Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 15 - Evidence, March 1, 2005 - Afternoon meeting
OTTAWA, Tuesday, March 1, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 1:40 p.m. to examine and report on the national security policy for Canada.
Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: I call the meeting to order. This is a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. My name is Colin Kenny and I chair the committee.
I would like to introduce the members of the committee to you. To my right is the distinguished senator from Nova Scotia, the Honourable Michael Forrestall. Senator Forrestall has served the constituents of Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, both as a member of the House of Commons and then as their senator. While in the Commons he served as the Official Opposition defence critic from 1966 to 1976. He is also a member of our Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs.
Next at the table is Senator Peter Stollery from Ontario. He was first elected to the House of Commons in 1972 and was re-elected in 1974, 1979 and 1980. He was appointed to the Senate in 1981. Senator Stollery is also a member of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance.
At the far end of the table is Senator Jack Austin fromBritish Columbia. Senator Austin was appointed to the Senate in 1975 after a long and distinguished career, both in the private sector and in government. He was sworn in to the Privy Council and then appointed Minister of State in 1981, and he was appointed Leader of the Government in the Senate in December of 2003.
On my left is Senator Joseph Day from New Brunswick. He is 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 a fellow of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada. He is also a former president and CEO of the New Brunswick Forest Products Association.
At the far end of the table is Senator Tommy Banks 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 direction to the ceremonies of the 1988 Olympic winter games, he is an officer of the Order of Canada, and he has received a Juno award.
Just joining us at the table is Senator Michael Meighen. Senator Meighen is a lawyer by profession. He is the chancellor of the University of King's College and the past chair of the Stratford Festival. He has honorary doctorates in civil law from Mount Allison University and The University of New Brunswick. He is currently the chair of our Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs and a member of the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce.
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 View 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 Border 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.
We have before us today a panel on defence-policy review dealing with what we refer to as big-picture questions. We have before us Mr. Brian Job. He joined the political science department of the University of British Columbia as a professor in 1989. Since 1992, he has also served as a director of the Institute of International Relations. His teaching and research interests are in the international security studies, broadly conceived. His work focuses on the evolving security order in the Asia Pacific, on intrastate conflict and on Canadian foreign and defence policy. He has published on international alliances, international theory and the application of formal statistical methodologies to international relations.
We also have before us Mr. Douglas Ross, professor, who came to Simon Fraser University in 1988. His research interests include Canadian foreign policy, strategy and arms control, international conflict and conflict resolution. He was a founding director of the Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament in 1983, and he served on the national policy advisory group for the Canadian Ambassadors for Disarmament from 1986 to 1993. He is presently on the editorial board of the International Journal. His recent work includes four edited collections of papers concerning security and arms control in the North Pacific; superpower maritime strategies in the Pacific region and prospects for security cooperation in the Asia Pacific region during the coming decade; and Canada/Russia relations in the post-cold war era.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming. We understand you both have short statements. Who will go first?
Mr. Brian Job, Chair, Institute of International Relations, University of British Columbia: Thank you, senators. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. I have followed the work of the committee as one of the country's most active voices bringing needed attention to Canadian security and defence priorities, and I join with colleagues and concerned citizens in expressing appreciation for your efforts.
When invited I was informed that the committee members looked to a general discussion concerning Canada's current security and defence environment rather than specific information on specific topics. Also, given the shortness of notice, I was advised that a prepared presentation was not expected; indeed it was apparently hoped for that I would not burden the committee by reading one.
That being said, you have heard a long biographical statement already, but where I might contribute to your discussions then would be with regard to security issues concerning Asia, Asia Pacific and Canada's role and interests in the region. I spend a good deal of time in expert and academic meetings in Asia, and in Canada on Asian security matters. As co-chair of one expert network, which is the Council of Security Cooperation in Asia Pacific, for Canada, I have had the privilege of working with Senator Jack Austin as a co-chair over the last several years.
Finally, the centre I direct at UBC is one of the security and defence forum centres which is funded by the Department of National Defence. I understand the committee has discussed this program at previous meetings and, if you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them. I will draw attention to four general issues today, very briefly.
Canadian "security'' is the first topic, and I put security in quotes because I think the Canadian public has yet to comprehend the true extent of their security concerns and responsibilities. Terrorism is not a significant, perceived danger by the public, but the dimensions of security considerations that derive from terrorism and terrorist activities and their possible impact on Canada in different ways is under-realized. We are getting a lot of attention at the moment to the pandemic possibility; this is attracting public attention, as it should.Overall, Canadians do not realize the extent to which attending to security does not equate to funding for the military. There is an under-appreciation of the fact that security budgets havebeen, and probably will continue to be, largely devoted to non-uniformed military programs. This is not an argument against that on my part, but it is an argument that there is need for further education, consideration and realization by the public.
The second point is an important one if we look forward some years, and that concerns global and regional security institutions and Canada's role in them. Canada, by choice and by necessity, has defined its role in international security through multilateral institutions; in particular, the United Nations and also NATO. Serious re-examination of these roles is required, in part, because we have experienced a declining voice in those forums, and also because those institutions and others are defining themselves in ways that do not necessarily provide the same voice, or even a voice, for Canada. In one sense, we are seeing some tables created at which there are no seats for Canadians. That is the concern. The UN we can talk about. It is in need of reform, but it remains a necessary legitimizer. You must remember, and the Canadian public does not always, that Canadian security initiatives of the last decade have been largely orchestrated outside the context of the UN. The Landmine Treaty, the International Criminal Court, and the missions in Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan were all missions that were done in the context of coalitions of the willing, or through NATO or other multilateral enterprises.
Finally, with regard to NATO on this point, I would argue NATO is in an identity crisis when you have, for instance, Gerhard Schroeder, the German leader, basically saying that NATO is no longer where it is at, and the move is toward a European-Union entity. This poses serious problems for Canada. Where is our voice? What is it going to be in the European context?
This also raises my third point with regard to Asia, which I would characterize as the necessity to sustain "relevant'' engagement. The economic imperative of Asia is obvious. So, too, is the general security imperative. Regional stability is essential for economic prosperity. We have a multitude of traditional security concerns in Asia, specifically, at the moment, concerning weapons of mass destruction but, again, looking in a broader context, consequences for Canada and Canadian security are important. One can look to energy, one can look to long-range pollution, and one can look to much shorter concerns — disease, transnational crime and drug trafficking.
In essence, if we want to think about it in regional terms, one can see the majority of our security threats may well be emanating from across the Pacific. Where do we find our voice then in the Pacific? That is an important consideration, because within Asian institutions, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, APEC, for instance, there is increasing discussion as to what its relevance is and what its role is. The Asian Regional Forum is important, but a talk shop, and do we have a particular perspective within it and what should it be? In terms of foreign policy, Team Canada is not where it is at, and apparently the current Prime Minister has taken that view. We need to have an agenda and a consideration with regard to Asia, which is broader than simply a narrow and short-term business or manufacturing/ trade agenda. I look to the recent announcements, for instance, concerning the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada as a step toward creating a vehicle for informed dialogue, informed study and discussion with regard to Asia.
Finally, my fourth point is sustaining foreign debate on security and defence issues. That is absolutely necessary; that there be an articulation of priorities that goes beyond simply rhetorical symbols. The International Policy Review, IPR, which will apparently come out at some point, appears to be devolving towards the same rhetoric that one found in statements of 10 years ago. This is not going to excite the Canadian public. There is an attention in the Canadian public to international affairs and to security issues, which can obviously be mobilized. The tsunami disaster was a profound indication of how the Canadian public is, in fact, on some of these issues ahead of and realizing possibilities that the Canadian government, at the moment, is not necessarily doing. One can see that in the way in which leaders respond or do not respond. I would give credit here certainly to the current Minister of Defence in this regard in terms of responding to the possibilities there, and the necessity of the Canadian response.
We need to have more vehicles for public discussion. I suspect you have already seen representatives from Canada 25, which is a very interesting innovation on the part of people who are a lot younger than I am, and therefore perhaps with more at stake. I said I would be happy to talk about the Security and Defence Forum program as a vehicle that allows informed debate and education on campuses. I leave that for the question period.
Douglas Ross, Professor, Faculty of Political Science, Simon Fraser University: I would also like to reiterate Mr. Job's comments, that we both thank you very much for the work you have done. This committee, in fact, seems to have produced the best work, the most critical work, and the most effective work — I have in mind national security and defence — of any body in Ottawa, certainly, that is being put regularly in the public domain. The problem is, of course, can you have any effect? It does not seem like it, quite honestly. I am highly skeptical that the allegedly new $12 billion will ever show up. There will be marginal amounts over the next couple of years and, after the next election, what seemed like significant injections will vanish. We are in a continuing structural crisis, thinking about Canadian national security issues. It is not going away.
My writings over the past decade and a half have always strongly indicated a preference for an alliance-based approach. I am still very much in favour of what used to be called a cooperative security approach; that alliance- building, institution-building is critical; and that we played a very good role over the decades; and that NATO was a significant organization.
We have marginalized ourselves, of course, since the early 1990s by effectively cutting back on a presence in Europe and with the Europeans who have their own serious problems.They are not able to think of us as an independent, significant actor and, since we have cut back forces further since the mid-1990s, they are quite right not to do so.
Having said that, in the longer term it is critical that we not allow the trans-Atlantic gulf to widen, and the train wreck, as it was called, shortly after the Iraq invasion, between France, Germany and the United States should not be allowedto get worse. We need to be playing a bridge-building, institution-renovating role within NATO, when and how we can. This is our most critical partnership. The Atlantic community must be kept going. That is my grand- strategy perspective.
The gist of my comments in the short five-page summary with a couple of the charts is: we are so severely stretched, the forces have been cut back so badly, and the funding is so inadequate in terms of policing, border control, and the porousness of the borders — all of which you have documented so well, so thoroughly and in frightfully depressing graphic detail — we cannot, in fact, play a bridge-building role, an effective role, in reaching out to NATO, other than diplomatically.
In pragmatic terms, the key message of this report is we are very much on the front line. In one of your various reports you discussed Canada not being in the centre, in the bull's eye of the target, but being in the inner ring. With at least one particular scenario, I would suggest we are part of the bull's eye and, that is to say, the threat of nuclear terrorism. The reason for that, and that is laid out in the middle of these two or three pages, is quite simply that, to me, the most credible use by terrorists, by rational, committed, in-their-own-way, from-their-own-perspective, sane, theologically-motivated Islamist radical terrorists, is they want results. They want to drive the United States out of the Middle East for good. They want to sever the American-Israeli security relationship. How best do you accomplish that? Would the cause be advanced by setting off a bomb in New York City or Los Angeles right away, or will it confuse the issue, muddy the waters and prevent compliance by the U.S. government? Will it open a Pandora's Box of irrational responses by Washington?
The question I am posing is, would it not make a lot more sense, and this is something we, the Britons and Australians, in particular, the increasingly hated and detested members of the Anglo sphere, need to be aware of. Would it make more sense, in fact, to set off a weapon in a densely populated city in an allied country and, of course, couple it with a threat of setting off several more at future dates in American cities? The chief advantage, of course, would be there would be no dead Americans, and there would be no immediate calls for vengeance. Perhaps that is precisely what terrorists might be thinking about.
I have been mulling that over for about the last five or six years. I had hoped that over the last five or six years, especially post-9/11, that we would have a much more attentive government and that setting up public safety and emergency preparedness would get us down the road fairly quickly to tightening up the borders and looking after our security. I do not see that happening, and we have demonstrations that it is not happening. It is far too slow and there is no sense of urgency. They are not getting the budget they need and the personnel they need. CSIS is getting money, but slowly, and it takes a long time to train personnel. You know all the reasons why we are responding too slowly. This, to me, is really appalling and very dangerous. What we really need is to somehow persuade the people who hold the levers of power that this is not a time to bide your time and assume we are nice Canadians, and we are exempt. In fact, we are not exempt. In some respects we are unfortunately, along with the British and the Australians, an ideal target for a strategy of coercive diplomacy. One should not think of Islamist terrorist groups as being incapable of thinking through the best way to achieve their goals. They are highly controlled and highly self-disciplined. They are committed to a broader, larger strategic objective, and they are winning the struggle politically.
This is why, at the beginning, I discussed United States policy. Although they are quite right to put the highest priority on counter-proliferation, rolling back the spread of nuclear weapons, what they are doing is profoundly counterproductive. It is backfiring on them and on us. Their actions are increasing the direct risk to us as a result.
What that means in the first instance is we double or triple our efforts domestically in trying to close those gaps on the coast and the ports, going well beyond international standards of container security, search and control, and investigation. We have to be better than the Americans precisely because we may be on the first wave of the first strike, if you will, by an international terrorist group.
Current relations with Washington are going to get rockier. I looked at Mr. Dwight Mason's commentary coming out of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies as a fairly powerful signal from someone who has generally been pretty sympathetic to Canada, and CSIS has generally been sympathetic to Canada, as a clear warning that things are going to get tough. The alleged cancellation/postponement of Condoleezza Rice's visit may be yet another signal that there may be rough waters ahead. Unfortunately, all of that could just confuse the issues about where we need to go, and the strategies we need to think through, for dealing with our present collective crisis. We do not need to be arguing against each other at cross purposes.
I think the instincts of Prime Minister Martin were correct, given the political landscape in Canada, to say we will give a polite "no'' again. It did not turn out to be polite, the way it was delivered. The compromise of having de facto integration with NORAD, and we do have all this integration, that is fine publicly. However, we are not going to actually support it, but you will have Mr. Pettigrew and others saying, you can let contracts in Canada. That is the 1986 formula all over again, but it did not quite work out in its presentation. The optics, the execution, was not stage- managed as it should have been.
This is different now from what it was in 1986. The priority for this administration on missile defence is far higher. I disagree with it; I think it is a big mistake. Strategically it is ill-conceived and causing a counter-productive backlash and increased mistrust in both Beijing and Moscow. It means, in practical terms, we have 2,000 to 3,000 more warheads aimed at North America now — Russian nuclear warheads — than would have been the case if the Anti- ballistic Missile, ABM, Treaty had been left in place, and the Start-1 and Start-2 treaties had been fully implemented. As I recall, about 8, 9, or 10 years ago, there was much discussion about the Russians being on an inevitable glide path down to a thousand nuclear warheads only. They have over 5,000 actively available now. What we will also see with missile-defence investments is a major expansion; a displacement effect into accelerated development and deployment of cruise missile technologies by the Russians and the Chinese. The Chinese, for political reasons, quite rightly, and I hope they continue, are holding back on modernizing their Intercontinental Ballistics Missiles, ICBM, force, but they are likely to grow from 25 or 30 ICBMs able to reach North America, to 200. Just as a matter of ordinary modernization, that has to be done. Their missiles are old. They have to be replaced.
We are looking at an increased threat environment. It will not get better, it will get worse, and levels of mistrust and suspicion are being fed. Paul Hellyer's opinion editorial, short essay in The Globe and Mail on Saturday was a good indication of the kind of mistrust that has been generated, not just in Canada but all across the western world and elsewhere as well, that the project for a New American Century crowd in Washington are dangerous and unstable, and we should not work with them. I disagree. That is all the more reason why we have to work with them. We have to have communications open and we have to be seen as a sensible, rational partner in the joint endeavour of managing our cooperative security. Thank you very much.
Senator Banks: Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. Professor Ross, I hope we will succeed in having an effect of one kind or another. We already have in one respect at least, having to do with non-military aspects of national security, now having all those frames put into one hand. Sometimes people do pay attention to us, even when it might cost a buck.
You have said today, and in other places, that we need to cooperate with the U.S. in continental defence. Talk for a minute, if you would, about the fact that we are in NORAD now, we are in NATO now, and we would like to be in the UN now, if it could have some sort of effect, with a side bar from you about whether that is likely ever to happen again. Will the UN be useful again, will it be meaningful again, and will it ever have any teeth with respect to security questions? I am also interested in your comments on the implications of the Responsibility to Protect, R2P, if it were ever to be undertaken, on the question of Canadian alliances. I am sorry these are all together, but they have to do with our alliances, and where we stretch out our hand and try to make deals with people, is what it boils down to. The Europeans are setting out to make themselves a military force as a counterweight, which will, in a way, obviate some aspects of NATO. Would that drive us even more necessarily into the hands, the bailiwick, the thrall, of the United States, and how will we handle that?
Mr. Ross: Not many questions, but all of them very hard to answer. The UN will be in for a very tough time because of the investigations and the money issue arising from Oil-for-Food, et cetera. That is going to poison a lot of discussions and people's image of the UN for a long time.
If we can have that process sped up somehow through our diplomacy to have the appropriate people punished and some kind of legal proceedings to clean up the problem will help, the sooner the better. The UN is capable of many other activities that do not necessarily require the Security Council. Peacekeeping and peace-building are likely to attract a consensus in many situations, so the UN can do good work.
In keeping with the very sensible suggestion you have collectively made of pulling back our forces and giving them a break for a couple of years to reorganize and retrain, I do not see how we can expand the forces significantly, and provide the personnel for the regulars and the reserves, without pulling everybody back home. The training system is broken. Everything I hear from the military is, it is broken, and you have to get skilled people back to begin the training process to rebuild it so we not only integrate those 5,000 plus 3,000; it has to be much more than that. We need far more than that, and we need the tactical air-lift to get people around the country very quickly in the event there was the kind of emergency I am suggesting that we are at risk of here.
To come back to alliances, I guess my general sense is for the next five to 10 years we need to be introverted and look close to home. Look at the very serious problems we face; that we have let our guard down or never really built it up because we never really acknowledged there was a threat. Continue saying constructive and cooperative things toward the Europeans, but say we have a plan now, we are going to get our house in order, and eventually we will be able to participate in joint-force projection activities in the service of common objectives.
I am strongly against General Rick Hillier's vision of putting a whole lot of resources into an amphibious capability, into aforce-projection capability. That is a huge mistake. I know why he is doing it. It may have better optics, and it is more likely he will get that $12 billion out there in years three, four and five, but it is exactly the reverse of where our national security priorities should be; here, now.
Consequence-mitigation measures that you have outlined, we are not seeing a lot of progress there: getting emergency supplies, and getting first responders connected into a network that works, is there and is practiced. All the many suggestions you have in, especially, chapter 8, but chapters 2, 3, 6, 7, 8 of the Canadian Security Guide Book, that is exactly what needs to be done. I am sure many people in the national defence department and many civil servants would agree with you.
Senator Banks: Those things are not mutually exclusive. SeaHorse, for example, General Hillier's idea, and the other aspects that you are referring to, is not mutually exclusive. Do we not need to do both? If we are going to be at the council, do we not need to be able to send somebody somewhere, eventually, after having brought them home to train them and properly equip them?
Mr. Ross: We cannot do it at 1.2 per cent. Another $4 billion on the base budget is a good start, but we need to look in the long term of going up to 1.5 per cent of GDP, perhaps up to 1.8 per cent. I do not see the political will there for that. It would cause too many other programs to have to be put back severely and/or taxes increased.
Senator Banks: Do I gather that what you are saying is all this military stuff is very nice and let us hope it happens, but you, Canada, still are not paying enough attention to domesticnon-military aspects of security?
Mr. Ross: Let us say security-related activities such as border control, port security, immigration, managing and tracking refugees are critical issues that are not being addressed, and to our direct danger. This is not theoretical anymore. The whole point of this is to suggest that there is much loose fissile material around, not just from the former Russian sources. Of course, Russian cooperation has been very hesitant, increasingly hesitant, because they do not trust the Americans. They can read the national security strategy document. They do not want to see permanent military hegemony by the U.S. That will set limits on how much cooperation they will extend to us in closing down the inadequate storage dumps and buildings where there may be fissile materials with padlocks on them. That kind of situation will not be addressed because they will not cooperate, nor will the Chinese. There will be more and more mistrust, and that is the dilemma we face. That is why the risk is there. Add to that the problem with Pakistan, that you have a de facto new, independent nuclear state with at least 50 nuclear weapons, and maybe fissile materials for 50 or 60 more, and that will continue to increase.
The Americans are determined to do Iran, and bring this to some kind of closure in a constructive response, but that will be extremely hard do. That will probably also poison the waters even more inside Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf is incredibly vulnerable. If he goes, and more radical elements come to power, then I submit we have a huge problem in terms of fissile material being controlled.
I am impelled more by a sense of urgency. We need to act now, here, borders, us; our own immediate security. We are not even in the inner ring. We are part of the bull's eye, potentially.
Biological materials, all of that is much less likely, for a variety of reasons: not impossible, but much less likely.
Senator Banks: Easier to do if you are a bad guy.
Mr. Ross: Yes. That was my major objection to the Americans invading Iraq when they did because they did it based on some information and analysis telling them Saddam's forces may have held smallpox. If you really believe that, you do not do the invasion; you sit back and get all your ducks in order. Their fault in doing the invasion was not that it was illegal. It was that it was strategically, really, a provocative, dangerous gamble with their security and ours, with the whole world's, because nobody was ready for that.
Senator Banks: Professor Job, you talked about the lack of a public grasp of the concept of security. Is that not the natural state of things? We will not get a public grasp, appreciation, for the necessity of those things until somebody gives us a bloody nose, will we? Is that not normal?
Mr. Job: It probably is. That is, I suppose, one of the ways of interpreting the U.S. response to 9/11, right? It has never happened before on U.S. soil, and now it did. We ought to be smart enough to draw some intelligent lessons from that, as I think Mr. Ross has indicated. Our history, however, has been one of seeing the relevance of security issues and participating in security outside our own shores, as obviously the history of the 20th century indicates.
The Canadian public is increasingly skeptical of what I would characterize as high-risk/low-probability threat warnings. That is a bit of a dilemma. The pandemic possibility that I raised does have Canadian attention because of SARS in Toronto and Vancouver, and in a way that it actually does not have in the U.S. Why? It never got there.
Senator Banks: That is exactly my point. We experienced that, so we understand it.
Mr. Job: That is right. It is not an argument for it to happen before we get it though, right? That is where my point was simply trying an intelligent way to expose where we are spending money on security, and pointing out why that is necessary. Perhaps I am a little less critical of Canadian efforts to date on that than Mr. Ross is. I think we have probably gone very far towards a smart border, given where we started and given what the U.S. has done on its side. We probably have, in fact, done more than our share to create that.
I do not have an easy answer there. I think the dilemma is two things: First, as I said, focusing on the high-risk/low- probability events to the exclusion of others; secondly, getting caught up in a U.S.-defined threat agenda. There are two elements to that in the Canadian context. One of them, which you saw a bit of in missile defence, is if the U.S. wants it we have to be skeptical. The other is the current hysteria in America about security. You have a government which has, for electoral and other purposes, sought to continue a high level of public concern about their own personal safety. I think it is beyond what would be necessarily seen as a rational response.
People in Iowa, some people report, are more concerned about threats from terrorism than people in New York. That is manufactured. That is not real.
Senator Banks: Do you think that we ought to, if I understood what you say correctly here today, either have a new emphasis or change our emphasis with respect to the whole nature of Asia Pacific? In particular, you said the possibility of a threat coming from that direction, rather than another.
Mr. Job: I said that I thought that if we looked at where we would see threats to the Canadian public, Canadian civilian population, and particularly regionally in this context, we have already talked about trans-Pacific disease possibilities. We have transnational crime, we have drug trafficking, we have trafficking of persons, all of which have a substantial impact, as is evident 10 blocks east of here in the downtown east side. If one is nervous about erosion of, shall we say, the social fabric in Canada, and consider that a security concern, those issues and meeting those, which will largely be a matter of police and international cooperation, those become fairly important security concerns.
Senator Banks: I am glad to see an ex-Edmontonian here, doctor.
Mr. Ross, you have connections with, or have had connections with, the defence industry. It is a crass question; will it cost us a lot to say, publicly, that we are not in Ballistic Missile Defence, BMD?
Mr. Ross: It depends on how the message is delivered and whether there is any back-pedaling.
Senator Banks: It has been delivered.
Mr. Ross: It can be nuanced, and there will be continuing communications and signals on this issue for some time to come. This is not over by any means, and there will be pressure coming from Washington to reconsider, in as constructive a way as possible.
Senator Banks: In the American mind, the same is the fact that many Americans still believe that 9/11 terrorists came on a ferry from Canada. That was a front-page story on the day, and retraction was on page 34 at the bottom of column eight. Is that not going to be true of all the nuances, explanations and repackaging of what we have said? What we have said that was headline news is, "We are not in.''
Mr. Ross: I do not know whether Senator Clinton has yet changed her mind on that or not, but I think for many Americans we probably just are not on the radar at all; we are just irrelevant. At most, we get some airtime on The Simpsons as America Jr., but that is about it. Mostly it will be professionals who want us to respond. The more they see us as being free-riders, as the Wall Street Journal editorial would, the more they see that, the more unforgiving they are going to be. Whether this is a prelude to hardball, I do not know. That is a real concern, and we may see the need for the Canadian government to have to repackage what it is doing.
Ultimately, with respect to the one question, is there a risk to NORAD being terminated? This is coming up again and again, and I know a number of air force people have said, if you do not say yes on missile defence they are going to close down NORAD. I do not buy that. That is cutting off their nose to spite their face. They need a coordinated air- defence system. There is no point in having the world's best missile defence with a roof and no walls; then everything starts coming in through the walls. There will always be a need. If you go down the path of strategic defence you have to have all avenues of attack covered. Air-defence cooperation is plenty, but we are not even doing a whole lot on the air-defence front either, right? We are not doing much there.
Senator Banks: We are projecting to do less.
Mr. Ross: Yes, and we should be doing more. That should be part of the package of controlling the approaches to Canadian territory, putting in surface-wave radars on the coast, and putting aerostats with radars which can pick up cruise missiles. We should be looking at, actively, the active electronically scanned array, AESA, radars which are now installed on F-15s in Alaska, which can pick up cruise missiles. The radars are very important, and we do not have anything remotely like that and will need it in order to deal with that threat.
I would state, for me, that is still out there in terms of priorities; it is not the top of the list. It is our immediate security question; aid to the civil-power functions by the military is really critical. We need to have the forces close to the cities that might, in fact, be attacked; not stuck out in remote locations. We do not need all our CF-18s stuck at Cold Lake and Bagotville where they are an hour' or two hours' flight time from some of the major cities. That might be a problem if there is a crisis. I do not want the Washington Army National Guard or Montana National Guard dealing with our problems in our territory, but that is the direction we are headed in.
Senator Meighen: Following up on Senator Banks's theme of, are we going to pay, do either of you gentlemen believe we are already paying for our, at least as perceived by Americans, failings in the area of defence on other fronts such as trade? Are the two linked, or am I being naive?
Mr. Job: Are the two linked? This will be a typical academic answer, and I will say yes and no. I would say two things: It would seem apparent that our trade problems with the U.S. derive from Congress. The issues there are such that, only if and when, and I would say sometimes a U.S. president is willing to exercise or attempt to exercise his limited political capital in Congress, will you see movement on certain trade issues. The question then becomes, on things like softwood lumber, whether or not you think President George Bush had any interest in the issue in the first place, had leverage over the relevant voices in Congress, and was willing to use it. If your answer to the first two is yes, then your answer to the third about "willing'' to use it may be, he is slightly now less willing to use it. That is the way I would answer it.
Senator Meighen: If your answer to the first two is no, it does not matter.
Mr. Job: Then it does not matter, that is right.
Senator Stollery: He cannot cause the Senate to repeal the Byrd amendment, no matter if he stands on his head with his clothes off.
Mr. Job: Yes.
The Chairman: Mr. Ross, did you have a comment you wanted to make on this subject?
Mr. Ross: No, I think I am going to let Mr. Job have the floor for any questions for a while because he has to leave soon.
The Chairman: I have a few questions that follow from Senator Banks's intervention. First of all, hardball is the only politics the Americans play, ever, and why should we not play hardball with the Americans? I am a little disturbed when I hear someone suggest that Canada should play in a different league. We have our interests and we should pursue them. I will let these roll out and then you can comment on them. Why did the Americans really want us in? Why do they care? Frankly, I have always felt it was a freebie and a gift to us. I have commented that if I was a U.S. senator, I would be voting against ballistic missile defence, but I am a Canadian senator. It makes terrific sense if it is a free ride.
SARS, it has come up now, and less than a score of fatalities from SARS: a whole lot more people get killed driving between here and Calgary than by SARS. The way we scale and prioritize our real threats and risks, we would really have smoking at the top of the list, not other things.
The comment about money and it is not going to be there: I am most concerned about whether we have been too timid. We talked about $4 billion. Why are we not talking about hitting the main? That brings us in at 1.9 per cent, which works out to about $22 billion, $23 billion a year. We have had eight consecutive years of surpluses. Our debt- to-GDP ratio is in order. The surplus this year was $9 billion. Surely, the proper position for this committee, or someone reviewing defence policy, is not to say $4 billion was too much, and we should cut our cloth accordingly. It is to say, we have just reviewed this, and actually it is $22 billion we are after. That will park us in around Norway or somewhere, and we should be going there. What are your comments?
Mr. Ross: As to hardball, actually they tend to play with Canadians, for the most part they have anyway, with kid gloves. They have been very nice to us over the years. It has been a long time since there has been a whole lot of hardball. We may be moving into that era, and that is unfortunate. I do not like seeing talk about WTO-approved trade retaliation happening. That will take us down a road that could get really ugly. Trade retaliation that the WTO has approved, if we go down that route, could be very problematic.
I do not think we want to get into a hardball game with the Americans, and make them feel that we will outsmart them and get our free ride no matter what.
The Chairman: Perhaps that was the wrong word, but you used the word "hardball.'' My point is, Americans pursue their real interests and do not come saying, do me a favour because I am a nice guy or your best friend; they are pursuing what they perceive to be their real interests. Messing with the WTO is not in their interests or ours. Individual senators may pursue state interests that way, but all I am suggesting is that there is a mythology around here that we are good neighbours and good friends, and therefore deserve a discount. We do not. I am asking you to comment on that.
Mr. Ross: I think we have operated on a defence policy. We have been, I would say, free-riding. We were cheap- riding for a long time and now we are free-riding. The Wall Street Journal editorial is not wrong. I generally agree with that and, actually, we can continue to do it. You could argue that this is a small "r'' form of realism by the powers that be in Ottawa, and James Ayers asked this question over 30 years ago. Some countries are producers of security others are consumers. We, happily, are in the latter category, so let us take it and enjoy it. Given their own moral value inhibitions, they may play hardball but there are limits to what they can do; we can work this really well.
I would say you can do that, and it is small "r'' realist from one perspective, but it also means we have absolutely no contribution in trying to build the global community, cooperative-security approach that is absolutely essential for dealing with things like the spread of fissile materials, and/or people with knowledge of how to make biological agents. That is another huge genie that is being let out of the bottle right now with inadequate controls. An international regime has to be put in place and we need to support that, not marginalize ourselves and stay out of it altogether. We need to be communicating with third parties, not just dealing with the Americans, to say it may look like the Americans are trying to organize the world and build a new American empire but that is not what is going on. They are actually terrified. The reason they are playing hardball with us on missile defence is that in their heart of hearts they really believe they are at risk. Not now, but the lead time on building effective missile defence is quite long, and they want us on-board. We are going to get the screws tightened on us on this one.
The Chairman: The question was why, sir.
Mr. Ross: Yes, why. There have been many assurances that there will not be missile interceptors on Canadian territory in the foreseeable future. They are thinking about X-band radars, of course, in Goose Bay. They will probably think about them in other locations as threats mature. One does not want to waste money and deploy them before they are needed, but one must build the personnel infrastructure to operate this thing. The skill levels must be built, and essentially get a tradition in place so that if the system needs to be rapidly expanded, it can be. They want our participation in principle, not just de facto acquiescence. That is not enough.
With a new administration in the White House, that might change. We may go back to the way the Democrats were approaching it. They were very sceptical. Many of them still remain skeptical and see this as major misallocation of resources; a proposition I agree with. Notwithstanding that, the current decision-makers see it as absolutely critical for the long-term vital security interests of the United States.
Critics say outside, this is fate-based defence. First of all, these technologies do not work. That is true up to a point; they can be easily defeated. Countermeasures are cheap and easy and what they have now cannot deal with the most elementary countermeasures, and are not likely to. There are major engineering difficulties, which they have not been able to overcome. They shot down a satellite almost 20 years ago. They did that; they are doing the same trick over and over.
Getting a really effective missile defence against a serious threat is not something that they are anywhere near, but they view it as front and centre, and needed now because it is part of their counter-proliferation program. You cannot get a permissive American political environment to endorse going after Iraq, then Iran and then, of course, ultimately North Korea, unless you have some remotely credible protection of national territory.
The Chairman: With respect, sir, we are getting off on a rationale for missile defence, and the question was why did the Americans want us in? They have not asked anything of us, and that is the reason why it seems like such a good deal for Canada, because they have not asked for anything.
Mr. Ross: I think this is the Trojan-horse kind of thing.
The Chairman: It is an effort by one senator to save the riding he used to represent. It has nothing to do with government policy or what Americans are doing. Even the company who was trying to sell it said it was their third location and Thule is a better place for the radars, so let us not venture there. If you have some thoughts, either of you, on why the Americans want Canada in, we would be curious.
Mr. Job: One reason they want us in is legitimization. They want to be able to say, X countries are on side, just as in Iraq they wanted to list 22 countries of whom some were giving one troop, and that was probably 50 per cent of their army, toward the Iraq coalition. It makes some difference in some areas to be able to say your nearest neighbour does not buy into missile defence. The other thing is, Americans probably wanted us in missile defence in terms of a long- term horizon. Missile defence is a 15- to 20-year agenda, if they keep at it. The longer the U.S. goes without a major terrorist incident and the more progress that is made on things like Libya, the less push there will be for it in the U.S. You have already seen them back off on the current budget. They have cut a billion dollars out of this year's expenditure on it because they realize, in some sense, they cannot simply spend money fast enough on a technology train that is not going forward as fast as George Bush promised. That would be my easy argument.
If I can go to another place where your questions were, which was with regard to the $22 billion, there was a book out a while ago called While Canada Slept, and you know the story. I think the dilemma about that is that Canada was not sleeping. Canada had political leaders that just had different priorities. The money went somewhere. It went into national programs of other sorts. In order to change what you are talking about, the $22 billion, you have to give the Canadian public a reason to want it. At the moment I think there is a real dilemma there, because much of what is being talked about in your discussions, and in ours, about security does not involve a really substantial increase in the Canadian-military portion of the budget. The reason we are looking for, and I support it, increasing the Canadian military's portion of the budget is we want to be a more competent and capable actor in terms of deploying abroad. You must make the argument as to why and how we, the Canadian public, want to see our guys abroad doing good work, and that is where you get the public support for it.
The Chairman: That is very helpful. Just to finish off, could you help us then with the words that would persuade the public that it makes sense for us to have the capacity to project force?Do we tell people that we want a stable world and we need combat-capable soldiers there to allow NGOs to assist? Do we tell them that we are sending people to Kabul because we are disrupting terrorist training camps, and it is better to disrupt them over there than to have them arrive here and have to deal with them at our borders? What sort of language should we have to persuade Canadians that this sort of investment is in their best interests?
Mr. Ross: That is getting back to Senator Banks's question that I did not answer on responsibility to protect, and whether we want to be active on that agenda. In terms of Canadian public opinion, yes, that is a good way to convince many people that we should at least do our role as one of the most affluent countries in the world. We should bear our part of that burden. In normal context, I would endorse that fully and see that as we are doing something useful. In fact, if we were doing more and were able to project force more effectively, that would diminish a lot of American unhappiness with our lack of responsiveness on things like missile defence.
Senator Meighen: Would it not be fair to say that we have done more recently, and there does not appear to be one iota of change in public opinion? We have had more people, more publicity abroad, than for decades, it seems to me. We have had the tragedy of the loss of life with all the attendant publicity, and the pride that people felt, but it does not seem to translate, if you can believe the public opinion polls, into any greater support for greater expenditures on matters of security and military operations.
Mr. Ross: Again, this needs the Prime Minister. It needs leading members of the government to actually go out and convince people. You have to take leadership; you have to take the kind of leadership Tony Blair has been trying to exercise in the U.K. That is what we need to have happen here as well. He is sliding backwards for the moment; that is true.
The Chairman: The challenge that faces this committee is not how to design the right armed forces. It is not how to pick the right aircraft. It is not how to figure out the right budget figure. The challenge facing this committee is to come up with the list of arguments that will resonate with the public to cause them to see security through a different optic. Everywhere we go we ask people for help with this question. It is a very difficult question. Either we are not picking the right words, we are not being persuasive or our arguments are not substantial enough. If you can assist the committee in that regard we would be most grateful.
Mr. Job: If you ask the Canadian public what they want to see, they want to see themselves abroad. Simply, Canadian, what is Canada's role? The average citizen says Canada is a peacekeeper, we should be abroad. One of the striking indications of that was the defence department being literally forced into sending the Disaster Area Response Team, DART, to Sri Lanka. We knew in advance it was going to get there late and probably was not going to make much difference, but it had to go. Why? It was done for political and public-opinion reasons. I would argue that what is probably useful is, in that sense, a focusing. We have X number of major, I will use that phrase advisedly, deployments abroad, and we make it very clear to the Canadian public why we are there, and why we are doing good work. Afghanistan counts; the Persian Gulf, to be blunt, gets very little in the way of public credit. I am not saying that is wrong, but that is the truth. If we are looking for purchase on Canadian public opinion, Haiti could get you a good deal more. Bosnia, to be blunt, has run its course, partly because it has been allowed to sink below the radar horizons entirely. That is the argument. Afghanistan is a place where the Canadian public realizes we were there in substantial numbers, and albeit a long way from home, sees a rationale there, both in terms of the Afghan people. Partly, they see us doing something abroad in a context that is relevant for the people of Afghanistan but is distinct from a U.S.- defined war on terrorism. I say that partly having had the advantage of being on aDND-sponsored trip to the mission in Afghanistan. The attitude on the part both of the Canadians versus the Americans whomwe met in uniform, but also in terms of the people we met in the Afghan government and elsewhere, in NGOs and so on, was stark. NATO is here to create and provide a longer-term security environment for the Afghan people. The United States is in its sector in Afghanistan to fight the war on terrorism, which translates into a much more hard-edged, point-guns-at-people-first, kind of attitude, and there is a profound distinction.Those distinctions, if we are talking strictly political arguments for, are the ones that have some resonance.
I will make one final comment going back to your hardball comment. Within the corridors of the United States, setting aside our clumsiness in reaching these decisions, which is the big problem with missile defence at the moment, our contributions to things like Afghanistan are actually seen as more positive than we would sometimes understand. That is, the Pentagon, others, will see that as a legitimate, real contribution. They will not talk about it much, but if you ask them they will acknowledge it. Where we are getting into trouble is on the optics and the procedures of decisions such as Iraq and missile defence. One would think those things could be more easily solved than getting $22 billion.
The Chairman: Let the record show, Professor Ross nodded.
Mr. Ross: I would agree with that. In relation to defence spending, public opinion is not irrelevant but it is very secondary, almost tertiary. Defence spending is something which Prime Ministers and cabinets, they make the decision about budget. If they are convinced that there are priorities here that need to be addressed, the money will get spent. Then they will get into the business of trying to explain it. It is an elite-driven decision. Most Canadians are not going to follow these issues. They are doing the current cocooning and disengagement from the world. You all know sociologically what is happening in this kind of disconnection from much of the world, except for these periodic outbursts of humanitarian fellow feeling, which is a good thing, but not sustainable. Direction and strategy is what is missing in the Canadian debate. Any sense of doctrine, any clear vision of where we are going and what we want to accomplish, is missing.
Some of our Canadian Forces people are trying to do that. I was just at this conference in Winnipeg which, as part of a Power Point presentation, General Hillier explained what his concept is for the new force. That picture he has there of two heavily armoured Canadian soldiers with semi-automatics charging on to the beach looking like Star Wars Imperial storm troopers is not the ticket. This is not going to help. That is the wrong way around. I appreciate where he is coming from. Failed states are his rationale, but I do not think that will work. Failed states will be seen as kind of a black hole. Do we really want to send our young men and women into danger like that, for what possible gain, and can we make a difference?
Senator Banks: Right on that point, do you not think there would be a taste in Canada for saying what we might have done if we had the jam and the capacity in Rwanda, to use the specific sexy current model?
Mr. Ross: Absolutely. For that you need air transport, you need to be able to look after your people on the ground and you need to provide your own air support and fire power delivered at a distance, and at considerable expense. That is not the kind of activity the Americans will want to sign in on; they have other priorities. If we want to take on that kind of responsibility, to protect humanitarian intervention and enforcement, we are talking big ticket, big bucks. Will Canadians buy that? I do not think so. I think they want to provide food aid, they want to provide control where civil populations are at risk, but I do not think they want to change governments. They do not want to do the nation- building, just as much as most Americans do not want to do that nation-building, which is exhausting and a long-term process.
I am not entirely convinced. I did not go to Afghanistan, that, in fact, we are going to make a difference in Afghanistan and that this thing is not going to disintegrate underneath us and we are going to have to get our people out. Afghanistan eats up foreign armies, foreign troops and foreign presence, and that really worries me. That could backfire and discredit spending more money on the military. They do not know where they should go, and they cannot be realistic about what can be accomplished. Those kinds of questions may be asked. I would like to see your committee do a detailed report on how things are coming along in Afghanistan.
My colleagues at the Canadian-American Strategic Review website are very upset with European disengagement, as they see it, and the fact Europeans are not willing to pull their share of the load in Afghanistan; that they are backing away from a major role and taking on a major role. It has gotten to the point that my colleagues think it is time we re- think; let us get out of NATO. I do not share that view. My view is this is a symptom of deep trouble in an organization that is very important to us, the same way the UN is very important to us. We need to do what we can to turn that around, rather than say we are fed up now, we are leaving. Perhaps we should be disengaging or taking a new approach in Afghanistan. I do not think a unified government is going to come to power there anytime soon; perhaps not in my lifetime anyway. That is the problem.
Leadership makes decisions about budget, not public opinion. I suppose some of our parliamentarians will fight and scream bloody murder if you tried to say we want a $22-billion defence budget within three years. There would be a big struggle for sure. The rationale of an insurance function is theoretical and empty. I do not think you can sell it that way. Governments respond when they feel an impending sense of crisis. You can take this, my little five pages here, and say I see a really big threat here that the government is not addressing, and maybe they just do not recognize it, they do not see it as possible. That should generate a whole lot more activity and should also make us think seriously about counter-proliferation. The Americans push it; it is part of their grand strategy, and it is illegitimate to most Canadians. There are deep and pervasive suspicions that the Americans are imperialists now. Everybody fastens in on Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and the Project for the New American Century, PNAC, but that is just one part of the American national security community. They may not be around four years from now; it may be an entirely different team having to deal with a lot of the problems they created.
A policy of empire is not sustainable; not empire light, not empire heavy. We are in a very different world. Democratic norms are pervasive everywhere. Democracy is making two steps forward and one step back, but it is making gains and it can be leaped. We need to have a strategy for making that happen because we have concrete security interests on the line. This is not theoretical. This is very tangible, very real. We are at risk. I say that as having myself and my family in the midst of one of the three big cities in the country. I am worried about our cities. I am worried about all those containers sitting in docks that are not being properly inspected. They cannot be because there is not enough equipment there and not enough people trained to do it. Unpacking takes too long, and the port authority does not want to do it anyway; you are slowing down commerce. You know all the problems. People have not gotten the message. They have not thought this through. I am torn myself; are you contributing, potentially, to the problem? Should these kinds of discussions be going on in camera? That is part of the problem, but you can do that in camera.
Turning public opinion around, I am worried Canadian public opinion is becoming more and more skeptical, fearful and angry about the Americans. Ms. Carolyn Parish can speak for a lot of Canadians who do not only mistrust the Americans but really dislike them. That has always been a factor, perhaps, in the Canadian political system and it has always been, fortunately, a minority, but we do not want to see that grow. We have to engage them too about taking a more constructive, conciliatory and cooperative approach rather than, this is the mission, we create coalitions of the willing and you can come on or not. If you do not come, we will be watching and we will be keeping score. That is not the way to build a security community. That is what we should be doing with community-building, not engaging in imposed top-down leadership.
This committee cannot really sell to the Canadian public or come up with innovative new ways to sell an aggressive new approach to defence issues, or even a responsible approach to defence issues. I guess the targets finally have to be the government of the day and the opposition parties, and get some kind of a consensus coming out of this that we have problems here that need dealing with. We should all be working on this together.
Senator Day: Dr. Job, I would like you to reflect a bit on your experiences and participation in the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific and your mention of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada earlier when Senator Austin was here. What role do you see evolving for Canada in the Asia Pacific forum, having in mind that the U.S. seems to be quite preoccupied with Europe, the Near East, the Middle East, and also the growing financial and military might of China?
Mr. Job: In 30 seconds, right? Let us start where you started. First, in sharp contrast to Europe, Asia is an environment where you have few institutions. If I can draw an analogy, you have APEC, which is the official trade organization, and you have an organization called Pacific Economic Cooperation Council, PECC, which is a network of business and commercial interests around the region. On the security side in Asia you have something called the ASEAN Regional Forum on the official side and on the unofficial side then as an analog, if you will, to PECC you have the phrase you used and I used, the Council of Security Cooperation in Asia Pacific, CSCAP. It is a network of experts, and each member country has a member committee. In that context I was co-chairing, with Jack Austin, the Canadian member committee. If we take that committee as an example, it was a group of academics, officials sitting in there, if you will, individual capacities, experts out of think tanks, and some elected public figures, but not in the House of Commons. The participation there is that we will send relevant experts to a set of working committee meetings around the region on current security issues. What has it accomplished: a couple of things. First, in the same sense as PECC has accomplished what it has, it has built a community of conversation, which has led to a better sense of what national interests are on different issues. That was particularly useful about 5 to 10 years ago with regard to China, getting a better sense of what they were up to. It also brought in a set of countries in Southeast Asia who had not been particularly involved, such as Vietnam; general discussions about their security brought them in. It had a particular useful result in the late 1990s by engaging North Korea. That is, a set of people out of their foreign ministry think tank regularly came to these meetings and, to be blunt, got a sense of what the rest of the region thought about them, and they had some capacity to present their own views.
I would say that, in the particular context of the North Koreans, the marginal utility of their continued involvement, and they continue to be involved, has probably tapered off substantially. Partly it is because the people you and I could talk to in that organization do not have any more idea if North Korea has nuclear weapons than you or I. They will not be told. I am trying to give you a sense of the efforts, if you will, of expert networks, as you will see them in various ways, to sustain intelligent study, and to sustain some sense of dialogue and understanding.
The U.S. and Asia relationship is an interesting point, because I think what we are looking for here is Canada in Asia and how do we position ourselves intelligently vis-à-vis what we see as an over-arching U.S. management structure in Asia? There has been a shift there. Certainly since 9/11, the U.S.'s centre of gravity of attention has moved inland. It has moved to, basically, the Afghanistan, central Asia and Pakistan perspective. You can see where they are putting bases, you can see where they have their troops and you can see where they are paying attention. It now includes a lot more attention to Southeast Asia. They are still concerned about Northeast Asia, but in the sense of demanding that Northeast Asian players like Japan and, to a certain extent, South Korea step up to the plate in different ways. The U.S. has put on notice the fact that they are going to pull back out of those commitments, and the big dilemma remains Taiwan.
In Southeast Asia the U.S. is of interest and is perceived, especially by the public, as undertaking a war on terrorism, which is having negative rather than positive effects. The resonance of the Palestinian cause in the Southeast Asian Muslim society simply cannot be underestimated, as can the negative resonance of what the U.S. has accomplished or not accomplished in Iraq. The role for a Canada is not to be a clone of U.S. policy. We presumably have the same long- term ends, but it is to interact intelligently on some of the areas where we could actually make a difference. They are unlikely to be hard-edged military unless they are, perhaps, in the areas of contributing security training, military observers and, in certain instances such as short-term disasters like East Timor, to put a small presence on the ground.
The longer term is articulating intelligently with the militaries and the leadership in those areas and attempting, especially with societies that have substantial Islamic populations, to build an understanding and to encourage peaceful, if you will, transitions in governments and so on. Where we have a dilemma is what we do with regard to South Asia. We have not spent much time there. The Indians have not wanted to talk to us since 1974, and continue not to be excited about us. Pakistan poses real dilemmas. It is a government on the edge and is, as Mr. Ross has suggested, a particularly troublesome concern.
Sri Lanka is important to us, in large because of thediasporas, but more generally because of its potential to destabilize and draw attention to the region. We could, with some limited capacities, if the peace process goes forward, see ourselves playing a role there. It may be, again, a border-security, a monitoring or a military-observer kind of role.
Senator Day: Do you see a growing role for China as a stabilizing force in the area that we might be able to work with, or do you see it as a potential threat?
Mr. Job: This is a glib answer to you, but it does not matter; we still have to work with China. For various reasons, it is no longer a quiet player in either the regional or the global context. We have to come to terms with it just as, during the Cold War, we had to come to terms with dealing with Russia, which we did during the Cold War in different and important ways to Canada, different ways than the United States did. That is a useful analog. That is, there is a country that is of concern, we have with it substantial trade interests and, more interestingly, if you look to even the short-term horizon, China's energy concerns are going to be the major demand factor in the global energy market within the foreseeable future. They have figured out that, in Mr. Banks's province, for instance, they have some potentially very important interests. This is at the same time that the United States, with its relatively insatiable demand for energy, is looking for stable supplies, and they look north. This puts us in a very particular kind of position as to how we attempt to manage both continentally but also, in a broader regional sense, how we look to manage our diplomacy and economics.
Senator Day: That is fascinating. You did very well in a couple of minutes on a very complex issue.
I have one other question for Professor Ross, if we have time. I recognize that we are running out of time. I will not say it is a short question. It is probably another one of those complex issues that you will want to take some time on. At any time, if either of you have some other thoughts afterwards do not hesitate to contact us, because these are important issues that we are struggling with.
Professor Ross, I am going to this issue of national security. The current policy is that the reservists have a mandate with respect to aiding civil power, aiding first responders and participating, but they also continue to have the mandate of the Total Force Concept and supplementing sometimes up to 25 per cent, 35 per cent of our deployment. In a national defence policy, how do you see the role of the reservists, having in mind your comments with respect to the importance of a national security and a major role to play on the North American continent in Canada?
Mr. Ross: Harkening back to the question that Senator Kenny raised about how we can build support, having a much-expanded reserve force distributed across the country with people in the community who are involved in the reserves would be absolutely invaluable, number one. The problem is, it seems every time there is a defence review governments always add on, "We are going to expand the reserves.'' That is an idea that keeps coming back and rarely, if ever, gets enacted. I suspect it is because the regular forces people get hold of the money and they say, "We do not have enough to take care of our priorities'' and fight tooth and nail to have more money and resources going to the regular forces. There has to be enough money in the system before the regular-force people are going to let the reserves expand and not try to hamstring these kinds of reform proposals. If we want more boots on the ground, more prospect for immediate assistance aid to the civil power, it seems to me well- trained reserves are the way to go. You can do that more in the short term than the long term; not if you are going to have 25 per cent of them being shipped off to support regular force deployments abroad. That is probably a bad idea. If you are trying to attract people into the reserves you want to make it quite clear that it is voluntary, that it would never be mandatory, and that they might get summoned to go off and do duty abroad. That is problematic. It is a very important way, and that might be a way to build more community awareness about international security issues.
The Chairman: Excuse me, Senator Day. Professor Job has to leave.
Mr. Job: Thank you very much.
The Chairman: Thank you for coming, and we appreciate your contribution very much. If I may, I would go on.
Senator Forrestall: You have suggested, in the title of your paper today that you are going to talk to us about the changing threat. I wonder if I might ask you why you left out survival of suicide as a possible threat to Canada. Why was that not included? I will not pursue this very far except to ask you to comment, after you have answered the question, on whether or not you see the locale of the threat, and this threat particularly.
Mr. Ross: You said survival or suicide?
Senator Forrestall: Yes, suicide as in suicide bombers. I want to move you from where they apparently are now and, without suggesting it is Islamic or any of that, coming from the west coast here and watching Asia, do you discern a shift to Indonesia of some of these factions?
Mr. Ross: I do not follow that closely. As part of looking at international conflict, I would say this: I had a student who just finished a thesis on the Landmines Treaty process and defended it successfully yesterday. Her general argument was that, by and large, this is a major step forward in humanitarian law, and a new consensus, a new norm has emerged on that front. In the discussion and the actual examination, my colleagues in the department raised the immediate question: there may be progress there, but look at all the suicide bombing that is going on. We may be getting progress on this one front, but all these other people are being murdered. Does this mean that the norm is disintegrating before our eyes? Attacking civilian populations is going to become more and more acceptable, as it were, certainly to those who feel oppressed. I do not know the statistics on that.
There is good news, that the number of actual intra-societal wars, civil wars, has been noticeably declining in the past decade. That seems to be fairly firm. The fact that there is more respect for the Landmines Treaty and more willingness by even those countries who refuse to sign it to say, including the United States especially, we will make an accommodation here to try to reduce our use of it, limit it geographically and try to phase it out. That is very substantial progress, so I am optimistic that we may turn the corner on it.
For the Middle East in particular, though, to turn that corner something has to be done for Israel/Palestine. A stable international peace has to be achieved, and that is the foundation, before the animosity across the Islamic world is substantially reduced, and before the terrorist organizations will find it harder and harder to recruit willing suicide bombers. The intelligent young men who are now going to Iraq and sacrificing themselves are not fools. They really feel there has been a terrible wrong done to the Palestinian population and, indeed, to the Islamic world generally. That is a political symptom that has to be looked at through some kind of reasonable compromise, and that is going to be, of course as you know, very difficult to achieve. The U.S. has been convinced, partly by Tony Blair's actions and his British diplomacy, that this really should be at the top of the agenda. That is one big check mark you can put on the side for British diplomacy in Iraq and afterward. There is some possibility for optimism in that regard. This is not an entirely black situation.
Actually, in terms of Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems to me Iraq may have a better prospect for eventual stability than Afghanistan, given the long divisions, the much higher level of education, and much more involvement in the regional economy of the Iraqis. I am not sure that is relevant to what you are asking.
Senator Forrestall: Money helps too.
Mr. Ross: That too, especially.
Senator Stollery: It has been a very interesting discussion, and I have appreciated the views of our witnesses.
Professor Ross, I read a document that I believe you wrote that I have in my binder. It is a slightly different take on this issue, because you wrote in this paper that American political leaders and officials look on Canada's geographically extended source of societal vulnerability for the United States because of Canada's liberal and uncontrolled refugee policy, and because of its inability to control its national territory and ocean approaches. I do not mean to beat this around, but I also deal with Mexico quite a bit. The U.S. border patrol says that in the year ending in September on the Arizona border, they get one in three, they say. Of course they do not know. They intercepted 530,000 people on the Arizona/U.S. border. If we go by their own figures, that is about a million that made it across just on the Arizona border. Does that not have a pretty major effect on their security and possibly on our security if some of those people decided to come to Canada?
Mr. Ross: Yes, very much so. Not unreasonably, many Canadian officials over the years have said, how can they really complain about us and the U.S.-Canada border and our coastlines when they cannot manage their southern border. They have obviously stepped up; they put a lot of investment into it in the last eight years.
Senator Stollery: We are talking about last year.
Mr. Ross: It is much more difficult to get across now, and they are turning this into a new Berlin Wall. The amount of steel, cement and glass going from the beaches in San Diego — more of that border is going to be impenetrable, and the parts that are not, they will have a pretty lethal desert, as you know. That is not going to, in any way, diminish their sense that we are more of a threat than the Mexicans. Why? We now have a Muslim population which is quite sizeable.
Senator Stollery: They do as well in Mexico.
Mr. Ross: They do, but this is not seen as a potential source of people crossing the border into the United States. They are probably right, and that is going to be the source of their anxiety. Until they extend to all Canadian residents and Canadian citizens the requirements for fingerprinting and biometric identification, they do not feel terribly secure about us. That is a measure that they will apply, and we can try to persuade them not to for various reasons. If we do, we will have to reassure them in other ways. What we have done so far on immigration reforms and tracking refugees is not nearly enough to satisfy and allay their concerns. They will keep pointing at us.
Senator Stollery: I realize we are running late, but there does seem to be a bit of a disconnect there. A handful of people manage to get into Canada, which is a difficult country to get at, as opposed to, by their own figures, millions of people crossing into the United States. As you know, the borders between Mexico, Guatemala and all the other places are pretty fluid, as are the chances of terrorists inserting themselves among those groups. By the way, again, I do not mean to go on about it, but the question then would be: If the 10 million Mexicans that they estimate are illegally in the United States stayed in Mexico, what kind of pressures would build on the Mexican government? In other words, it seems to me that it is a pretty big issue, but that is perhaps not the issue for today.
The Chairman: Should I say you encapsulated the discussion perfectly, Senator Stollery?
Professor Ross, it was very good of you to come. We have found your presentation stimulating and helpful, and we are grateful to you for taking the time. Clearly we share many of the concerns that you have, and we appreciate your assistance in helping us find our way through the woods.
Colleagues, we have before us Vice-Admiral Charles Thomas, retired, who had a long and rewarding career with the Canadian Navy. He was educated at the Royal Naval Engineering College, Canadian Forces College, National Defence College, andreceived an MBA from Dalhousie University. He joined the navy in 1954 as an engineer officer and later served ashore as a staff officer in the dock yard. He was executive officer of HMCS Preserver, and commanded HMCS Fraser and also the Training Group, Pacific and the 4th Escort Squadron. He was later commander of the navy and vice chief of defence staff.
We also have before us Vice-Admiral Nigel Brodeur, retired. He joined the Canadian Navy as a midshipman in 1952. He commanded the destroyer HMCS Terra Nova and the Fifth Canadian Destroyer Squadron on the East Coast. He served as commandant of the Canadian Forces Maritime Warfare Centre in Halifax. He was promoted to rear admiral in 1980 and was appointed chief of Maritime Doctrine and Operations.
In 1982, Admiral Brodeur was appointed deputy chief of Staff Operations, Reinforcement and Resupply to NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic in Norfolk, Virginia, with an additional concurrent appointment as chief of staff to Commander-in-Chief Western Atlantic.
In 1985, he was promoted to vice admiral and returned to Ottawa to become deputy chief of defence staff. He retired as deputy chief of defence staff in July of 1987.
Gentlemen, welcome to the committee. We are pleased to have you here before us. We understand that you both have a short statement to make.
Vice-Admiral (Ret'd) Nigel Brodeur, as an individual: Honourable senators, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you today. In a couple of instances, our associations go back many years. Were it not for the reports you have issued, especially the 2005 report, many of us would have lost hope some time ago. We take great heart from the work that you have done.
Canadian governments do not always seem to understand the full consequences of the reality that, unless they are threatened by all-out war, Canadians are very reluctant, if not unwilling, to abandon their cherished social programs in order to fund defence.
Consequently, a promise to give Canadians the programs they demand is tantamount to eventual disarmament, because it means that defence issues come to be decided on the basis of popularity or public opinion. This is an absurd situation.
To quote your 2005 report:
If Canadians had demanded that national security be given the attention that has been given to health care or deficit and debt reduction, there is no way that Canada's armed forces could have atrophied so dramatically over the last decade of the 20th century.
Opponents of defence spending have always sought to convince Canadians that such spending damages the national economy. My research shows that defence funding has been the victim, not the cause, of the financial problems that Canada has faced; that the results of this victimization have damaged Canadian industry and Canada's international reputation and influence; and that the traditional manner whereby national defence has been funded in the last three decades has become unworkable and a new formula is needed.
I have asked that the graphs that accompany my presentation be given to you for the simple reason that they illustrate far more graphically than any words I could ever give, what has happened to defence and defence funding.
The notable thing in Figure 1 is that defence spending as a percentage of the federal budget was as high as 21.9 per cent in the 1960-61 period, and it rapidly declined to the order of 8 per cent. In subsequent years, as shown in Figure 2, defence spending was permitted to increase, but it never increased sufficiently to prevent the rust-out that was starting to occur, until 1987, when the defence white paper, several reports by Senate committees and a report by the Auditor General all indicated that the Canadian Armed Forces were in a serious situation for lack of funding. At that time, the defence white paper, which was issued by Mr. Perrin Beattie, and the program improvements in funding that were contemplated in that white paper, namely, a 2-per-cent escalation over 15 years in the federal budget, foretold the possibility that the rust-out would be cured.
A lot of people might say that great and generous funding was being provided at that time, but in point of fact it was not. In Figure 4 you will see that the loss in purchasing power that occurred over the years is such that for the last 11 years onthat graph the purchasing power is less than it was in 1983 and 1984. That essentially means that in those subsequent years there never were sufficient funds to launch the major programs ofre-equipment that would become necessary.
Figure 7 shows the actual defence budgets versus the budgets that would have come occurred had the 1987 white paper held; in other words, 2-per-cent escalation over 15 years. The area between the upward line in Figure 7 and the columns may be seen by some as a victory for social programs, but by others it is seen as a defeat for Canadian industry, and also as a key factor in the 30-per-cent reduction in Canadian military capacity and the large reduction in personnel.
Figure 8 shows the percentages of GDP that are spent on defence by Canada, the European average in NATO and the United States.
The difference between Canada's defence spending percentage and that of NATO European nations has undoubtedly had a negative impact on Canada's reputation and influence abroad. The United States, for its part, views all North American issues through the lens of national security, including such matters as bilateral trade, economics and diplomacy. The more the impression takes hold that Canada is shirking its share, the less recognition will the United States give to Canada's good deeds, and the less willing they will be to be influenced by Canadian preferences or policies.
The substance of all this research has led me to conclude that Canada's traditional methodology for allocating defence funding is seriously flawed, and that politicians of all parties must act to correct it without expecting grassroots public support as a pre-condition. One solution, and perhaps the only one, is to remove defence funding from the discretionary category and to legislate it according to a fixed formula.
Figure 9 shows alternative defence funding options. You see there the actual Canadian defence budget and the defence budget if Canada had been using the European percentage average of GDP expenditure. You will see it using 10 per cent of the total federal budget, and then you will see it using the United States percentages, which clearly would be unaffordable for Canada. You will see that there is reasonable proximity between the NATO European figure and the 10 per cent that I recommend to you, honourable senators.
Senator Banks: VAdm. Brodeur, our copies are not in colour. Can you tell us whether those figures go left to right?
VAdm. Brodeur: The left one is the Canadian defence budget. The next is 10 per cent of the total federal budget, then the European and then the United States.
Senator Banks: Thank you.
VAdm. Brodeur: The preferred approach, which is depicted in Figure 9, is one that legislates that the defence budget shall be fixed at 10 per cent of the total federal budget. It can be seen from Figure 9A that this corresponds reasonably well to the Europe columns. It thereby redresses NATO's concerns and contributes to the government's policy objective to be a player on the world stage. It would also project a smaller defence expenditure than that which is envisaged in the 1987 white paper, which is probably a realistic consideration given the termination of the Cold War. Additionally, it provides built-in flexibility for ready adjustment when Canada's financial fortunes change, and it provides the predictability Canadian industry needs to participate in defence capital equipment programs. Most important, it should be easy to explain to Canadians, and it should be readily accepted.
Canadians spend 7 cents of every federal tax dollar on defence; spending an additional three cents to restore the defence industry of the nation, to contribute to international security and to regain the respect of our allies and trading partners, surely is not too much to ask.
Vice-Admiral (Ret'd) Charles Thomas, as an individual: Senators, I am always pleased to be paired with my friend Nigel, because he takes twice as much time as we are both allowed, and then I am permitted to say very little.
I do not have formal remarks. I have been impressed by the people you have seen here today in that they have all got it right. The two professors who were here earlier only missed two things. The first was the Arctic, which was not mentioned, and the other was water. If I were to give a single piece of security advice to the Government of Canada, it would be to make water a commodity.
Senator Banks: We will lose it if we make it a commodity.
VAdm. Thomas: We will lose it if we do not. If you make it a commodity, the price goes up when it gets scarce.
However, my message is about things military. We see the lack of equipment, the lack of money and the decrease in buying power. It must be remembered that behind all the equipment are people — people who have been worn on for a very long time and have been put at risks they should not be put at for a very long time. The information I get is that they are getting tired of it and losing faith in their leadership. They certainly doubt the proclamations about a better future, because these are smart people who can do the numbers. It will be very difficult for both the military leaders in the next decade and their government if the people who are supposed to serve them in the Armed Forces lose faith in the leadership that can send them off to war. That kind of organizational implosion is very near.
The work of your committee, therefore, is vital. It goes beyond numbers; it goes beyond the obvious deficits in the defence budget, and it goes beyond how that defence budget is spent. This is a piece of the national fabric, and it is in jeopardy. Government should be careful where they walk.
The Deputy Chairman: Thank you, Admiral. That is very thoughtful.
Senator Meighen: Thank you for being here, gentlemen.
As you will have noticed, all our reports have been unanimous. All members of the committee are on the same wavelength as you. I, too, was impressed with the professors' words today. I am not always of the view that those in academe have a solid grounding in the realities of the political world, but I thought they did, in many respects.
Senator Kenny mentioned that our task seems to be — and so far the answer alludes us — how to get across to the Canadian public the sort of things you were saying, the sort of things the professors were saying, and the sort of things we have come to believe are necessary to preserve the fabric of this country.
The more I listen, the more I am convinced that the answer lies in leadership, that unless somebody grasps the nettle — if indeed it is a nettle — and explains to the public why certain decisions are being taken by the government and then goes ahead and takes those decisions, we will not succeed. If we are going to merely follow polls, the sort of things you are advocating and the sort of things we have been suggesting will not come to pass. Those entrusted with the responsibility of making decisions have to be, at least in that respect, a little ahead of the public.
VAdm. Thomas, perhaps you could give me some insight into a particular problem that we have encountered. In many instances, we do not think we are getting frank and complete answers from serving members of the forces who appear before us as witnesses. We do understand that there are certain subjects that quite properly they should not deal with. They should not voice an opinion about government decisions. However, we are continually frustrated as we do not think we are getting the full story. They do not have to give us an opinion, but they should give us the facts.
I have been told that the constraints under which our senior military authorities operate are different from the constraints of their counterparts in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, although I have not been able to find out exactly what the differences are. Can you, whether anecdotally or otherwise, elaborate on that and tell us what the problem is?
VAdm. Thomas: It is a fact of law that our officers operate under a different set of constraints than do the Americans. Our officers appearing in public appear in right of the minister, and only have opinions that reflect those of the minister.
I personally have been threatened with court martial. It just happened that my case in law was better than theirs, so they dropped it.
Some ministers want the message to get out. When I was running the navy and until about halfway through my period in Maritime Command, Mr. Beattie, and then Mr. Bill McKnight, were the ministers, and I gave a speech somewhere in this country every third night for two years. Some of my colleagues did not like that, but I heard nothing from the minister's office. If the minister is not of that persuasion, these people are effectively silenced.
In the United States, officers are called in front of congressional and Senate committees as experts in their own right, and they speak to their professional expertise. That is a fundamental difference.
Senator Meighen: To put it in theoretical and practical terms, surely a senior American military official in a Canadian context could not say, for example: "I think the decision to buy the Sikorsky helicopter was crazy. I would have brought a Cormorant.''
VAdm. Thomas: I am sure that is true. However, if you ask the American officer if the capability of the Sikorsky is X and the capability of another helicopter is Y, he will tell you the truth.
I have watched your committee hearings, and I am not sure that reluctance is not being carried beyond reason. Have we been in a situation of shortage for so long that people are forgetting what the proper level of support is? It is not credible to me that a commander of the air force would say: "We have 32 Hercules of which seven to 12 are flying, and that is good.'' I assure you that his people who are working on the Hercules do not think it is good, and they wonder where the hell he is coming from.
In my opinion, the application of the Canadian rules is driving our senior leadership into a situation of lack of credibility with the people who work for them, whom they are supposed to lead to war. It is really destructive.
On the other hand, the annual report of your last witness the other day stipulated the $135-million shortfall that he has to live with. Yesterday, you heard that they are having to move spare pieces from one ship to another because there is not sufficient national inventory supply.
I thought his report was explicit, and it was clear from your questions that you did as well. I would like to see a sea change, and that comes back, as you suggested, to national leadership. Its absence must be regretted.
Senator Meighen: VAdm. Brodeur, I am in total sympathy with your goal. Frankly, I think that politically it would be very hard to persuade anyone to go with a set legislated percentage. What do you do with the other areas of federal expenditure? Do you do the same for health care, post-secondary education and the other areas of priority?
I doubt that you can. Clearly, our spending has been unacceptably low and we have to increase it. Can I take from your remarks that you felt that the 1994 White Paper was a good white paper that fell by the wayside only because it was not adequately funded?
VAdm. Brodeur: I did not deal specifically with the 1994 White Paper. I was talking about the 1987 White Paper.
Senator Meighen: I am sorry.
VAdm. Brodeur: Essentially, the funding did drop off.
To refer back to your introductory comment, leadership is the solution. It may not be 10 per cent, but something must be legislated, because working on public opinion for funding is not going to succeed.
Senator Meighen: You do not have to legislate it, of course, to do it, although the necessary Orders-in-Council would have to be passed. However, I am not convinced that it would be wise to legislate that 10 per cent of the GNP be spent on defence in the same fashion that one might legislate against running a deficit budget, although I think it would be wise to exercise the leadership to bring spending closer to the levels you suggest.
VAdm. Brodeur, there is a binational planning group in Colorado Springs that has been doing some good work, and has a decidedly naval flavour. Is it your view that NORAD could and should be expanded to include maritime operations?
VAdm. Brodeur: I have seen what is in your report on that subject. Frankly, I do not have an expert opinion on that. I have never been in NORAD. I was in Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, SACLANT, when very close coordination was being developed between SACLANT and NORAD. I do not know whether it could be achieved through the mechanism of simply expanding NORAD to cover the area you spoke of, or close coordination, but one or the other will be necessary, in my opinion.
Senator Meighen: You both have very strong naval backgrounds. I think it fair to say that our navy has always felt that it has a blue water responsibility and primary theatre of operations. Do you see the inshore waters as the navy's responsibility or more as the responsibility of a revamped Canadian Coast Guard and perhaps even an armed Coast Guard?
VAdm. Thomas: The navy's responsibilities start at the edge of the ocean and go outward. I do not see that they are divided into zones depending upon how many fathoms are underneath. You have the responsibility to provide that security to the government, period.
We have had much discussion here about how difficult it is to get our act together and provide the financing. The Coast Guard is just one step further in that chain of difficulty. I do not think you need to start talking about arming the Coast Guard. They cannot do the things they are already supposed to do, and they have been starved of capital for longer than the navy. This is not a new theme; it has been played over and over.
I would not give that responsibility to the Coast Guard, not because they could not do it but because they will not get the money. We might as well keep the navy we have and make it do the job we want it to do.
Senator Meighen: From the coast right out?
VAdm. Thomas: Absolutely, and "out'' goes to wherever you want to go, for whatever purpose. I do not predict the future very well, and I do not know anyone who does. You have to build the most flexible tool for use by the government in whatever circumstances the future brings, and you better have it built because when the circumstances arrive, there will not be time.
Senator Meighen: Is that your view as well, VAdm. Brodeur?
VAdm. Brodeur: Yes. There are functions that the Coast Guard has performed that the navy is not in a position to perform, such as aids to navigation, licensing and many others.
Senator Meighen: What about drug smuggling?
VAdm. Brodeur: That is where you coordinate.
VAdm. Thomas: Those are our kids too. If someone is smuggling drugs and you want us to go get them, we will get them.
VAdm. Brodeur: The idea that you can put two starving men together and they will have enough so that they will both eat does not work. There are roles to be performed by the Coast Guard but they do not have the right assets for anything that goes deep water, nor do they have the legislation such as they have in the United States. We do not have large Coast Guard cutters. Owing to the blessed oceans that the good Lord gave this country, which are the two worst, the North Atlantic and the North Pacific, the ships have to be capable of going far afield rather than staying in coastal waters.
If you have to choose between the two, I would agree with VAdm. Thomas and say the navy. However, I believe that we should keep the two because there will be enough for both to do in the near future in their current roles and missions, but coordinating very closely together.
Senator Meighen: Do you know of any other nation that guarantees, in the fashion that you have been advocating, that percentage of GNP allocated to national defence?
VAdm. Brodeur: No, but maybe they will learn to.
The Deputy Chairman: I once heard a Russian naval commander say that their budget was fixed by what they needed.
I am deeply concerned about the Arctic. I was a strong advocate of the development of the Polar 7 or 8 as a permanent establishment of a Canadian presence in the Arctic — a vessel with a Canadian court, an RCMP detachment, a library and diagnostic clinical capacities; a vessel that would be seen to be there by the Russians, Danes and anyone else who wanted to work in the Arctic for scientific and peaceful purposes, leaving no question at all about sovereignty.
The issue has now come up again. I see that we have a ship working off the coast of Labrador.
What is your opinion about Arctic sovereignty. What are we defending?
VAdm. Thomas: I believe that when Mr. Beattie's white paper was shot down, Canada gave up a claim to sovereignty in the Arctic that it was about to develop. If we had those nuclear submarines in service now, we would be surveying the Arctic and the littoral around the Arctic, which is necessary to a claim of sovereignty. I do not think it is accidental that The New York Times never refers to the Canadian archipelago but rather to the archipelago north of Canada.
It may be that Continental Energy has muted this issue because access to the resources of the Arctic will be achieved under Continental Energy, or bought through the stock market. However, I think we have been putting a claim to sovereignty in jeopardy by our inaction for 20 years, and it will not improve quickly. We do not have ice breakers regularly in the Arctic. Even if global warming occurs and the Northwest Passage opens, there will still be times of the year when it is not open and we will not be able to go there. There are submarines that have been using the Arctic for a long time, and they are not Canadian submarines.
I obtained unclassified information from a Canadian naval officer who was the ice expert in the second U.S. nuclear submarine, which made 20 passages through the Northwest Passage. He wrote, as naval officers did in those days, in his journal. When we did the nuclear submarine study, it was an amazing source of intelligence. He was old, but he was sharp, and with his journals he took us through the experience hour by hour.
It is a matter of leadership that we just do not have, and I do not know why. God knows what riches are up there yet to be developed. We know about the capped oil wells and the gas under Cornwallis Island, as well as the diamonds. Who knows what else is there. Everyone but us seems to be interested.
The Deputy Chairman: I am not sure that we are not. I have a feeling that there may be some papers yet to be released.
VAdm. Thomas: We have not bit the bullet and produced the hardware that would allow us to do the job.
Senator Day: Would you talk about the role that you believe should be defined for the Canadian navy in the next defence policy? We are trying to develop a blueprint. Would you talk about what you see, from a naval point of view, as the main issues that the navy should be involved in with regard to security for Canada?
VAdm. Brodeur: I will defer on that issue to VAdm. Thomas. However, if one looks at defence white papers, reports of your committee and reports of the House of Commons Defence Committee far into the past, you must conclude that when you discuss roles, missions and all those good things, you are blowing in the wind unless the funding is provided and assured. That bothers me more than anything else.
VAdm. Thomas: When I was commanding the navy, one thing that really annoyed me was old guys who had not got it done when they were in charge, now telling the admiral who was getting it done how to do it. I hold to that. People running the navy today are as good as we are liable to get. They are current with the realities, threats and needs. Their advice is solid. There is no doubt that we need a replacement for the AOR, and it ought to have the expanded capability that they are talking about. There is no doubt that the next surface combatant is going to be late and must include command and control and air defence, and by then you probably have to roll in a frigate. The conceptualization they placed before you is absolutely sound, and I would not try to second guess them.
The problem is that there is no money to do it. Enthusiasms after the budget are insufficient, because it does not bring us back to the buying power we had 10 years ago. In my judgment, there is no concern about the quality of the advice or the thinking about the future that you are getting from the people now giving it to you. Whether the resources will be available to bring their good ideas to fruition is another issue.
VAdm. Brodeur: When VAdm. Thomas and I were working on the Canadian Patrol Frigate, the Soviet Union was on its way to breaking up. One could have legitimately argued against the combat capacities we had in ships because, after all, the Soviet threat no longer existed.
Adm. Summers used equipments from that new program and installed them in the ships that he took to the Gulf. The lesson in this is that, whatever force you build, it must be capable of handling modern combatants. You never know who will be aiming a weapon at you, so you must have modern capacities.
Regardless of what the planners produce, please bear that in mind, gentlemen.
Senator Day: I appreciate your comments that you must have the money to do the things that need to be done. However, we keep hearing from the executive branch of government that we need a plan before it will be funded. We are trying to develop a plan that we can defend, and we are asking people like you to help us develop it.
VAdm. Thomas, you mentioned that we should be able to rely on the information and advice of people in uniform. We sometimes get the feeling that we are getting advice from them that is driven by the amount of money they have available, as opposed to stating Canada needs for the future and asking for the money to fund it.
VAdm. Thomas: I will tell you how I did it when we put the frigate program in place. We looked at various sums of money that were liable to be available and what we had to start. We figured out what we could buy for each of the various sums of money in various mixes. We took all those mixes to the operations research people and ran war games with one mix against another until we produced a set of curves that showed us the best we could get for given amounts of money. When we went to defend our choices to the rest of the department first, and then the government, we had the whole research scientist community on board with us because we had done our homework.
You will find that the people who are offering you a multi-role, single-combatant AOR replacement have done their homework. The questions are, when and how many?
If you had $50 billion for naval procurement, no one would ask for a Lincoln-class aircraft carrier. That does not fit with the roles and tasks the government has given the navy to do. It does not start from the wildest imaginings of some admiral who wants to get a pay raise. He is responding to the tasking he is getting from the government.
The problem in this country is that we have not had a foreign affairs or defence debate because, quite frankly, the centre is afraid of such a debate. If we had a rip-snorting defence debate, you might find that there are many Canadians who feel strongly on the positive side.
I am told by people in the television industry that one of the strongest things you can do to arouse a response is to tie into the feeling of being Canadian and proud of it, which is not quite as visible as in the United States but is there, and is manifest and real.
Senator Day: It sells beer.
VAdm. Thomas: It sure does.
Senator Day: We asked a senior naval officer about the navy taking over the aspect of the Coast Guard that does interdiction and assists the RCMP and Citizenship and Immigration Canada with coastal defence. He was absolutely opposed to that. He had the image of the navy being a deep-water force, and coastal defence being left to someone else.
I do not know if he honestly believed that from a policy point of view, or if he was worried that he would be given a new responsibility and no more money to perform it. We have to get under that leaf and find out the truth.
VAdm. Brodeur: There could be another factor in that. If you are in the military, you are the nation's last resort. You must be able, therefore, to handle the most difficult task. If you cannot handle the difficult task, in the final analysis you lose. He was certainly thinking that the far field job, which some people call blue-water, is the most difficult job.
History has shown, in two world wars and in Korea, that the first forces our nation sends abroad are its naval forces. He is accepting the inevitable, therefore, that he will be asked to do a very difficult job, and perhaps there are only enough assets to do that very difficult job and not enough assets left over to concentrate on what must be done inshore.
Senator Day: Now we are being driven by available assets and money, as opposed to good policy decision.
VAdm. Thomas: Absolutely. I would not want to disagree too violently with my friend, but most naval officers since the Second World War have probably been terrified at the thought of the Coast Guard becoming part of the navy, because that is where all the money will go. Four major studies have been done on this, and they are quite elegant. The problem is that there is no money associated with them.
Senator Day: Professor Ross, from whom we just heard, said that national defence and coastal defence are extremely important in the future policy for Canada, and the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway are also important.
Are you satisfied with the way the navy is handling that now, that is, leaving maritime coastal defence vessels to be primarily manned by reservists, with that being their primary duty along with training? Is that niche role for the reserve an acceptable way to do things?
VAdm. Thomas: I thought it up, so I have to think so.
VAdm. Brodeur: I agree.
VAdm. Thomas: The reserves and the coastal defence vessels are meant to map the ocean bottom along the coasts of our country. With that, when you become concerned about mines, you need only physically examine the differences. A mine is about the size of a Volkswagen; you should notice it on the bottom.
There is a company here in Vancouver that produces the technology to do that. The reserves do it very well, and it is appropriate.
I think your two previous guests were talking about something bigger than someone dropping mines. Missile defence would not be my first priority. I do not like the way we dealt with it; I think we were gratuitously rude. However, all those container ships, or even a tramp steamer carrying a suitcase-sized nuclear bomb, scare the heck out of me. I know they exist and I am not at all confident that they are being looked after.
There is a massive security dimension that does not have to do with coastal defence vessels. Your two previous witnesses were right.
Senator Day: I want to talk about coastal defence vessels doing more than searching for mines, being involved with boarding of unfriendly vessels off our coasts, helping the RCMP and helping the immigration department. They are training for boardings now, so they obviously have mandates in addition to looking for mines.
VAdm. Brodeur: Certainly; that is to be expected. Their primary role and the role for which they were designed, as VAdm. Thomas said, is all aspects of mine countermeasures. That does not mean that, if there are no mines, they do not have a job to do. They do have a job to do. They can be used for training. Given their speed limitations and their sea-keeping limitations, they can assist other government departments, and have done so very capably.
VAdm. Thomas: The last defence paper talked about small, fast frigates for Canada. In terms of design of them for our oceans, there is no such thing as a small, fast displacement hull. If you put enough horsepower in it, there is no room left for anything else. If you make it small enough and push it through the waves fast enough, it breaks up. In order to go fast off the Grand Banks and the east coast of Vancouver Island, you have to have a pretty large ship. It is appropriate to use those coastal defence vessels inshore and to do boarding or whatever, but we should not fool ourselves that there is a cheap answer in a small fast ship that will go off the Grand Banks or Cape Scott. The naval architects will explain to you in detail why they cannot do that. If you want to play in our ocean, you have to have a ship of significant size and capability.
The Deputy Chairman: I agree. It was not designed to do what we were just talking about. It was designed to do another job, which it does extraordinarily well.
VAdm. Brodeur: The concept of "small and many'' has come up many times. I had to defend the frigate program against it the last time it came up in 1982-83. What VAdm. Thomas has said is correct. We should remember that in World War II we started with the Corvette at 200 feet. From there we had to go to the extended Corvette and then to the 300-foot World War II frigate, and we were still not able to generate speed and fight effectively. There is a minimum size requirement, and we have done pretty well with the Canadian Patrol Frigate.
The Deputy Chairman: What is that size?
VAdm. Thomas: It is 400.
Senator Day: You talked about 300 feet.
VAdm. Brodeur: Three hundred feet was not good enough. We then went to 360 feet with the DDH 205 class. Now we are up to over 400 feet.
VAdm. Thomas: I spent 15 years of my life more intimately connected with the frigate program than members of my family were comfortable with, and I never got to go to sea in one. I resigned about 10 days before they were delivered. That is how long it takes.
Senator Day: Nine of the 12 were built in my home town. Adm. Summers and I were there for the christening of one of them.
Senator Stollery: I saw some of those Corvettes in 1942. I could not believe how small they were. They were really tiny boats.
Senator Banks: We have all been frustrated in the past by the dissimilarity between answers given by the people who actually have to do a task and the people in Ottawa.
You were, respectively, the vice and deputy chief of the defence staff. You talked about the law, VAdm. Thomas. As a complete amateur, I believe that the way to solve that problem is to separate, institutionally and physically, the headquarters of the Canadian Armed Forces from the Department of National Defence, and that senior military officers ought not to be deputy ministers in the bureaucracy.
Is that the solution to the problem?
VAdm. Brodeur: When I first came to headquarters as director of maritime requirements in 1979, the senior civilians in the department had all served in the military. They were staunch supporters and had a great understanding. At that time, I would have said not to separate them because these gentlemen not only know the tune but know the words. We who have served at sea or in the field do not necessarily know the words that win in Ottawa, but working together we can win the battles.
Time has gone on and there have been changes. I will defer to VAdm. Thomas because he followed me in that respect.
VAdm. Thomas: This is a common debate among military officers, and many of them disagree with me. I do not think that the problem is that they are serving in the same headquarters and are part of the same tree. I do not think it would make a bit of difference to the acceptability to government of a senior officer appearing before your committee being abjectly critical of the way the government was conducting its business, that he was in a purely military role and not part of the management of the Canadian Armed Forces at headquarters.
Moreover, in that Byzantine city where we are trying to push paper through government to get necessary approvals, a vast majority of the military officers could not find their breakfast without the aid of senior civil servants. The union would close. Yes, Minister is a popular program for a reason. It is real.
I do not see a startling advantage to splitting out the military headquarters from Department of National Defence headquarters. I do not think it is the combination that is the problem. The problem is that there is not enough money. Everything else flows from that. When there is not enough money, you start eating yourself; you start internal battles.
Senator Banks: We have asked senior military officers in public hearings on the record whether there was enough money, and they have said that they do not need any more, that if they had a lot more they could not spend it.
VAdm. Thomas: They are lying through their teeth and they ought to be out of their job. It is not true, and anyone who can add two and two knows it. If they do not know it is not true, they should not be in the job they are in. Their answers are probably somewhat more disguised than that, and they should not be. There are worse things in Canada than being fired when you are 54 and having to go play golf every day.
If the Crown decides that we do not need these people anymore because they are too honest and too smart, they will probably make a very nice living for themselves doing something else, and the loss will be the country's, not theirs. I have never seen the threat of firing as being real.
The problem is that you have to have some good people left to run the organization. You cannot fire all the good ones because they tell you the truth.
Senator Banks: You talk about a law, and none of us want senior military officers to break the law. Did I misunderstand that?
VAdm. Thomas: No. I was certainly told by the deputy minister: "You will not say anything that is critical of the policy of the government.'' When I did in the press centre for two and a half hours one day, the Judge Advocate General was waiting at my office to advise me of my pending court martial.
Senator Banks: We have run into situations such as the one you described in respect of getting answers. I must say that this has improved markedly in the last little while, in my view. If we cannot ask those people the questions that we need to ask in order to do our job and get straight answers, who can we ask?
VAdm. Thomas: I wrote you a paper about this, sir. In my opinion, you should, as a matter of course, call the last person in the job right after he retires, put him under oath and ask him all the same questions. He will not need the files. The oath removes the secrecy and any other shyness factor. The only threat is whether he will be popular as a consultant, and I do not think that matters.
VAdm. Brodeur: The purpose behind the material I provided you is to give you insight information that you can present to your witnesses and ask: "Is this accurate? Is it true?'' I hope that has been constructive.
The Deputy Chairman: On behalf of my colleagues and myself, I thank you very much for your presentations and for your contributions over the years.
When I was a member of Parliament, a minister of National Defence referred to an extraordinary seaman as a traitor, and the admiral had done absolutely nothing wrong. That created a wall that, throughout the years that I spent in the House of Commons, no one was going to go through.
Thank you both again.
I am pleased to welcome Rear-Admiral Robert Yanow, retired, who began his naval career serving in minesweepers and frigates. He commanded at various levels and has served overseas in Northern Ireland as well as on various British and Australian cruisers and destroyers operating out of Singapore. He is a graduate of the Canadian Forces Staff College and the National Defence College in Kingston. He was the Commander Maritime Forces, Pacific, and Commander Pacific Region from May of 1984 until retirement in 1987.
He retired from the Canadian Armed Forces after 36 years of service and since retirement has invested significant time in the development of the Canadian sea cadet movement.
Welcome. Please proceed with your opening observations.
Rear-Admiral (Ret'd) Robert Yanow, The Navy League of Canada, as an individual: Thank you very much for allowing me to speak on behalf of the Navy League of Canada. I was in uniform in 1945 and stayed in uniform until I retired in 1987. I did not get medals for serving during the war, though, as a sea cadet.
The sea cadet organization was absolutely outstanding. It gave me many things that I would not otherwise have had. It allowed me a career, taught me about citizenship and gave me trust and loyalty. It is an outstanding Canadian youth program that I hope you will support. If you find a few dollars available, I would hope you would give it to that organization.
The Navy League of Canada made its first appearance before you in 2003 in the person of Vice-Admiral Garnett, who stressed the need for a national maritime security policy and for increased interoperability between the various departments and agencies that share responsibility for maritime security.
Of course, defence and security issues have become more important since 9/11. I should like to thank this committee for its outstanding reports on maritime affairs and, in particular, your 2005 report entitled "Canadian Security Guide Book,'' which provided an excellent synopsis of the government's responses to the issues identified by your committee's work.
We are pleased to see that the government has taken notice of some of our recommendations and acted upon them, something that previous governments did not do. It is hoped that this interest will not wane, as it has on many other occasions.
In the maritime security context, we are heartened by the national security policy and the announcement of the establishment of the maritime security operations centres on each coast. The Navy League considers that effective maritime security means knowing exactly what is happening in all waters under Canadian jurisdiction, including the Arctic. To us, maritime security means total command and control of our maritime areas of responsibility. The establishment of maritime security operations centres is a critical first step in meeting this criterion.
However, such centres are only as good as the information they receive and the tools they have to respond to any situation. We share your concerns about our nation's intelligence and surveillance capability. The implementation of high-frequency surface-wave radar will help with the surveillance of our coasts. However, covering only the key areas of approach to our country is not sufficient because terrorists specialize in exploiting weakness. Total radar coverage of maritime space is required if it is to be an effective deterrent. Of course, that is a big order.
In terms of aerial surveillance, the use of uninhabited aerial vehicles is an area where progress appears to be lagging. We do note the progress made with projects such as the Atlantic littoral intelligence surveillance reconnaissance experiment, but we do not believe that the department has been given adequate resources or assigned sufficient priority to take advantage of UAV technology.
We endorse your recommendation regarding enhancement of our human intelligence capabilities. We are pleased to note that in 2004 the naval reserve graduated its first class of intelligence officers. In this, we see an excellent opportunity to expand the role of the naval reserves as it relates to maritime and port security. Given that the reserve units are close to major Canadian ports, it makes sense that the reserves act in this capacity and be integrated into the operations of the security framework of our ports and maritime security operations centres.
We urge the committee to explore the possibility of integrating this human intelligence resource with the implementation of surface radar, increased aerial surveillance, including more use of satellites, and the implementation of vessel transponders in order to satisfy the first requirement of knowing who is using our waters.
The second criterion is a need for absolute control of our water, and this requires ships. The Navy League and other defence organizations remain concerned about the rust-out of our government fleets and the dysfunctional procurement process that prevents successful life-cycle management and causes Canadian taxpayers to pay much more money for fewer capabilities. There is data to show that the lifespan of a warship is about 20 years. Past that point, it drives up maintenance costs and forces costly upgrades in ships' propulsion systems and sensors. That latter creates a false economy that ultimately inhibits our ability to provide suitable equipment to the men and women of our navy.
The government needs to adopt a long-term, perhaps 20-year, planning cycle for procurement of vessels for our government fleets. This approach will allow for the continual renewal of our fleet while avoiding sticker shock when taxpayers are asked to dole out billions to replace an aging capability. It will also help stabilize our shipbuilding industry and end the cycle of mass expansions and collapse that our shipyards have experienced over the past six decades.
Our air defence destroyers are now 30 years old, and only three of the four are operational. Our frigates are reaching the 10- to 15-year mark and will soon be undergoing extensive upgrades to keep them operational for another 10 to 15 years. A sensible, long-term procurement strategy is required as an immediate priority. Replacing the 12 frigates and four destroyers with 16 new ships of the same class will reduce the long-term costs of fleet management and significantly reduce personnel costs. Advances in ship design will enable us to put a more capable ship to sea with less than half the number of personnel. Bringing new ships on line as soon as possible will generate cost savings and help to alleviate the personnel shortages faced by the navy.
We also see a need for offshore patrol vessels or, as the Coast Guard calls them, mid-shore vessels, to fit between the lesser capable ships and the high-end frigates and destroyers. These vessels will alleviate some of the high demand on the navy for support to other government departments. These mid-shore vessels could be built in modular design and payload and these payloads could be tailored to fit the mission assigned — for example, fisheries patrol, search and rescue, cleanup of oil spills, Custom and Immigration enforcement, and other duties. Where it is necessary to add weapons, a naval team could be added to provide the necessary expertise and support.
When one looks at the requirements of our government fleets, it is easy to see how a long-term procurement plan is required. The task of procurement and life-cycle management seems daunting, and the price tag for replacement seems unbearable. However, this is only the case if we follow the practice of ad hoc procurement that has been a legacy of previous governments. The government will find it much easier to plan to spend X-million dollars a year over the long term than to sell a one-time Y-billion dollar purchase. The current process makes procurement too political, too random, and too costly. We only have to look at the helicopter program to note this effect.
Policy is the final area I should like to address. We are eager to see the outcome of the government's internal policy review and hope there will be significant opportunity for public input. We have stressed the need for a new defence policy rooted in a new foreign policy. In our 2003 submission, we noted this item since we thought its release would be imminent. Two years later, we are still waiting for this review.
We do acknowledge the delivery of the national security policy and view this as a positive first step to establishing the long-range strategic vision that will enable defence planners to establish the force structure and equipment needed to meet the defined obligations.
We are concerned about the notion that Canada only needs an army and that the navy and air force, if either is to exist, should only be there to transport the army. We need a balanced force structure where the three services can work together in a more efficient manner — that is, if we wish to meet all of our security concerns. It should be remembered that the navy has always been the first to respond to international crises and only the navy can secure our maritime domain. The same capability that the Canadian task force now has is the one that will be needed in our home waters to effectively counter homeland security threats alongside the United States forces on both the East and West Coasts.
Canadian maritime security continues to be a major concern to the United States and jeopardizes our open land border with our largest trading partner: We know how costly it is when a border crossing is closed or blocked, and we should be able to extrapolate that cost if one of our major ports is closed because of a terrorist attack.
We must be serious about maritime port security. Additionally, as you know, 85 per cent of our international trade with nations other than the U.S.A. is carried by ship. It is important that we keep the ocean free and our coasts secure if we are to continue to participate in the global economy.
Throughout our 110-year history, the volunteers of the Navy League of Canada has been pleased to serve our country through our work with the cadet program and support of the navy and merchant marine, especially during times of war, and by working with a collaborative and cooperative approach with the government to address the many maritime issues that affect the health of our nation.
We would like to thank you, honourable senators, for allowing us to bring these security items to your attention. We would also like to thank you for your very good work on behalf of the Canadian public.
The Deputy Chairman: Thank you for that.
Senator Day: Thank you very much for your comments. You touched on a lot of important points in a very succinct manner.
You touched on the issue of a long-term procurement policy. You indicated that that might avoid the sticker shock that you indicate seems to cause politicians anguish.
Can you expand on how it would avoid sticker stock?
Mr. Yanow: This has not happened in my time, but international policy and defence policy have to be integrated. It seems to me that, at the moment, they are working separately. Defence policy follows foreign policy. Once foreign policy is decided, we know what we want to use our military for. It follows logically that you could then have a plan for procurement, but you cannot have that until those two policies are coordinated intelligently.
Senator Day: Do you know of any countries in the world that are using new and innovative ways to finance new acquisitions? We have read that the Americans may have a few surplus San Antonio class ships, and there has been some discussion about leasing as opposed to buying. I know that some aircraft and ships come with a contract for maintenance.
Are you aware of any innovative ways to avoid sticker shock, to allow the navy to get the equipment and platform they need without having to pay all the money upfront and getting all the people required to maintain them?
Mr. Yanow: That is a difficult question. I am aware of the San Antonio program. I think they are building 12 ships, and can only man 11 at the moment, so one or two may be available if another country asked to lease one of them.
However, I am not sure that there are innovative ways of doing this. Our forces have not had sufficient money to maintain their capacity for so long now that we are at a very critical stage. We need an infusion of money to bring us back to an operational state.
At the moment, we just deal with crises; we just bandage things together. That is a very unfortunate way of doing things. That comes back to the fact that our foreign policy is not coordinated with our defence policy.
I do not think there is any way to do this innovatively and still maintain three services that can cooperate and coordinate effective operations.
Senator Day: We all recognize the lack of funding issue, but we are trying to develop a policy for the future that includes the navy's role, without being too constricted by past funding. We have to be somewhat realistic, but we would like to determine what we need without being driven solely by dollars.
I talk to the reserves unit in my home area of Saint John, New Brunswick, on a regular basis. They have a written memorandum of cooperation and understanding with the Coast Guard. They operate out of two different buildings in the same area. They use the same jetty and often go out together on assignments, not only on harbour patrol but also along the coast.
Do you see that as a possible means of providing coastal security in the future?
Mr. Yanow: It certainly is possible that you could intermingle the navy and the Coast Guard, but I am not sure it is advisable. The skills that are being taught to the military are not the skills that are being taught to the Coast Guard. The reserves have recently been a great pool for us. That was not as much the case the 1960s, 1970s and the early 1980s as it is now, because we are very short of personnel.
Senator Day: Is that due to a recruiting problem?
Mr. Yanow: It is due to recruiting and also to how we present ourselves. We are presenting ourselves to a different kind of person today.
When I first joined the navy, the education standard was grade six to eight. If someone had grade eight, he was pretty well educated. In those days, we hauled lines, anchors and cables. It was a seamanship kind of thing. The ships were not even analogue in those days.
It took the navy a long time to bring its men up to a standard where they could compete in technical trades and operate digital equipment. We went through terrible growing pains, as I am sure Senator Forrestall will remember. We raised the level of education of our people to a grade 11 standard in mathematics and physics so that they could man our sensors.
That was difficult and very costly for the navy, and a lot of kids went by the wayside. Today, it is a different story. Today, the kids have grade 11 and 12, and a university education in mathematics and physics in many cases. They do not have to line up at the recruiting centre to join the navy, army or air force; there are many other things these kids can do today, which was not available before.
We have to find a strategy to present ourselves in a manner that will make kids want to join the navy, army and air force.
Senator Day: Assuming that we can correct the recruiting requirement for the regular force, rather than thinking of the naval reserve as a feeder group for the regular force, do you see a role for the naval reserve that is different from the regular force navy? There are certain roles of the Coast Guard in support of other government departments, such as the Department of Immigration.
You spoke about mid-shore. If we had the right platform, do you see that as a role for the navy or a role for the naval reserve?
Mr. Yanow: The Coast Guard could operate offshore. As you know, the United States Coast Guard operates a blue water cutter and has the jurisdiction to stop ships, to board and to arrest. We have to put a whole lot of pieces together to do that. If the navy goes out to do that, they have to take an RCMP officer with them. If they are working with the Department of Immigration, they have to take an Immigration officer with them. The same is true for the Coast Guard.
In the United States, a lot of that is wrapped together so that they have a cohesive force to do those things. As such, the navy does what it is supposed to do, that is, deal with external threats. We have always defined that role as defence of Canada and of North America first, and then anywhere else. Those three things have always been in our defence policy, and I must say that I agree with that.
I do not think we have enough reserves to man the offshore vessels, do the Kingston class duties, that is, minesweeping, which is their prime duty, and also supplement the regular force. That would be asking too much.
That is a very good question from another point of view. We have not treated our reserves very well and never have. You may remember how VRs were treated during the Second World War, even though they filled most of the roles of the Canadian navy. However, that is another story.
I do not think our reserves are treated very well. We do not look after them properly. There is no long-term reserve period that they can serve. There is no pension for them. Employers are not required to reinstate them in their jobs after a leave for a month or two to do their duty for Canada. The Americans have done those things to a degree.
It is hard to maintain people in the reserves, because they do not want to serve for an organization that is not interested in them, and I do not blame them for that. If we improved their terms of service and their relationship with their companies, we would have a lot more reserves in this country. In addition, they would spread the word about the forces throughout our communities. It is better to hear about it from the kid next door than to hear a lecture from an admiral.
The reserve question is a very serious one. It needs to be considered seriously by people who really want them and want to look after them properly.
Senator Day: Thank you for those answers. Each one raises a number of issues for discussion.
Senator Meighen: Welcome, Rear-Admiral Yanow. I do not think you touched on the very much talked about notion of interoperability of our navy with the U.S. navy. The navy is the arm of our forces that has carried this further than any other.
How important is it, in your view, that we be able to operate in a seamless fashion with the U.S. navy? Also, if it is important, to what extent does that limit our ability to take care of our own national interests?
Mr. Yanow: I will answer that with a personal example. When I arrived here in 1984 as Commander Maritime Forces, Pacific, for the first two months I found that I had very little to do. All the action was on the East Coast. Throughout my whole career, I never asked to serve on the West Coast, because all the action was out of Halifax.
At that time, Mr. Beattie was the Minister of National Defence. I took my operations group to see the Commander in Chief, Pacific, in Hawaii, who was my boss under the Defence of North America. I told him that he had not given me enough duties or enough support in the area in which Canadians have jurisdiction under his command. I told him that I had listened to his intelligence briefing in which he mentioned every country in the Pacific except Canada.
He was quite a good friend, but he became angry with me and told me to go away and come back the next morning. In the meantime, he asked all the pertinent questions, and when I came back the next morning he told me he would support me in doing a Canadian defence of the Pacific study. He said that I was right in what I had said. He said that all his resources were open to me, that I could ask any questions I wanted and would be given all the support I needed. He said that when I had finished the study he would come with me across Canada, or wherever I wanted to go, to help me deliver it.
Throughout my naval career, we worked more with the United States navy than the British navy. Anytime we asked them for anything, they gave it, and they never kept a score card. They never asked me to sign a chit. They just gave it to us and were happy to do so. They were happy to have us operating with them.
When the Cuban crisis occurred, it was Admiral Dyer who sent the ships to their war patrols zones because the Prime Minister could not decide what to do.
Our involvement with the United States navy is intricate. What has happened with the missile defence question does not help us because people start to draw apart where we have operated hand in hand.
You have probably heard already that in the operations in the Gulf our commodore was the commander of the group. He actually did the duties that Americans normally would not let anyone else do. We rely on the U.S. and we work hand in hand with them, and to a degree they like it and they like to see us there.
Senator Meighen: Does it limit our ability to look after our own needs in any way?
Mr. Yanow: Not at all. If anything, if the navy is left alone to operate with the United States navy, it only enhances it.
Senator Meighen: You have been very involved in the naval cadets. I do not think we have discussed the cadet movement very much — army, navy or air force. Do you see it as a citizenship exercise, or as a recruiting tool, or as both?
Mr. Yanow: I do not see it as a recruiting tool at all. We try to train cadets in certain skills, be it communications, sailing, band or cooking, as well as citizenship. We try to lead them to the point where they can take charge, where they have the confidence to command a small group and to look after themselves, from a personal point of view, all those things in which you want to instruct youth to make them good Canadian citizens. That is our role.
Senator Meighen: Is it a costly exercise? Which budget does it come out of?
Mr. Yanow: It comes out of the DND military budget.
Senator Meighen: Does it cost a large sum of money?
Mr. Yanow: Not at all, although it did at one time. When I was a sea cadet in Saskatoon, our corps alone was 600 cadets, and we had army and air force also. At one time, we had a lot of cadets and it used to cost quite a lot, in part for uniforms. When I was a cadet, I went to the British Empire Sea Cadet Camp at the Lake of Two Mountains near Montreal. Some kids went to Cornwallis for extensive training. We saw the country and we met other people. It was marvellous experience.
Senator Meighen: Is it your view that submarines are an essential component of a modern navy? We did purchase diesel submarines. To what extent are they useful in operations in the North? They cannot stay under the ice nearly as long as a nuclear submarine, presumably, but can they stay under for long enough to perform a reasonably useful patrol?
Mr. Yanow: I do not think so. Diesel submarines are not made to go under the ice. If we change the technology in them, it would be possible with long-life batteries. I would not consider that advisable. That is a nuclear submarine role.
You already heard from Vice-Admiral Brodeur andVice-Admiral Thomas about the 1986 defence review wherein the thought was to buy 12 nuclear submarines. There was great discussion about that.
I must admit that, although I am a surface officer, I was a proponent of the 12 nuclear submarines because from an offensive point of view and from the point of view of looking after all of our waters — East, West and Arctic — they were the most versatile vehicle you could get. They could do nearly all the duties. Gunboat diplomacy went by the board a long time ago. I would rather have the submarines than the surface vessels.
Senator Banks: Thank you for being here. You talked about bringing shipyards back to life. We have heard arguments on what we thought might be the two sides of the story, but it turns out that there are about 11 sides.
Please respond to the following argument: Given financial resources, we should find ships, perhaps of modular construction — one hull that will do a number of different things — and buy them wherever we can, as long as they are well made, to get the best bang for the buck as long as we are certain that we can maintain them here and that we can install the technology that they need to do their jobs here, but that we should buy the steel whatever we can.
Mr. Yanow: Is the argument that we should do the hull modular parts offshore, or are you talking about systems and sensors from offshore?
Senator Banks: I think the idea is that the systems should be done here, or at least the maintenance should be able to be done here. The rationale for that, as I understand it, is that the shipbuilding business has been built up and let fall repeatedly, and that we should not do that again because those yards have not been able to sell their product elsewhere than to the military and cannot function properly and sustain themselves.
Mr. Yanow: That is true. The one shipyard that is still slightly viable is the one in Halifax. The one in Saint John was built up and we allowed it to crash. That company had three separate areas. They were building tugs, commercial vessels and then naval and larger vessels, and that was the area that was not economically viable. We have lost that; we have lost Sorel; and Davie is almost gone. What do we have left? On the West Coast we have the Washington Marine Group, part Canadian, part American.
We have really let our shipyards go down the drain, which is unfortunate, because it is a technology and industry that we need. I guess it is just not economically viable to maintain them because they do it cheaper in Korea and Japan, and now in China.
The question is how much money we have. Will it be a political decision or will it be a military-driven decision? If it is a political decision, I could not answer, because local economics enter into it and so on. From a military point of view, as long as we have the ships available and have the money to pay for them, I do not care where they come from.
Senator Banks: You also mentioned that the average useful life of a warship before it gets too expensive to keep is about 20 years. How old are the Tribal class destroyers now?
Mr. Yanow: I commissioned the Athabaskan in 1972. They are getting pretty old. We only have three of them left. We had to put the Huron up, primarily because we could not find replacement parts. We are using bits and pieces from the Huron to fix the other three. Another problem is personnel shortages.
Senator Stollery: You said that defence policy and foreign policy go together. People ask how you can have a defence policy if you do not have a foreign policy. I have started to wonder about that because foreign policy can change quite rapidly. Whoever would have said that in 2001 somebody would blow up the World Trade Center? We can make a list of things that can happen very rapidly.
Defence policy requires 10 or 15 years of forward thinking to procure what you need. I have started to question the theory that you have to have a foreign policy in order to have a defence policy. I do not see how you can have a defence policy based on having a foreign policy, because you would not be able to plan acquisitions. It seems to me to be a totally different animal. What do you think about that?
Mr. Yanow: I do not agree, senator. I understand your question, and I understand the lead that is required in defence procurement. However, both documents should be living documents. You should not write them one day and forget about them until the next election or for another 10 years. They are living documents and both should be growing together.
They could have been if we had started a long time ago putting the money into the right places to build the ship we need. If you build every year, you need 10 years, but if you build every year — to replace — it is easy to make changes to the vessels or aircraft that you are procuring.
Senator Stollery: I agree with that, but there has to be continuous future thinking with regard to frigates, destroyers and all the other equipment in the army and the air force because of the rapid changes in technology, for example. We have to have a coordinated defence and a coordinated armed forces. Foreign policy can go all over the place, but you still have to plan. In a perfect world, every year we would plan our acquisitions for the next five years, but I am sure that it is not only Canada that has trouble with that approach. Every country has a problem with budgets. The role of this committee is to try to determine what strength our Armed Forces should be at. I am not certain that we have to sit around and wait for a foreign policy, which could be different two years from now, in order to devise a proper policy for our Armed Forces.
Senator Kenny: Senator Stollery is asking about the conventional wisdom that defence policy should follow foreign policy. In fact, it appears that defence policy has been the limiting step for foreign policy for the last couple of decades and that, in fact, defence policy is driving our foreign policy.
Mr. Yanow: That might be, but I am not sure it really is driving our foreign policy because a lot of the foreign policy that commits the military is immediate reaction of the government, be it in Afghanistan, Haiti or elsewhere. I am not sure who is driving who in this regard.
Senator Kenny: In fact, it is the limiting step, because the absence of a capable defence force means that you do not have much of a foreign policy.
Mr. Yanow: That is right. They are tied together.
Senator Kenny: Working back from that, the idea of a shipbuilding plan has had some appeal to this committee for some time. We have considered the shape of the Coast Guard fleet and the shape of the naval fleet. Given your experience, do you really think that you will be able commit future governments to an ongoing program, that all of us here may agree may be rational, to lay a keel or lay a couple of keels a year? Does the political reality not dictate that you grab it when you can? If you have a government that is about to spend money, and they want to spend it on ships, do you not go with that and build the ships? Do you think it is possible to persuade a government to build just one or two a year?
Mr. Yanow: If you have lots of money, you can build two or three a year. I said that because we do not normally have sufficient money to build 12 ships every three or four years.
Senator Kenny: That is not my question, sir. I did not phrase it well.
I am asking you for your observation, as a serving naval officer, of how the politicians to whom you have had to report have been inclined to spend money. Have they been inclined to spend money in a steady, gradual way, or have they waiteduntil the pressure built up and then given you a bunch of money to spend and told you to go away and bother someone elsein 30 years?
Mr. Yanow: It has always been a tough battle to get money to build ships and buy helicopters. As you well know, there is a lot of politics before you get the helicopters or ships. The money always comes in a bunch, when we have been able to convince the government in power at the time of the absolute need. The hope is that that government stays in power until the majority of the ship is built so that it does not get cancelled, as the helicopter program did.
Senator Kenny: Since we know that governments will change on a regular basis, and since we know that we will have minority governments from time to time, are we not dreaming in colour to hope for a rational, consistent shipbuilding policy?
Mr. Yanow: It is like dreaming in colour vis-à-vis having a rational defence and foreign policy. The federal government is responsible for three very important things. The first is foreign affairs, the second is national defence, and the third is the economy. All the rest kind of belong to the provinces, with a degree of input from the federal government. Irrespective of what party forms the government, it should have a commitment to maintain those three things on an even keel.
Senator Kenny: I am not asking you what you think it should be, sir; I am asking you what you think will work, and you are not giving me an answer. You are giving me a lecture on how things might be in a perfect world.
You have had hard experience. You have had to go to politicians and ask for the things you need. In light of that experience, what conclusions can you share with the committee? Do you ask the government to say that it will build two ships a year for the next 10 years, or do you seize the opportunity when they are in the mood?
Mr. Yanow: I think you seize the opportunity when they are in the mood. That is when we get our programs.
Senator Kenny: How much of a political premium do you have to pay to build the ships in Canada to get them approved? The case has been put to this committee that the only way we will get new ships for the navy is if we are prepared to pay the 30 per cent premium to build them here. Do you agree with that?
Mr. Yanow: That is what has happened to date. I cannot answer on what is happening now.
Senator Kenny: Should we be looking the government in the eye and saying, "No more political premiums. If you want regional development, send them a cheque. Do not do regional development on the back of the military. Let us get it at the best price — and if that means building the hulls in Korea, let's go there?''
Do you think that if we do that, the government will just say, "We are sorry. We will delay building ships for another five years until you come back with a proposal to build them here?''
Mr. Yanow: I like the first scenario, Senator Kenny — that is, if we need vessels, we should just go out and we get them, regardless of where they are built. There is a political premium. It would take a long time before we could build a shipyard and produce a vessel.
Senator Kenny: Do you think you will get political support to spend that amount of money without paying the premium?
Mr. Yanow: I doubt it.
Senator Kenny: That is scary. If enough people tell us that we had better pay the premium, that that it is just the cost of doing business, we may have to back off what we think is an important principle of buying the equipment at the best price and ask the government to do regional development in another way.
Mr. Yanow: I do not think you should back off. You have been very proactive, as your reports have shown. You are the first group that has stood up and said the things about security and defence that should be said. I would hate to have you back down from what you think is right.
Senator Kenny: You have just told me that if I want to get a new fleet built, I had better back down and pay the premium. That was yourself evidence a moment ago.
Mr. Yanow: It is doubtful that we would get it, unless we had a very strong Senate committee that said otherwise.
Senator Kenny: I wish we were as strong as that, Admiral, but thank you very much.
The Deputy Chairman: On that note, and with serious reservations about whether we can afford to build up a shipyard to do this, I thank you, Vice-Admiral Yanow. As always, you do credit to the military, and particularly to the navy and the cadets. We need your support. Thank you for being here.
The committee adjourned.