligence, open source intelligence, and surveillance to feed information to the Canadian Forces and to the Department of National Defence. It has a very specialized and distinctive capability, at least for Canada, with respect to intelligence about science and technology. This is a capacity to discern the development of weaponry of mass destruction and threats of proliferation; a unique capability of defence intelligence in Canada.
It also has a very important capability for strategic assessment. That is not only to collect intelligence, but to make sense of intelligence, to translate raw intelligence into information and knowledge, which can be used by decision makers, by commanders in the field, and even by other government departments as part of their responsibilities for the defence and security of Canada. Those are the four intelligence capabilities.
It also has very important capability for peacekeeping intelligence. At one time, peacekeepers eschewed the notion of intelligence. It was regarded as somehow tainted and in fact the lessons that we learned from peacekeeping operations in many parts of the world are that operations other than war require a foundation of intelligence. Our capacity in Canada for peacekeeping intelligence includes our capacity to do surveillance, so we are able to see where threats, adversaries, and resistance to peacekeeping rise. It also involves what amounts to political, and cultural anthropology, the ability to know who is on our side, and who is an adversary in environments that are unfamiliar to us.
It involves humanitarian assistance, the capacity to know and to have the intelligence, to know what humanitarian assistance is necessary by whom, for whom, without intervening inappropriately and unfairly in internal conflicts.
It also, of course, involves very importantly intelligence for force protection, the ability to discern, thwart and protect against threats to Canadian Forces on peacekeeping missions.
Third, our defence intelligence capability relates to traditional combat intelligence and the need to have intelligence of a strategic, tactical and operational form in order to enable Canadian Forces to achieve their missions.
We have all-source architecture for our defence intelligence based on what is, in jargon, C4ISR. C4ISR is a computer based, coordinated, communications-based intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, bringing all the forces together — the phrase goes ``from sensor to shooter'' — so that our forces in the field have all the knowledge they need that technology can provide for them to fulfil their missions.
All this technology, all these capabilities for combat intelligence have to be interoperable because Canadian Forces, whether on military missions or on peace support missions or on other operations other than war, work together with allies. Our intelligence technologies have to be interoperable and our architecture must be as well with those of our allies, both within NATO and in the UN system.
Our combat intelligence also has to have to a counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism capability and, once again, force protection. All these are the intelligence requirements for Canadian combat intelligence.
Our defence intelligence agenda has a critical infrastructure protection mission. It involves military aid to the civil power in case of a national emergency or a terrorist strike on Canada. This intelligence capability has to be available for threat assessments, has to be available to discern the science/technology components of those threat assessments; is it nuclear or radiological, is it chemical or biological? It is the Armed Forces of Canada which has the intelligence capability to discern and characterize those threats.
What is the way ahead? Very briefly, because my time is limited and I would like to maximize our discussion opportunity, the way ahead involves four elements. The first is resources, and I will not address this because I think General Gauthier and other officials of the Government of Canada will be appearing before your committee, and they can best express the resource requirements for the agenda for defence intelligence.
Second is coordination, and that is the capability to coordinate the work, findings, and information arising from defence intelligence with the other intelligence arms of the Government of Canada through the Privy Council Office and through the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, which are the mechanisms we have in place to ensure a seamless architecture between the different components of our intelligence communities, including defence intelligence.
Then there is the issue of training. I should say that in my experience, defence intelligence has been an enthusiastic supporter of the university and academic initiatives to promote intelligence studies in Canada. They have participated actively in academic conferences sponsored by the universities, sponsored by CASIS, the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies, and by my own centre on intelligence analysis. They are voracious consumers of knowledge and contributors to the development of knowledge in these fields.
Yet, unfortunately, there are lacunae. We do not have in Canada, for example, a counterpart to the Joint Military Intelligence College in the United States, which is a specialized graduate and undergraduate university-level training program for intelligence analysts to deepen their trade craft and broaden their knowledge base.
We do have, at Royal Military College, training courses on military intelligence trade craft, and we have, at the Canadian Forces School of Military Intelligence, a new course on strategic defence intelligence. However, I do not think that these have yet achieved the breadth and the scope of what is required for the kind of agenda that Canadian defence intelligence has before it.
In my opinion, one of the issues for the Department of National Defence and for the Canadian Forces is to examine the opportunities and the institutional modalities that lie before it, to achieve not only professional training, but also professional development of the analytical community in particular, so that analysts are capable of using the immense amount of intelligence that the collection capability is able to offer.
An additional issue before defence intelligence is surge capacity. Our Canadian Forces are small by world standards. Some would even say they are underfunded by NATO standards. There is a Canadian Forces intelligence reserve, which offers, if an emergency should arise, trained people to serve on the collection side. What I suggest may be wanting is a surge capacity on the analytical side.
A colleague of mine, Professor David Charters from the University of New Brunswick, has proposed the development of a reserve of Canadian academics and others, available to work with the Canadian Forces in the Department of National Defence in times of emergency as a surge capacity on the analytical side.
I will close by emphasizing the need for a balanced lockstep between collection and analysis. If there is one thing we learned from September 11 and the ongoing counter-terrorism effort around the world, is that the collection of intelligence is vital; but the collection of intelligence will only be relevant if there is an analytical capacity to translate the collected intelligence into information and knowledge; actionable knowledge upon which both military commanders and government officials can respond.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin: In your paper ``The Future of Canada's Defence Intelligence,'' you stated that asymmetric information warfare is not only a threat to critical national infrastructure, it is also an intelligence challenge. Could you provide us with a better appreciation of this challenge and what do you believe DND has to do to meet and properly respond to this issue?
Given that DND is not alone in dealing with intelligence — other government agencies are involved in it too — how is it possible to integrate and coordinate all those elements that you have mentioned several times, this is the famous $56,000 question?
[English]
Mr. Rudner: I will give two examples of where defence has a crucial role to play with respect to threats to critical infrastructure. Imagine the nightmare scenario of an aircraft hijacked by terrorists over Canada, where indications are that these hijackers are not hijackers of the old sort — take me to Cuba — but hijackers of the post-September 11 type, who are prepared to use civil aircraft as a guided missile.
The responsibility is to determine the character of the hijacking. The signalling of the hijacking may come through the civilian sector, but who will determine the character of the hijacking?
Second, what is the response of the Canadian Forces to such a hijacking? If we had such a nightmare scenario, I suggest it would be defence intelligence that would play a crucial role in differentiating between a traditional hijacking, and the new type of hijacking.
Third, you would want the decision whether to intercept and shoot down a civilian hijacked aircraft which is a guided missile, to come from the Minister of National Defence to the Prime Minister of Canada. It is at that level of terror where it is crucial that national defence work in close coordination with other intelligence agencies and, of course, with the political leadership of the country.
A more prosaic, less nightmarish but also deadly scenario has to do with our critical infrastructure. We are all aware of its importance to the country and to our very important trade relationship with the United States. Approximately 90 per cent of our merchandise trade is with the United States. About 90 per cent of that trade is transported across eight bridges and tunnels across the St. Lawrence and related waterways. An attack on those bridges and tunnels would damage Canadian trade and could cause a response by our trading partner that would be extremely damaging to the Canadian economy as a whole.
The Canadian intelligence service has the technological expertise to disarm an explosive device in a tunnel or on a bridge. Canadian defence intelligence has the ability to detect threats to infrastructure from explosives and other threats. I am not saying that they should not work together with the other intelligence services and law enforcement agencies; they should and they do.
I am suggesting that coming out of the military experience, especially in terms of defence intelligence, science and technology and strategic assessment, they have a comparative advantage of a specialized sort, which is a necessary value-added to Canada's overall intelligence effort, including law enforcement and other intelligence services.
Senator Nolin: The two examples you just gave us are civil in nature. How would we reorganize the infrastructure of the government to make the department the main operator of such analysis?
Mr. Rudner: I do not think they are necessarily stove piped into civil and military. For example, a decision to send Canadian interceptors to intercept a hostile aircraft would be —
Senator Nolin: I do not question what the response would be or who would be in charge of organizing the response. However, let us begin a few steps before that scenario. Who is in charge of gathering the information? Who is in charge of promoting option A or option B and moving into the response mode? That is a question about coordination.
Mr. Rudner: That is a question you might askMGen. Gauthier.
I will draw an analogy from September 11. The 9/11 commission reported on this in great detail. It found three levels of decision and the failure of coordination. The information that aircraft were hijacked went first to the companies then to the Federal Aviation Authority in the United States. Only later did that information go to NORAD, the defence authority, and in fact it went too late. The interception failed even though a decision had been taken to intercept any aircraft before it attacks.
One lesson learned from this exercise is that you must have specialized responsibility among the company, the civil aviation authority and the defence agency. There has to be lateral communication and that communication has to be seamless and immediate.
In my opinion, although I have not studied this in detail, those lessons have been learned in the United States, and I think they have been learned in Canada.
Senator Nolin: Do you think the Americans are expecting us to move in that direction?
Mr. Rudner: I believe the Americans assume we will because an aircraft hijacked over Canada is a direct threat to Canadians and is a Canadian responsibility.
Senator Banks: I want to continue along the line of Senator Nolin's questions, but from the standpoint of a devil's advocate. I want to ask this because I was on a committee of parliamentarians that looked into questions of intelligence, including military intelligence.
In the old days, we were able to make it very clear if there was an army, navy or air force that was going to attack us. That is military intelligence. The business of spies, undergrounds and smuggling people was other than military intelligence. I guess you would call it civilian intelligence. That distinction does not really work any more, does it?
Are they not so commingled that perhaps there ought to be only one that is dealing with intelligence?
Mr. Rudner: In my opinion, no. Let me give you my reasoning. There is no question that there are several threats, not just one. There is a terrorist threat, no question. Let me remind honourable senators that in its latest report the British Intelligence and Security Committee warned the British public that there is over-concentration only on the terrorist threat and under-concentration on other threats to the U.K.
In the age of terrorism, yes, the resources ought to be there to meet the threat from terrorism, but not at the expense of the other threats. The other threats also have to be met.
The other threats are espionage and proliferation of weaponry of mass destruction, and for the Armed Forces — I do not want to use the word ``traditional'' because they are no longer traditional — but conventional threats to the forces of Canada involved in peace support or involved, if we ever are, in combat.
The military requires an intelligence capability for its missions whether they are combat missions or peace support missions or force protection missions. We also require intelligence to meet these other threats. Proliferation and defence intelligence has a very important science and technology role there.
For intelligence more generally, including early warning, our Canadian Forces intelligence capability is of unique advantage to Canada, but also let me suggest that there is nothing wrong with a degree of duplication in intelligence. One of the problems of intelligence, whether it is collection or assessment, is that the risks of missing the discernment of a threat can be catastrophic.
Part of intelligence management is risk management. In order to avoid intelligence failure where the risks have a potential of catastrophe, it is not necessarily bad to have more than one agency involved in collection and assessment, something the Israelis learned after 1973.
Senator Banks: As long as they talk to each other.
Mr. Rudner: As long as you communicate, you reduce the risk of something falling between the chairs.
Senator Banks: Along a different line, Mr. Rudner, we met with the British committee to which you have just referred and had long discussions with them. We were looking at the question of, and have arrived at certain conclusions about, parliamentary oversight of intelligence, which would include military intelligence. There are people in the world, including the Australians, who, when we said there should be a certain amount of transparency and a certain amount of openness about these things disagreed. On the other hand, the Americans are at the other end of the stick where it is sort of a free-for-all in terms of the questions in Congress. The British model, as I am sure you know, falls somewhere in between.
If you were the boss in Canada, would you have parliamentary oversight of intelligence, and specifically how far up the clearance ladder would you allow or want parliamentarians to go before they bump into, ``I cannot tell you that?''
Mr. Rudner: That is a very interesting question, senator. Let me begin with an advertisement. Tomorrow, literally, we will be publicly announcing a major international conference that will be held here in Ottawa on May 18-19 on intelligence oversight and review, called ``Making National Security Accountable.'' Leading scholars and practitioners on a world level will be there. This is a question I have devoted considerable thought to, both out of my own research and teaching as well as for the design of this conference.
My personal view is that it is vital to have parliamentary oversight in conjunction with executive oversight and not as its substitute. There are countries that operate oversight at both levels. What am I saying? I am saying that organizations like SIRC, and Norway's security surveillance committee, play a valuable role in terms of executive oversight. They also have a security clearance. Literally, nothing ought to be kept secret from their scrutiny. That is valuable in the exercise of governmental oversight of a very sensitive area of life, and that is the intrusive role, and necessarily intrusive role, of intelligence.
Open parliament must also have an oversight role precisely because, in such sensitive areas, we want to have broad public confidence in the effectiveness, efficiency and, very importantly, the propriety of the intelligence effort.
In my opinion, effectiveness, efficiency and propriety do not really need secrecy and do not touch on secrecy. We as academics have studied this subject from those perspectives without having to get into the so-called ``circle of secrecy.''
I am suggesting that for military intelligence and other areas of intelligence oversight, one could walk on two legs. One could have the executive oversight, including specialized committees that have security clearance and do that level of scrutiny which is appropriate, and broad parliamentary oversight that should not have secrecy because it must be transparent and build public confidence in the effectiveness, efficiency and propriety of the intelligence effort. In a democracy, the public wants both.
Senator Banks: If the parliamentary oversight is by people who need to find out something in order to provide confidence to the public that things are being done properly, efficiently and effectively, how can they do that if they are obviated from having access to the information in order to be able to answer those questions?
Mr. Rudner: They have two sources. First, they could ask all of these services themselves. In Britain, Norway and Belgium, the executive committees are specialized committees of the Parliament who report to the rest of Parliament on a good faith basis.
In the end, if we do not trust Parliament and if we do not trust our courts, it is a sad day for democracy. In my opinion, in democracies, we can trust our legal system and we can trust our parliamentary system.
Senator Banks: And the executive system, always?
Mr. Rudner: Our executive is always subject to the rule of law and to the sovereignty of Parliament. That is the nature of democracy. I do not distrust the executive, but they are subject to law and subject to the rule of Parliament.
Senator Atkins: In the 1990s there was a significant cut back in the investment in security and defence, which meant that there was probably a cut back in the training.
How long does it take to recover personnel and get them back up to speed as the investment increases?
Mr. Rudner: By all accounts, one does not create either an intelligence collector or an intelligence analyst in a short time. A lot of the training is a highly nuanced specialization. If you are a human source collector, the ability to run an agent in a hostile environment that could be a village in Bosnia, is not something you learn in an MA program; it requires experience and knowledge.
The ability to do intelligence analysis and assessment is not the same as writing a term paper at my school using open sources. Again, it involves the highly nuanced use of words in one culture against another culture. It takes time.
The cutbacks deprived the intelligence community of valuable knowledge and resources.
Senator Atkins: I assume it is a combination then of on-the-job and academic training. It is not just one or the other.
Mr. Rudner: You need both; an experiential. It is mentoring. You learn how to do from people who have done it and are doing it.
Senator Atkins: How does the Charter affect intelligence and security?
Mr. Rudner: In terms of defence intelligence, in particular, I do not believe there is anything in the Charter that touches on defence intelligence. The foreign intelligence capabilities and requirements of Canadian defence intelligence are not a Charter issue, they happen abroad.
The protection of Canadian forces and peacekeeping intelligence, are not issues to which the Charter refers or relates. In that sense, defence intelligence operates appropriately within the framework of Canadian law and Canadian policy.
Security intelligence is intrusive by definition into Canadian society and there is no question that in Canada it operates under the law. There is the CSIS Act of 1984, and the oversight of the enforcement and compliance of that act by the Inspector General and by Security Intelligence Review Committee, and by all accounts CSIS itself has a process by which it vets its operational requirements, such as TARC, which is a committee within CSIS that judges the appropriate levels of surveillance. There are a range of mechanisms that guarantee that security intelligence in Canada is lawful, ethically proper and Charter compliant.
Senator Atkins: Would it handcuff the RCMP in any way from some of the things that they might want to do in terms of disclosures or the way they would manage a case?
Mr. Rudner: I do not think so. There is a distinction between intelligence and law enforcement. The distinction relates to the grounds on which one has to conduct an investigation.
In intelligence, the principle is that if you have reasonable grounds to suspect that someone is committing an act that is a threat to Canada. In law enforcement, which is the RCMP's domain, it is probable cause; you have to see an offence being committed. Where they come together is when you want to take proactive measures against a threat where traditional criminality lets the crime happen, and then you have probable cause and then you have arrest and prosecutions.
With respect to terrorism, we do not want to have a situation where bombs explode and people are killed and then you prosecute, nor do we want three of our Charter rights observed in return for only two bomb explosions next year. We want all the Charter rights and no bomb explosions. That is where the RCMP, CSIS, and defence intelligence operate in close coordination.
There is a coordination committee that operates under the umbrella of CSIS that brings together all the Canadian intelligence services, including DND, in order to integrate seamlessly their assessments.
Senator Atkins: Is there a disconnect between the different agencies? Are you satisfied that they are working together?
You mentioned earlier in response to one of the questions about the Americans and one of the things that we found out in our travels is that there is a serious disconnect between some of the agencies that might have helped prevent 9/11.
Mr. Rudner: This raises a very interesting and challenging question that I do not believe has a solution. The problem there is, as a society, we have different things we value and it is not just Charter versus security. Those are not alternatives. The Charter is quite comfortable with security. The security protects the Charter and vice versa. We have other values, for example, privacy.
Do we want information obtained on a reasonable grounds to suspect, to be transformed into probably cause to arrest? The answer is no.
You do want certain limits on sharing. You do want certain limits on the use of information that could compromise the rights of individuals, their status, and their feeling of personal security.
How do you make the judgements that are sensitive, and require careful thought between what you share and what you do not share?
This is one of the roles of the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre. It is that integration that says that it will share the information but make it clear that the information is only on reasonable grounds, and there is a probability that it is not very reliable. They will make it available with the knowledge that it might not be reliable, and recommend waiting for validation of the information.
We have a sophisticated community which understand those types of nuances. Therefore, I think its sharing will take place effectively, but it also will be received effectively and not actioned inappropriately. That is the balance we seek.
Senator Atkins: Do you think we are underfunded in terms of security and intelligence?
Mr. Rudner: I do not know that we are underfunded. My concern is different. I am concerned about professional standards. I speak now as an academic.
I have met people in the intelligence community with whom I am impressed, but in every domain, we are in not only action environments but learning environments. I would be very concerned that our Canadian intelligence analysts and collectors have the same kinds of opportunity to develop their professional proficiency as do their counterparts in Australia, United States, United Kingdom, Norway or wherever.
I do not want Canadians to be insecure because of our lack of investment in the professional development of our intelligence community. When I look at our intelligence community, I see interesting drops of rain here or there, but not adequate irrigation, to use that metaphor, for professional development.
Senator Atkins: We have heard over the last couple of years that maybe we do not have enough collectors in the field.
Mr. Rudner: Senator, you raise the major question: whether Canada should have a foreign intelligence service. If we had a foreign intelligence service, it could be CSIS expanded abroad or a dedicated agency operating abroad, and yes, we would enhance our capabilities abroad and we would have a very much larger number of human source collectors abroad.
However, as we speak, we have, in effect, three elements operating abroad. We have our signals intelligence capability, which collects globally, although it is centralized in Ottawa. We have a CSIS capacity to operate abroad, which is modest but there; and the other one is in defence intelligence. We tend to neglect this one in our accounting for intelligence. Defence intelligence has a capability and does operate abroad in ways which I have suggested, and in ways that are vital for Canada's missions abroad, especially as it relates to the protection of our forces, our missions and peace support and our military presence abroad.
The other question is do we want this enhanced capacity?
Senator Atkins: What is your answer?
Mr. Rudner: I think we need a foreign intelligence capability and I would like to see it enhanced. I could understand the rationale for vesting it in the existing intelligence service; it is cheaper, not only in monetary costs, it is cheaper in terms of learning. They have a lot of knowledge at CSIS upon which they would build to expand and enhance a foreign intelligence capability.
However, I am mindful that most democracies in the world have separated security intelligence and foreign intelligence, and that separation is important, if only for people's confidence in intelligence, precisely because it is such an intrusive instrument in the hands of government.
Senator Atkins: Are you satisfied that this new ministry is the way to address the problems of integrating the agencies and eliminating any disconnect that exists?
Mr. Rudner: There is no question that a single ministry with a minister who has status in gravitas is an important element in every democratic system in mobilizing public and political support for the purpose of public safety, emergency preparedness and, in the broader sense, national security.
There is also no question that when you bring together disparate parts of a government, parts which used to belong to other ministries, the meshing takes time. It does not happen overnight. There are bits which rub against bits, and it will take time before it is smooth and works well. We all understand that process.
I think it is a move in the right direction. How long it will take until all the bits are working smoothly, I hope it will be in short order because to protect public safety and national security is one of Canada's most urgent requirements.
I am of the view that very effective relationships already exist among the operational side of the Canadian intelligence community; people and organizations work together, people speak to people.
There are areas where, perhaps, they cannot share fulsomely but that is not because of the institutions; they are compliant with the law. If we want those things to happen, we have to change our laws. I suggest that those laws reflect the values of Canadians; that is why those laws are in place and they are observed by the operating side of the community.
Senator Atkins: Are we concentrating too much on terrorists and not on the other elements that you suggested?
Mr. Rudner: Again, without being inside the tent, I think not. I have indications. As we know, CSIS has a very important role in counter-terrorism. It has maintained a branch which deals with the threats of counter-espionage and has established a new branch to deal with the threat of counter-proliferation. Obviously they cannot tell us their targets or their methods, but the establishment of the branch is the signal that there are other threats and they are responding. Likewise at CSE and RCMP. One gets the signal that the organizations have set up institutional capabilities, which signal to the citizenry that they are responsive to the threats.
The Chairman: Senator Atkins's first question to you concerned the cuts that took place in the early 1990s, particularly to CSIS, and the fact that we have now seen an enhancement of the resources available to CSIS.
How long will it take CSIS to recover the capability even though the funding is back now?
Mr. Rudner: To be honest, I think that would require a much more knowledgeable answer than I am able to provide with precision. A CSIS officer who is capable of running an agent, which is what we are talking about, to place someone in an adversarial organization at high risk and to derive intelligence from that agent; that is not a skill you get in five years. It is a skill you may learn over a decade from someone who has been doing it for 20 years.
The Chairman: This is what we were looking for. We need to hear that the investment that takes place now does not pay off for another decade.
Mr. Rudner: They say that the British Security Service and the British Secret Intelligence Service, sometimes called MI5 and MI6, have among the finest reputations in terms of agent running. They, too, underwent cuts; they, too, are undergoing a massive expansion, doubling in size. They have called back the former people to train the new people. It will take a decade to get those kinds of skills in place.
The Chairman: You commented briefly on an external intelligence service and you told us your choice was CSIS.
Mr. Rudner: One would be CSIS; the other would be a separate agency.
The Chairman: I understand that. You said both, and then you said your preference was CSIS because of efficiencies.
Please give us the argument for having one under foreign affairs?
Mr. Rudner: Let me correct myself. I did not give as a personal preference CSIS. I indicated that some might prefer CSIS precisely because of the existing infrastructure.
The Chairman: Why would some prefer the other?
Mr. Rudner: There is a view in most democracies that the accumulation of both domestic security intelligence and foreign intelligence in a single agency concentrates excessive intrusive powers in a single organization.
The Chairman: Is there also a concern that methods and procedures might slop over?
Mr. Rudner: That is what they mean when they say ``excessive powers.'' When one looks across at democracies, such as the U.K., New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Israel, we see that they operate two agencies precisely because they want to avoid having the so-called ``slop over'' or misappropriate conduct from one domain affecting the other domain, presumable foreign to domestic, but that is not the only area of concern. There is the problem of sharing. Again, abroad, you have many fewer constraints on sharing than you do at home when you have privacy laws and all sorts of other laws that limit the form, type and level of sharing.
The Chairman: The Americans avoid the problem but not having sharing.
Mr. Rudner: There was no sharing in there.
Senator Day: Do we have a coordinated foreign affairs department or foreign intelligence gathering going on that is non-security oriented?
Mr. Rudner: Could I ask what you mean by ``non-security?''
Senator Day: I think your point was that CSIS has a foreign capacity with respect to security. It is primarily a national security type agency, but it does have a foreign element with respect to security.
Mr. Rudner: Yes, in respect to threats to Canada.
Senator Day: Foreign Affairs Canada is gathering all kinds of information.
Are they coordinating that non-security type information that they have?
Mr. Rudner: Yes, it is. Foreign Affairs have several instruments for intelligence. They certainly have diplomatic reporting. They also have a program where they interview Canadians who have gone abroad and returned from regions of great interest, if I can put it that way. They participate at Privy Council Office level in intelligence assessment. Their information is shared with all the other information at a high strategic level. They are also members of the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, which is housed at CSIS but has its own status. It is much more operational sharing. Yes, FAC, in that sense, both gives and receives from the intelligence community.
Senator Day: Who takes the lead with respect to this Integrated Assessment Centre that you have mentioned?
Mr. Rudner: It is housed at CSIS. The history has not been written yet, but I think it would be a CSIS initiative to begin with, to which others have responded and taken up the challenge. It is housed there, and it is certainly functional.
Senator Day: You referred to that as ``integrated threat assessment'' at one time, and our notes suggest it is an integrated terrorist threat assessment centre.
Mr. Rudner: It is a threat assessment centre that deals predominantly with terrorism. Its formal title is ``threat,'' so proliferation threats and other threats to Canada are certainly within their scope.
Senator Day: Is this modelled on the U.S. integrated terrorism threat assessment organization?
Mr. Rudner: That is an interesting question. They both emerged at roughly the same time, though historians may correct me. The U.S. may have preceded it in terms of chronology, but that does not necessarily mean it preceded it conceptually. There is a major difference.
The U.S. is essentially a dance floor between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, and the others are seated around the room watching the minuet. In Canada, it is much more of an integrated threat assessment centre. Everyone around the table, to continue the metaphor, is a dance partner.
Senator Day: You referred to David Charters and his idea of having academics that are knowledgeable with respect to information and intelligence analysis as supplementary reservists to handle the surges that may be required from time to time.
What is your view of that concept?
Mr. Rudner: David Charters had in mind not just academics but also financial analysts working for the financial sector and other people working in the area of explosives and other areas of knowledge. At a time of a national emergency, these people should be made available to defence intelligence as a surge capacity for analysis. This means they require training. They would have training, for argument sake, several weeks every year in methodologies of intelligence analysis, which differs somewhat from academic and financial and other areas. In addition to their home discipline, they would build up this capacity to do intelligence analysis. At a time of national emergency, these people would be brought on board.
There is a historical precedent for this. In 1940, when Bletchley Hall was set up to do the ultra secret Enigma, the question came as to who would analyze the catch or traffic from Enigma. A woman in the British Ministry of Defence spent her time before the war compiling a list of knowledgeable people about international affairs from all different walks of life in the U.K.; academics, mathematics, and intelligence. This was the master list which led to the recruitment, which, as Churchill after the war said, these were people who laid the golden eggs and never squawked. They were surge capacity.
Hopefully we will not have a world war to deal with, but we need a surge capacity for Canadians as well.
Senator Day: We are hoping to meet with him in New Brunswick in the next month or so, so we will follow up on this issue further.
I have a difficult time getting my arms around all these aspects of intelligence in terms of coordination, collection, in terms of operational intelligence that the military may need and the strategic intelligence that a country may need and, indeed, the military may need if they are going into a country on a peace keeping basis. You talked about the Royal Military College and the Canadian Forces Intelligence School. What are they teaching there? Is it mathematics, geography, or languages, or science and tech to operate the equipment? How can you say you have an institution that is training people in intelligence?
Mr. Rudner: Senator, the training operates at two levels: the practitioner and the analyst. At the Royal Military College, the intelligence training is trade craft. As a military officer, what are the skills you need to have to collect intelligence? They prepare officers for the Canadian Forces. The Canadian Forces School of Military Intelligence, until now, was a more senior level trade craft. Just this year, I am told, they introduced a strategic defence intelligence analysis course.
The idea there was to go from trade craft and extend outwards to ask questions of the sort: ``What is jihad? What is the topography of terrorism? What are issues in the Congo or West Africa that Canadian Forces might encounter?''
To the best of my knowledge, and for reasons of their own, I believe they decided to use existing knowledge resources from within the school, rather than reach out and bring intellectual resources from outside the school, from other parts of government, from the assessment community or from academia. My centre told them that we were available for cooperation. They chose to remain in-house.
Senator Day: From a military point of view, should intelligence officers be in uniform or should they not?
Mr. Rudner: with a military purpose, the answer would be ``yes.'' After all, in an operational environment, whether it is peace keeping or combat, a commander wants to have intelligence from a person with whom they have confidence, and understands military and combat concepts. A civilian would not hack it.
At the strategic assessment level there are already civilian and military people working together at the Department of National Defence. They have a valuable dialogue. There are people, who are inside the tent and outside the tent, but they see the configuration, and the setting of the tent and the pressures that are on the tent and the topography around the tent. You have a valuable conjunction of knowledge and skills.
Senator Day: Am I right in interpreting your comments that the strategic intelligence analysis would probably be done back here, whereas an officer would be trained to analyze the information at an operational level, in Kandahar, for example?
Mr. Rudner: They also have to understand precisely what it means in terms of the operation.
Senator Cordy: I would like to go back to your comments about the surge capacity for intelligence analysts.
Has Mr. Charters actually gone into the planning stage?
It seems reasonable. Looking at several weeks a year may not be the best way to go, because you actually learn by doing. I am only thinking and guessing, but you would have to get a true sense of what it is like and how it works.
I look at the model of the military reservist, who has a mentor. In that situation the analyst would work at CSIS, RCMP, DND and gain experience over the period of two days, a month or whatever.
Has he developed a plan or have you developed a plan as to how you could see it work?
Mr. Rudner: Senator, no, I have not. I do not think Mr. Charters has written up a formal proposal. We have had a discussion and e-mail communications.
I think you are absolutely right. One would certainly want to have a period of more formal training and upgrading professional development once a year, two or three weeks constantly at it, and then regular application of this skill in practice on a regular basis. The difficulty will be twofold: One will be getting people in private life to be able and available for this type of work on a more extended basis; second, defence intelligence is based in Ottawa.
As a person residing in Ottawa and at Carleton University, I am delighted to see matters concerning the Government of Canada happen here in Ottawa. To be fair the surge capacity has to be national. Whether one could bring people from Atlantic Canada, the Prairies, Western Canada, Quebec, and the North two days a week in large numbers to develop a surge capacity at National Defence Headquarters is a real problem. It is not an insurmountable problem, however, and I think our creativity could find a solution.
Senator Cordy: It seems like an idea that is worth pursuing.
Has the government approached this idea or is it still in the discussion stages?
Mr. Rudner: To the best of my knowledge, an informal communication was sent to defence intelligence.
Senator Cordy: Would you analyze it?
Mr. Rudner: I do not know if anything has proceeded.
Senator Cordy: I am interested in your intelligence gathering and analysis for peacekeepers. Certainly, when you look at peace keeping, it has changed. In fact, it is almost peacemakers now. I will relate this to the issue of failed or failing states.
It seems that a number of states are failing and that countries like Canada are moving in. Do you think that the issue of failing states will dominate the international scene over the next while?
Before our peacemakers or peacekeepers move into any failed state or into any situation, what information do we have available before we send them in?
Are we communicating with countries that are neighbours or are familiar with them?
What exactly do we know before we send our people over?
Mr. Rudner: Let me premise my response by saying that I think there are two types of issues before us. There are the failed states, no question. There is also a category of what we might want to call ``states at building.'' They are in the process of being built; they have not quite failed. I am thinking of the Palestinian Authority which might well emerge as a Palestinian state in2005-06. Iraq is another example; Bosnia another country that has not quite failed and is being built. In those cases, there are explicit roles for international missions that are peace support, peace building, and peace enforcement. They all require intelligence.
The tragedy is that it is precisely on those countries that you have the least knowledge in academe, in the media, and in the public domain. Those are not only failures of states they are failures of the world to study them. Afghanistan had a narrow literature before September 11. I am not sure it has much of a literature now. Kosovo has a handful of books in the English language on Yugoslavia, let alone on Kosovo. Sudan has a handful of books in the English language.
We have huge lacunae in our area studies. I speak as an academic. This translates into great gaps in knowledge in the intelligence community. They say in the intelligence community that 95-odd per cent of the intelligence utilized is from open sources, meaning things open to all of us. If that is the case, and there is no reason to doubt it that tells you how little is known about the Darfurs, the Afghanistans, the Palestinians, the Sierra Leones of the world.
Speaking from the point of view of defence intelligence, we tend to take on these missions out of what amounts to crisis and emergency responses. Something horrible happens and Canadians expect Canada to respond, irrespective of whether our Canadian Forces have the intelligence basis for their operational requirements and they have to scramble.
Here, too, the concept of a surge capacity would enable military or defence intelligence to tax, if you will all the knowledge resources across the country from the private, public and academic sector. We would find the people who know about tribes, social construction, and religious institutions.
In that way, our Canadian Forces, in operating in countries where there is unfamiliarity, will have the advantage of all the knowledge that we have been able to accumulate as a society.
Senator Cordy: We certainly want to make sure that we are sending our peace keepers into safe situations.
The Chairman: Mr. Rudner, it has been useful to have you here before us today. We appreciate your assistance in the course of our study. We would like to have you back. I would also like to wish you every success with your upcoming intelligence oversight conference. I am sure it will be a success and we look forward to reading about it. Some of us will be there.
Our next witness is MGen. Michael Gauthier. He enrolled in the Canadian Forces in 1973 as a cadet at the Royal Military College in Kingston, and graduated with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. In November 2002, MGen. Gauthier was promoted to his current rank and appointed J2/Director General of Intelligence at National Defence.
In 1993, he was awarded the meritorious service cross in recognition of his performance on Operation Harmony. Given his reputation as a parachutist, I am disappointed to see he is not wearing any insignia to validate that comment. MGen. Gauthier, I welcome you with a small joke, but I do welcome you. I understand you have a short statement to make for the committee.
Major-General Michael J.C.M. Gauthier, MSC, CD, J2/Director General of Intelligence, National Defence: Honourable senators, I have been asked to provide an overview of defence intelligence. Since the subject is not something that would necessarily be familiar to most members of the committee, what I propose to do is to begin by explaining in some detail what defence intelligence involves in terms of processes, organization and capabilities. I will then say a few words about relationships with others in the Government of Canada intelligence community and our international partners. I will close with an overview of ongoing efforts to shape the defence intelligence function to meet the future needs of the Canadian Forces in DND.
I would expect all of this to take about 15 minutes, Mr. Chairman, if that is all right. If I am repeating what you have just been told by Mr. Rudner, by all means tell me to speed up or move to the next subject and I will be happy to do that.
As you can appreciate, intelligence serves many purposes in a national defence context. In the conduct of tactical operations, military intelligence provides insight into the physical operating environment and seeks to provide commanders with an assessment of an adversary's dispositions and capabilities and, more importantly, an estimate of its probable courses of action, centres of gravity and vulnerabilities.
At a more strategic level, the defence intelligence function supports the Chief of Defence Staff, and ultimately government, in making decisions about current and future Canadian Forces operations. It also provides strategic warning on security issues related to Canada's national interests. It provides assessments and warning information in relation to force protection, and it supports defence policy and strategy interests. It also produces intelligence in support of international partnerships and agreements. I will come back to this later in my remarks.
We teach that the intelligence process is a continuous cycle involving four steps, each of which must be managed systematically. In the direction stage, and I draw your attention to slide 3, intelligence requirements are determined in consultation with commanders or other customers. The collection effort is planned, and tasks or requests are issued to collection or production agencies.
In the collection stage, sources are exploited by collection specialists, and the collected data and information is delivered to the appropriate processing unit. Processing is the critical piece. It involves both the processing of data by specialists, and the fusing of this data with other types of data and subsequent analysis to create an all-source intelligence product.
Finally, an effective dissemination process will get the right product to the right decision maker at the right time and in the right format. This can involve a briefing, the delivery of hard copy material, or, more often, the posting of products on secure websites for rapid viewing by all interested parties, both nationally and internationally, inside and outside the Canadian Forces simultaneously.
Thanks to today's information technology, reports posted at the tactical level — for instance, by our forces in Kabul, can be seen virtually instantaneously by appropriate commanders and other analysts in Afghanistan, here in Ottawa, and amongst our partners and vice versa. This has had a dramatic impact on decision-making cycles, and this is at the heart of the so-called revolution in military affairs.
You will also appreciate that as illustrated on the graphic, the intelligence cycle is very much a circular process in which derived information in turn begs more questions, leading to a refined collection effort and a new round of more focused processing and fusion.
The fourth slide in your package is intended to illustrate that the intelligence cycle is far from linear. The intelligence function is able to draw on quite a complex array of sensors and information sources. The challenge is to use the intelligence cycle to synchronize the effort and integrate the data of sensors and deployed personnel. This entails the development of detailed plans to ensure that we have access to the necessary sensors, communications bandwidth and information technology to transform an enormous flow of data and elements of information into knowledge of a particular issue, capability or mission area.
This slide is also intended to depict the inter-service, inter-agency and international dimensions of this information environment. There is a vast array of information sources, only a fraction of which are owned or controlled by any particular commander. Effective integration and exploitation are key. This is really what network-enabled operations are all about.
Another way to view this process is through the lens of the various intelligence disciplines as seen on slide 5. A multidisciplinary or all-source view of a problem helps to resolve ambiguous data, fill gaps in our understanding of a particular situation and establish quality assurance over the data that is used to form an assessment. Let me briefly explain some of these disciplines and, at the same time, relate these to existing units and capabilities.
Imagery intelligence, or IMINT, involves a systematic collection and exploitation of hand-held, airborne and space- based photographic sensors that are capable of sensing activities using the visible and non-visible electromagnetic spectrum. Imagery analysis is performed by one of my units, the Canadian Forces Joint Imagery Centre located here in Ottawa. It is the only imagery analysis centre in the Government of Canada, so it serves other government department purposes also.
Geospatial information services are provided by the Mapping and Charting Establishment also located in Ottawa. This unit deploys geomantic support teams with deploying forces, and provides geographical, topographic and hydrographic data and products to the CF and the department.
Signals intelligence, or SIGINT, is a generic term used to describe communications intelligence, which involves the collection and exploitation of data passed over the electromagnetic spectrum, and electronic intelligence, which involves the detection, geolocation and exploitation of emissions from electronic sensors such as radar.
The Canadian Forces information operations group provides deployable SIGINT support to Canadian Forces operations, working in close collaboration with the Communications Security Establishment, which provides broader support to the CF and DND.
Human intelligence, or HUMINT, is intelligence derived from human sources through either covert or overt means. Today, the CF has relatively limited HUMINT capabilities. The CF attaché program contributes to overt human collection, and we now deploy tactical HUMINT teams on all of our major operations. In the context of evolving threats and CF missions, this capability is becoming increasingly important.
Counter-intelligence, as the term implies, seeks to counter collection, exploitation and targeting efforts undertaken by adversaries against our personnel and installations. Another of my units, the Canadian Forces National Counter- Intelligence Information Unit, performs this task.
Acoustic intelligence, meteorological data, current intelligence, measurement and signatures intelligence and medical and environmental intelligence rely, to one degree or another, on collection undertaken by technical and human intelligence sources to increase our understanding of emerging issues and threats. The key message in this graphic is that complete knowledge or comprehensive situational awareness comes from the successful integration of data provided by each of the disciplines shown. We call this integration process ``fusion.''
Data fusion has two dimensions, one where data is merged and another where information is interpreted. The merging of information can be achieved largely through automated means, whereas the interpretation of complex events and issues requires human analysis. It is this all-source analysis that serves as the heart of the intelligence process.
There are natural tensions between single-source collectors and the all-source analytical component, not the least of which is based on competition over resource allocation.
In the aftermath of the Iraq WMD controversy, both the U.S. and the U.K. have determined that the sharing of information between intelligence agencies was flawed, with collection agencies too inclined to provide raw intelligence data directly to policy-makers without the benefit of properly synchronized all-source analysis. There are lessons in this for Canada as well.
Slide 6 provides you with a more vertical perspective of defence intelligence, from the grand strategic to tactical levels. It is meant to show that the nature of the intelligence effort and associated products vary somewhat from one level of command to the next. Having said that, as you have heard before, the information age has caused considerable compression and overlap between the strategic, operational and tactical levels. Strategic level assets are increasingly able to support tactical decision-making, and conversely, tactical actions are sometimes directly influenced by strategic considerations.
This graphic is also intended to illustrate that intelligence staffs and units are an integral part of the chain of command. For instance, as most of you know, at the operational level, the navy has fusion centres to support maritime operations on each coast. Air force wings and squadrons have their own organic intelligence sections, and the army has similar capabilities.
At the national level, the broad outline of my organization is shown on slide 7. The various collectors and single source units I referred to earlier are grouped within the Intelligence Capabilities Division, and elements of these units are deployed into operational theatres on a purpose-built basis. The Intelligence Production Division includes analysts with expertise in particular geographic, functional or scientific areas. Many havepost-graduate degrees. All-source analysis, strategic assessments and operational products are produced by intelligence analysts from this division, normally working collaboratively with national and international partners.
We also have embedded in the National Defence Command Centre a 24/7 intelligence watch and a number of operational intelligence analysts who contribute to these processes. This national intelligence capability extends to operational theatres where we deploy joint or national intelligence centres. These normally include a range of collection, fusion and analysis capabilities tailored to support deployed commanders. In apost-9/11 operational environment, the diversity of threats on some missions has caused us to build substantially more robust capabilities that have served our deployed units extremely well on recent operations.
National Defence, and its intelligence component, is both a major consumer of intelligence and a major producer of intelligence within the Canadian intelligence community. The intelligence business is founded on the sharing or exchange of information, and this means cooperation and collaboration with sister agencies is absolutely vital. To this end, I have representatives physically located with virtually all elements of the Government of Canada intelligence community, either as liaison officers or in secondments, and working as an integral part of this community is one of my highest priorities. This is facilitated by a secure government network that supports the relatively free exchange of finished products between agencies. I would be happy to elaborate on this cooperation in response to your questions.
Internationally, we maintain a number of bilateral and multilateral cooperation agreements, the details of which are classified. The most important of these are our bilateral relationship with the U.S. and multilateral relationships with our closest allies. Information systems exist to support all of these. Given Canada's global interests and the global scope of Canadian Forces deployments, I can tell you that these arrangements are absolutely critical to us in terms of strategic decision-making and risk management, as well as for force protection purposes.
I would like to close by providing you a short overview of our ongoing and fairly substantial efforts aimed at transforming the defence intelligence function to meet the demands of a rapidly evolving security environment.
In the fall of 2002, the Chief of Defence Staff and the deputy minister issued instructions to launch a comprehensive departmental review of the intelligence function within the CF and DND. This review was undertaken over an 18 month period by subject matter experts from within and outside DND and was guided by the mandate outlined on slide 9.
The defence intelligence review was wide-ranging and generated comprehensive recommendations for consideration at the departmental level. The CDS and DM provided detailed approvals and direction in response to these recommendations just last month. Since the review provides a fairly detailed picture of CF intelligence methods and capabilities, the final report is classified.
The overarching measures arising from the review, which will serve as a foundation for the transformation of the intelligence function, are shown on slide 10 and include, in outline, first and foremost, to establish a clear governance framework with clearly stated authorities, accountabilities and a fully articulated policy base; realigning the defence intelligence organization and investing in staff to provide an effective functional management framework and develop procedures and tools supported by a staff to efficiently manage the intelligence process. To these ends, a new organizational structure has been put into place, and resources are being allocated to support these changes; and last, to initiate studies in support of longer term investments aimed at enhancing and balancing key collection and analysis capabilities.
Following from departmental direction, these measures were implemented in stages. The nearer term measures are shown on slide 11. In the context of coherent governance and accountability, my position will soon be designated the Chief of Defence Intelligence with clearly stated responsibility for overseeing intelligence activities across DND and the Canadian Forces.
My organization was recently restructured and will be deepened to provide more robust capacity to manage the intelligence process across the forces, to strengthen policy oversight, manage interoperability programs with allies and Canadian agencies and develop future requirements. We are in the process of hiring a number of new strategic analysts.
In parallel with these initiatives, a number of key capability areas have been targeted for further study, as shown on slide 12. HUMINT and counter-intelligence capabilities are growing increasingly important in operational theatres, where insurgents and terrorists have replaced traditional military adversaries. Measurement and signatures intelligence is emerging as a promising new technical collection discipline. The growing scope of Canadian Forces deployments around the globe, together with the growing complexity of threats, including WMD proliferation and cyber threats, has substantially increased our demand for all source analysts, and we must determine how best to respond to this requirement.
All of this suggests that, in a post-9/11 environment, intelligence has become a critical enabler, and associated capabilities will be on a growth path in many different areas. This in turn will present a significant challenge in relation to the training and education of both military and civilian intelligence professionals within the Canadian Forces and the department. Again, here we have identified the need to develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with this challenge, though the strategy itself has not yet been developed.
Finally, you all understand that information technology is having a dramatic impact on command and control and on the intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance functions. A large number of capital projects at various stages of development grouped under the rubric of a C4ISR campaign plan will influence intelligence capabilities, as well as many other capabilities, very much for the better.
I will conclude by simply saying that the intelligence function is one of the more dynamic and operationally relevant areas of defence capability today. The security environment is changing rapidly, and we are working to transform the defence intelligence function to meet tomorrow's challenge. Much has been accomplished, but a great deal more remains to be done to build a sustainable foundation for the future.
[Translation]
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my presentation. I thank you for this opportunity. I will now be pleased to answer your questions.
[English]
Senator Banks: Welcome, general, thank you very much for being with us. What is C4ISR? We have a practice here that you use an acronym without explaining you must contribute money to the pot over there.
MGen. Gauthier: C4ISR stands for command, control, communications and computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, all of which need to be wrapped together to support commanders in their for decision making. It is much easier to say the acronym.
Senator Banks: Intelligence has always been important. Spies have always been important. The nature of it has changed a lot. The nice, neat divisions that could be made between military and the other types of intelligence are harder to find these days. Are we adapting well? Are you adapting well? Are the forces adapting well?
We heard from the previous witness, Dr. Rudner, examples of sort of quasi-symmetrical threats. You talked about first determining who your adversary is, but if your adversary is not someone military and bringing in a dirty bomb in a suitcase, where does military intelligence fit into that?
MGen. Gauthier: I agree completely with your insight, senator, which is why I concluded my presentation by saying that intelligence is one of the more dynamic areas of defence today.
From a pure military perspective, as you have suggested, the days of clearly defined military threats are gone. In fact, the same targets from a security intelligence perspective are of interest potentially from a criminal intelligence perspective as well as a foreign intelligence perspective.
Senator Banks: There still is conventional military intelligence, because if you are a commander in the field doing peace keeping, you still need to know what is over the next hill.
MGen. Gauthier: Over the next hill might be a suicide bomber or a terrorist not wearing a uniform. This is where things have changed in a fundamental way.
From a military perspective, we must broaden our view of what our core business is all about. In addition to being focused on strategic bombers, submarines and large military formations that we were faced off against during the Cold War, we have to be increasingly focused on individual threats such as terrorist insurgents and networks of terrorists, what we now call ``bad guys.''
One of the things that we have discovered is that we cannot face that challenge alone. One of my important priorities is to be working in collaboration with others, whether it is CSIS, CSE or other contributors to the intelligence effort, so that they understand our needs and we understand their needs, and we can work together.
Senator Banks: That is nice and obviously true, but we are all human. We all understand that there are, even in the best of circumstances, turf wars. People might say, ``That is my information or my spy.'' ``That is my piece of news for the day, and I want to keep it because I want to get the credit for it.''
How are we dealing with that question of trading? I am only talking about within the Canadian intelligence communities. Is it working?
MGen. Gauthier: I think it is working well, while at the same time, I think there is room for improvement.
For example, the Canadian intelligence community came together and worked closely to support our deployment to Afghanistan over the course of the last 18 months. CSIS, CSE and others said that their number one priority was to support us on operations.
There is a natural actual inclination though in the intelligence business for whoever produced the product, whatever type of product that might be, to want to give that to a broad range of customers, immediately. I indicated to you in my opening remarks that in some cases there are disadvantages to doing that. Certainly within the range of capabilities that I have, we emphasize the fact that we must bring together the different collection capabilities to generate an all source product so that we give the broadest possible perspective to the decision maker.
Senator Banks: We once had a big respected seat at the international table in the years immediately following World War II. While we did not have many spies out there, we became expert at processing the collected information and data. We have from various people that we are not as good at that any more in terms of volume and capacity. Therefore, we are less welcome now at the international tables because sometimes people say that if they are putting something on the table, we have to put something on the table too.
Are we still able to bring something to the table with our international partners?
MGen. Gauthier: Yes. We are at the table, first of all. We are welcome at the table, and we are contributing to the extent that we are able with the resources that we have.
Senator Banks: Does battlefield secure communication among and between our forces fall within your area of interest?
If it does not, I will not ask the question.
MGen. Gauthier: No, it does not.
The Chairman: General, could you give the committee an appreciation of the DND's involvement in the recently established integrated terrorist assessment centre and the nature of the products produced there?
MGen. Gauthier: First, I believe, the title is the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, although the threat set is principally focused on terrorism and the terrorist threat. The ITAC has been in existence for two to three months. It is very much in its early days in terms of capacity.
We had an earlier initiative called INSAC, which has evolved into something much more robust with broad support from the Canadian intelligence community. It is certainly not even at 25 per cent capacity yet.
There is a plan in place to contribute people and analysts from across the community to staff ITAC. That plan will proceed over the next 12-14 months. DND sees itself being a major contributor to ITAC.
The current plan calls for me to contribute seven people to ITAC. To give you some sense of where we are, I am at the stage where the second of those seven is on the verge of arriving at ITAC.
To answer your question about their products in relation to our needs, as their capacity to produce grows, so too will our appetite and the collective Government of Canada appetite for products.
The Chairman: I was not particularly clear on what sort of products they produced.
MGen. Gauthier: As the title implies, first and foremost, threat assessments is their core business and these can be event driven to support a particular planned event, even an international event, or it can be driven by circumstances, where there is a need for change and a threat assessment from a Canadian perspective, or driven by threats to the security of Canada or Canadian interests abroad.
The Chairman: Will this new centre ultimately reduce the need for DND to produce its own assessments?
MGen. Gauthier: No, in terms of the number of threat assessments that we produce, because the integrated threat assessment centre will be principally focused on threats associated with terrorism and because we focus on a broader threat set than that focus. However, an important component of our threat assessments is the terrorism piece and if someone else can provide that then that relieves a load from within my organization.
Senator Atkins: Welcome, General.
In your responsibility, you should be a sociologist and not an engineer.
Can you give me the line and staff organization?
Do you report to one specific person, or is it a broader field of people that you are responsible to?
MGen. Gauthier: Yes. I report on a day-to-day basis and this is to do with my newly defined accountabilities as the Chief of Military Intelligence and I can leave you with a copy of those responsibilities if you wish.
I am accountable to the CDS and the DM for strategic intelligence advice. On a day-to-day basis, I work through the Deputy Chief of Defence Staff of the Canadian Forces. That ensures that my focus is on supporting Canadian Forces operations.
Senator Atkins: Can you be sure when you pass on intelligence that it is reaching the goals that you intend to reach?
MGen. Gauthier: I am not sure how to answer that, senator. My job and the job of our analysts is to collect and sift through the data, to go through as rigorous and impartial and unbiased an analytical process, as we can on a particular issue and to feed that assessment, whether it is a intelligence or threat or strategic estimate. There is a whole range of products that we produce to ensure that it gets into the hands of the decision maker, who has asked for it, or in some cases, it is pushed at a number of decision makers. What they do with that intelligence advice is up to them. I cannot control that, but my job is to ensure that the process to arrive at a particular assessment is sound, and equally important to make sure the product gets into the hands of the particular customer, the minister, the chief, the deputy minister, ADM, DCDS, or whoever might need it.
Senator Atkins: How do you protect against human error?
MGen. Gauthier: I believe the answer to that is inherent in our all-source approach. We try not to just take the intercepted communication, or try not to just take the human intelligence report. We try to corroborate and go back and check and validate and so on before the analyst comes to a final judgment.
At the analytical level, depending on the issue, it is not one analyst, who comes to the conclusion; it is one analyst working with a number of others from inside and outside DND. There is, in most cases, an opportunity for peer review, and supervisory review. There are a number of checks and balances built into our pretty systematic process.
Senator Atkins: You mention that you are adding analysts. Are these civilian or military?
MGen. Gauthier: That is a good question actually because I did not make that clear in the presentation. One of the things that we are trying to do, because of the pressure on the military component of the force, is increase the proportion of civilian analysts at the strategic level within NDHQ. The disadvantage of that is that they might not have the full experience of military background that we would wish for them all to have. The advantage is that in some cases, they may have more expertise in a particular area, whether it is biological or chemical warfare, or those kinds of issues, and there is a potential for far greater stability amongst civilian analysts working within my organization than with military folks, who have to deploy on operations and so on. We are consciously trying to increase the proportion of civilian analysts in our strategic intelligence organization.
Senator Atkins: Are you satisfied with the funding you are getting for your operation?
MGen. Gauthier: Yes. We have gone through a process with this defence intelligence review where it is staged. For each stage I must go forward and ask for money associated with a particular aspect of the study. The first stage is behind us and I have received everything I asked for. The next stage in fact I will be making my final proposal with the detailed resource requirement later this week. I am quite confident that I will receive what I am asking for. I have not been given any indication that I will not receive that. I have a senior leadership that is seized with the importance of the defence intelligence function and they have been extremely supportive of our proposals to date.
Senator Atkins: In the scheme of things, it is receiving high priority.
MGen. Gauthier: Yes, that is correct.
The Chairman: MGen. Gauthier, could you describe to the committee the process involved in establishing DND intelligence requirements?
MGen. Gauthier: Could you narrow that context?
The Chairman: At the beginning of the fiscal year it is decoded that you would like a bit of this, a bit of that and more of another thing.
How do you go about deciding what you will need over the course of the year?
How do you plan forward?
How do you determine what your needs will be and then budget and plan accordingly?
MGen. Gauthier: You are talking about intelligence capability as opposed to the production of intelligence.
Are you talking about the production of intelligence?
The Chairman: At the end of the day it is what you will produce and you need to have the capabilities to produce it. Presumably you put the capabilities in place first and the product comes second.
MGen. Gauthier: There is an annual cycle we go through to establish departmental and Canadian Forces priorities in the context of Government of Canada intelligence priorities. At about this time of the year leading up to a more intense effort in the January-February period, we engage our customer base, whether it is the operational community, the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff and his delegates down the chain, the policy community, the materiel community, et cetera, to obtain their inputs. Based on that information we produce a list of priorities in relatively generic terms.
In addition to that almost on a day-to-day basis, we have a system called CCIRM, collection, coordination and information requirements management. This is a relatively mechanical process through which we receive specific requests for information or intelligence requirements. All of that to say, from a strategic perspective, there is an annual process that commits senior decision makers to the Government of Canada level to a set of priorities. Our analysts and our capabilities are effectively aligned to that because there is not a large increase or decrease in resources from one year to the next year. By and large we have to go with what we have in terms of analytical capabilities.
We try our best to align our capabilities and, most specifically, our analytical capabilities to the priorities that have been established. Then, as crises occur throughout the year, such as a deployment to Haiti or to the Ivory Coast on short notice, we might have to adjust on the fly to adapt to those circumstances.
Does that answer your questions?
The Chairman: Yes, thank you.
Do you have any domestic intelligence responsibilities or are your responsibilities restricted to the support of military operations overseas?
MGen. Gauthier: Our domestic intelligence services are tied to the safety and security of Canadian Forces personnel and installations across the country. Beyond that, there may be cases where we are required to support another government department for a particular event, such as a G8 summit like Kananaskis. In those circumstances, we would work with other government departments to ensure that our intelligence requirements to support the operation were satisfied.
Given that the lion's share of Canadian Forces operations take place off shore, the lion's share of our intelligence effort is focused off shore also.
The Chairman: For your operations on shore, in Ontario for example, is there an oversight body or function to keep track of what you do, just as CSIS has SIRC and the communications agency has the judge?
MGen. Gauthier: The one capability that you would be conscious of that we use for domestic purposes is our unit called the Canadian Forces National Counter-Intelligence Unit, which works closely with other national intelligence agencies to counter threats to the safety and security of Canadian Forces personnel, including counter espionage.
For investigations in Canada, oversight is provided by a counter intelligence oversight committee, which I chair with representation outside of our military organization. We have a representative from the DCDS, from CSIS and from our legal advisory staff. There is an oversight body in place. Thus far, that has been deemed sufficient for our purposes.
The Chairman: Do you deem it sufficient?
Do you think it is appropriate to oversee your own operations?
MGen. Gauthier: I do not direct those day-to-day operations. The operations are conducted by a unit that is down the chain of command and I am removed from the commander of that unit in the chain of command. Given that I have a number of advisers on investigations to be conducted, I am comfortable with the oversight that we have currently.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin: I wish to raise three issues with you. First, I suppose you followed closely the review carried out by the U.S. Congress in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001 and you read their report that was issued earlier this year. Did you learn any lessons from it? If so, am I to conclude that the various review processes that you mentioned in your presentation have been strongly influenced by the conclusions of that investigation?
MGen. Gauthier: I would say they have to some extent. That study in the United States focussed on the intelligence community in the U.S. as a whole. The recommendations dealt to a large extent with the whole picture and the coordination between the various agencies of that community. In my view, the most important issues are all-source analysis before coming to a conclusion and intelligence sharing among the various agencies. We were clearly aware of that.
Senator Nolin: If something similar happens in Canada, are we able to react adequately without making the same mistakes as the Americans?
MGen. Gauthier: It a hypothetical question.
Senator Nolin: I understand, but I am asking the question because we are also going to draft a very hypothetical report on what the best Department of Defence should be in a government. That is the reason why we ask you hypothetical questions.
MGen. Gauthier: I really do not know how to answer that question. We have just completed a study on defence intelligence. We are trying to develop the capabilities and processes to manage intelligence production effectively and efficiently, in order to meet the requirements of commanders and decision-makers.
Senator Nolin: In your presentation, in slide 11, you mentioned interoperability with other government departments and our allies. I felt a bit short-changed when you answered my colleagues' questions on the need for more communication between the various federal agencies. I am even more frustrated when I see that we live in a federation where we have provincial agencies which are part of the Canadian intelligence community, not to mention municipal agencies. How can we satisfy Canadians who are listening to us that our intelligence community has learned the lessons of what happened down South and adjusted accordingly? I have felt somewhat short-changed with your answers and I would like to be able to alleviate that concern.
MGen. Gauthier: I can tell you mostly about defence intelligence. I consider myself as being part of a government of Canada team. That is the message that I keep repeating to my internal team. Our duty is to consult, share and work with our colleagues in all the other intelligence agencies. Now, is everything in place at the government level to ensure cooperation and coordination throughout the community? That is a question for the central agencies.
Senator Nolin: Senator Atkins asked you about the civil or military background of the analysts that you would like to have. The previous witness told us about the quality of training for analysts in Canada, as opposed to the United States. Do the analysts that you will be hiring have adequate training? Should their training level be improved? What type of recommendation would you suggest to our Committee in that respect?
MGen. Gauthier: First, if we compare with our American counterparts, the scope of work in the context of U.S. defence is —
Senator Nolin: Incommensurate.
MGen. Gauthier: Exactly. They have lots of specialists. We do not have the ability to specialize. Our analysts are much more versatile.
Senator Nolin: They are generalists?
MGen. Gauthier: Yes, but not in a negative sense.
Senator Nolin: Not at all!
MGen. Gauthier: We do not need responses from fifteen different people to make an analysis. Here, it is done by one person. Usually, the result is quite satisfactory. In that sense, I think we compare very well with our allies.
Personally, I am not satisfied with the level of development, training, instruction that we provide to our analysts, especially in this evolving context of threat and safety environment. It is one of the major aspects of the intelligence defence review in which we need to invest more, in terms of military analysts as well as civilian analysts.
Senator Nolin: You may say that my last question is also hypothetical, but I will ask you nevertheless. One of the political arguments that have been put forward by American leaders regarding the quality and effectiveness of implementation of their new terrorism protection process was that there have been no new terrorist attacks since September 11, 2001. However, when we dig deeper into that information, we find out that the reason there were none was that at least two major events that could have happened in the United States had been thwarted not by the Americans, but by the French. I guess you know about that. Would we as Canadians have been able to prevent such events from happening as the French did?
MGen. Gauthier: That is really not my line. The question would be for the Director of CSIS who is in charge of threats against Canada.
Senator Nolin: You actually deal with the protection of Canadian military assets?
MGen. Gauthier: And defence in the military context.
Senator Nolin: Tell me at least that you are responsible for preventing or attempting to discover unlawful attempts against Canada, not just Canadian military assets.
MGen. Gauthier: I do not understand what you mean.
Senator Nolin: Tell me at least that you have a responsibility to try and prevent any malicious action against Canada.
MGen. Gauthier: Of course it is an interest, but it does not fall under my mandate. Terrorist threats against Canada are not a part of my mandate in defence intelligence. That falls under Mr. Judd now.
Senator Nolin: Let me go back to that notion of ``interoperability.'' Obviously, we have a huge need for it. I hope there is some sort of melting pot somewhere where all that information is gathered every day to make sure that my country is safe.
MGen. Gauthier: Yes. I am interested. Of course, insofar as we get information that touches on the safety of Canadians in Canada and abroad, whether we get that information from our allies or elsewhere, I can assure you that we work very closely with our partners to share that information with them.
[English]
Senator Forrestall: I think we are all trying to find the words that will describe a new defence policy, one that will be hopefully more active in our security than the last one was.
The information that you receive and analyze, and from which you produce a product, are those products and/or is that information disseminated outside DND and, if so, to whom?
MGen. Gauthier: Definitely, to those who have a need to know. That can be across government at the federal level and it can be to allies who might also have an interest.
Senator Forrestall: Is it? — I am talking about allies.
How frequent are contacts with the United States' military? How many hits a day?
MGen. Gauthier: Every day.
Senator Forrestall: How many?
MGen. Gauthier: I could not give you a number.
Senator Forrestall: 10s, 100s, 1,000s?
MGen. Gauthier: I would say certainly more than 10.
Senator Forrestall: It is active — two-way.
MGen. Gauthier: It is a web, a network. There are hundreds of websites that are interconnected. I am not sure if there is even a capacity to keep track of the overall information environment.
Senator Forrestall: I do not know what purpose it might serve, even if you did.
I am interested in the activity that it is going on between National Defence intelligence gathering and let us just stay with the club, the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom.
Is it fair to say that there is a very active exchange of product among those three allies?
MGen. Gauthier: There is a very dynamic exchange of information, a constructive and reciprocal exchange of products amongst us and our closest allies.
Senator Forrestall: The deployment of Canadian Forces personnel requires a thorough understanding of the situation with which they are faced. The environments such as Afghanistan and elsewhere require a very sophisticated and high level of intelligence. Origins of the conflict are issues of state, social, cultural, economic backgrounds of this intelligence, the demography, and religion. The personnel must be fully aware of what they may encounter and how they may best deal with the situation.
Are we able to satisfy that broad range of information that is absolutely necessary to their function?
MGen. Gauthier: I do not know that I can give you a blanket statement.
Senator Forrestall: Are there weaknesses and strengths?
MGen. Gauthier: There are, based on the fact that there are limited resources. Also, as I said, we need to invest more in analytical capability. We accept some risk every year through our prioritization process because we align analysts with those priorities. Having said that, we have been relatively successful.
At one level, it is about supporting government decision-making to determine what the risks are associated with deploying to a particular place on a particular mission. At another level, it is a matter of providing the intelligence support required by the deploying force so that they are fully prepared to go off and do what they have to do.
Some of that is achieved through our own internal capabilities. If we have to go elsewhere, and we often do, we go to wherever the source of expertise might be to help us to get the information we need.
Senator Forrestall: The importance of sending our troops, our forces into situations with the utmost confidence in the intelligence they have so they will be able to function remains very important.
If we were to have situations, for example, in Indonesia, would we rely on the Australians for finesse in intelligence services?
MGen. Gauthier: I would prefer not to get into specifics about countries or allies, because our allies might not like us to do that, senator.
Senator Forrestall: Mr. Rudner was very forthcoming in this area. I thought it might be an opportunity for you to boast a little bit.
MGen. Gauthier: What we will do is go to wherever the expertise might be found. We have a reasonable understanding of that globally. Part of our job is to figure out where the expertise lies amongst our allies and to maintain close enough relationships with them that we are able to get assistance when we need it.
Senator Forrestall: You have suggested that you are very happy with the balance and how you handle certain aspects with the analysts that you have at your disposal.
Can we take that as a general comment or observation on the overall responsibilities that you have, that you do have enough and they are sufficiently trained to meet your requirements?
I am looking for you to tell me whether you need more.
If so, more of what and where do you find them?
If a major portion of your resources are intelligence-centred on one person and you lose that person, what do you do?
MGen. Gauthier: I am not one who is inclined to say that I have enough to do the job. The study that we undertook was all about trying to evaluate how existing defence intelligence capabilities measured up to the evolving environment.
If you look at slide 12, you will see a number of areas where I am saying that we do not have enough and we are taking risks. We must look at these areas more closely and better define what our needs are and bring that forward, and then some decisions can be made either about resource allocation or risk management.
Given how quickly the threat environment has changed, given over the last decade the breadth of deployments around the world, I would not suggest for a minute that we have all the capabilities we need right now — in fact, quite the opposite.
Senator Forrestall: Can you give us an example of where you might welcome additional resources in the analysis field, languages, understanding of cultures, and the understanding of local communities?
MGen. Gauthier: There are a number of areas where there are gaps. In the context of deployed operations I have concerns with our existing HUMINT capability to directly support operations overseas, and with the counterintelligence function. From a strategic analysis perspective, I cannot identify one specific area. It is more of a quantitative issue, where I have indicated that I need quite a bit more than I have. I have a job to do yet, to fully quantify and qualify that. That is the suggestion in my presentation that I need to initiate — in fact we have just initiated a study — to answer the questions you have just asked. I do not have those answers yet.
Senator Forrestall: Apparently, nor do our university libraries. Linguistic requirement has got to always be a factor that keeps pressure on you to keep abreast of what is being written in various parts of the world and said because of the difference in dialect and whatnot.
I wish you well next week. We have to ask these questions because that document is not one that we will ever see.
The Chairman: General, when you use the phrase HUMINT are you referring to people overseas?
MGen. Gauthier: Absolutely.
The Chairman: It is another 25 cents that goes to the pot.
MGen. Gauthier: Deployed operations, overt or covert collection of information from human sources, human intelligence.
The Chairman: You declined to comment specifically on the question concerning Indonesia. I will give you the obverse. The Australians described having a little corner of the world in which they specialized and that was their contribution to the other countries; U.S., U.K., New Zealand, and Canada. They added what Canada lacked was a niche where it could have a specialty.
Would you care to comment on that?
MGen. Gauthier: A way to explain it is that their geography and our geography are different. We have Canadian Forces deployed in three different countries in Africa and I could go on, 17 different missions, and 1,400 people today which is a relatively low number for us. They do not have nearly that diversity of deployment.
Without criticizing the Australians, I have respect for what they do as a military and their intelligence function also, we just do not have the luxury of being able to narrow our focus in the same way they do.
The Chairman: Your evidence has been of assistance to the committee today, we value your experience and you taking the time to share your views with the committee. We hope to have you back before us before too long.
The committee continued in camera.