Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 19 - Evidence, March 21, 2005
OTTAWA, Monday, March 21, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 2:35 p.m. to examine and report on the national security policy for Canada.
Senator J. Michael Forrestall (Deputy Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chairman: Welcome. I call the meeting to order and express the chair's apologies for being unavoidably busy elsewhere.
It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. This committee is reviewing Canadian defence policy during the next few months.
The committee will hold hearings in every province and engage with Canadians to determine their national interest; what they see as Canada's principal threats; and how they would like the government to respond to those threats.
The committee will attempt to generate debate on national security in Canada, and to forge a consensus on the need and type of military that Canadians want.
I will introduce the members of the committee that are with us: Senator Tommy Banks from Alberta, Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.
Next to Senator Banks is Senator Stollery, the distinguished Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, who is good enough to be with us. He is replacing our chair today.
On my right is Senator Meighen, who among other things is Chancellor of the University of Kings College in my home area of Halifax.
To my left, is Senator Jim Munson from Ontario, a distinguished communicator and to his left, Senator Norm Atkins, a long time communications expert in the field of advertising and other worthwhile endeavours. I welcome you all.
Our guests today are Dr. Ernie Regehr, a distinguished Canadian, an Officer of the Order of Canada, an adjunct Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Waterloo's Conrad Grebel University College. He is one of Canada's most prominent and respected voices on international disarmament and peace, and has been for many years. As Executive Director and co-founder of Project Ploughshares, he has advised the Canadian and foreign governments, the United Nations, the World Council of Churches, the Canadian Council for International Cooperation and the African Peace Forum.
We welcome you. I might add that the last time you attended a standing committee of the Senate was during the 1994 cross-Canada endeavour to speak to Canadians about what they wanted in the white paper that was produced that year. Here we are 11 years later.
Next to Mr. Regehr is Mr. Ryerson Christie, a researcher, and a Ph.D. candidate at York University's Centre for International and Security Studies. His research has focused on the securitization of identity and its role in peace building with a strong regional focus on Southeast Asia, looking at Cambodia in particular. In addition to this research, his work has addressed broader issue of Canadian security and defence policy with particular focus on naval issues and the role of human security in Canada's military.
He currently holds a Canadian Consortium on Human Security, Ph.D. fellowship and has been a past recipient of the Security and Defence Forum Ph.D. Scholarship. Welcome, gentlemen.
Mr. Ernie Regehr, Executive Director, Project Ploughshares: It is a pleasure to be invited here and to enter discussions with this distinguished panel on a topic of growing importance to us all. The notes that I have provided for advance distribution to the committee include some attention to the Canada-U.S. security relationship.
I make the basic point that in national and continental security neighbours should cooperate as much as possible according to their own interests and in response to independent threat assessments.
Canada has a particular responsibility to ensure that threats to the United States do not emerge from within our territory, and the United States has a reciprocal responsibility toward us.
In these introductory comments, I want to focus on Canada's security interests and obligations beyond North America — that is, our contribution to international peace and security.
Canadian security depends on a world order that is stable and prosperous, that functions on the basis of agreed rules that apply to all and in which Canadian sovereignty and rights are recognized and respected by others. It is in Canada's interests, therefore, to do what we can to build and maintain such an order.
Ultimately, the chief challenges to the kind of international order we need are derived from chronic insecurity experienced by people in their homes and communities.
The most immediate way in which people in much of the world experience insecurity is through unmet basic needs such as chronic and debilitating poverty, political exclusion and the denial of basic rights. Loss of confidence in the public institutions that are supposed to serve the interests of the people are a result of creeping social and political disintegration. That is state failure.
These conditions of chronic human insecurity are inevitably accompanied by escalating criminal and political violence, with national, regional and global implications. In addition, the retention and further spread of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction, including the danger of diversion of nuclear materials to non-state groups, pose an ongoing extraordinary threat to the safety of people, including Canadians.
How best do we respond to these insecurities?
The first priority is to respond to the most immediate and fundamental experiences of insecurity through efforts to combat poverty and promote human development. That is done by fostering good governance: political inclusion and participation, and respecting basic rights and rebuilding confidence in public institutions. You can call that democracy, I suppose.
Second, in extraordinary, though not infrequent circumstances, human insecurity translates into military challenges, especially when economic and political remedies are too long neglected. The ready availability of the instruments of violence, small arms in particular, must be addressed through arms collection and disarmament measures.
Canada also needs to be able to make a credible contribution to the international community's deployment of military forces to restore order, protect people and support compliance with agreed rules; the defence component. Nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction disarmament and non-proliferation measures must similarly be an element of our contribution to international peace and security.
Diplomacy is essential to promoting development, democracy, disarmament, and the peaceful settlement of disputes to ensure that the resort to force is in accordance with international law.
All of the above must be understood as security measures.
How do we set the priorities among these responses?
Where should we focus our resources?
In the present political environment, there is considerable pressure to enhance the defence component of our response to international peace and security threats. I want to remind you that while that is a requirement in Canada, it is also fundamentally important that we not neglect the other real security needs of development, good governance, disarmament and diplomacy. These are all actions to address the roots of the insecurity experienced by people, an insecurity that leads into threats to international order.
We also need to remember that when the defence component was allowed to decline in the 1990s, funding for these other security requirements suffered an even greater proportional decline. Canada obviously spends money in all of these areas, but what is the appropriate division of resources within the security envelope?
We have tried to get a sense of federal security spending, and I recommend that you would do a great service if you could put your minds to the following question: How much money do we spend proportionately on defence, development, and the promotion of good governance, all of which contribute to the pursuit of international security?
We made a go at it, and I have a longer paper here that I would be happy to give to the clerk, which shows the source of our figures. I welcome both corrections and the committee's attempt to do the same thing.
In 2003-04, I believe we spent about 1.3 per cent of GNP on what can be defined in those areas as contributions to international peace and security, about $16 million overall. Of that, about 20 per cent went to development, or 0.29 per cent of GNP; about 75 per cent to defence; and 5 per cent on those other areas. That leads to a defence-to-overseas development assistance ratio of about 3.8 to 1.
If we were to meet our stated commitment of contributing 0.7 per cent of GNP to ODA, with a modest increase in the other areas, leading to about 2.1 per cent of GNP as the total security envelope, then we would have about 30 per cent of the spending on development, and 65 per cent on defence and the rest on the others. We would then have a defence-to-ODA ratio of about 2:1, which is in line with the ratios in Netherlands and the Nordic countries.
Our reading of the projected spending that came out of the last defence budget is that it will move the ODA spending to about 18 per cent of the total, reaching only 0.33 per cent of GNP in the year 2010-11. The defence proportion will go up to about 78 per cent, according to Don Macnamara of Royal Military College, to about 1.6 per cent of GNP, and then a little bit less for the others, leading to a defence-to-ODA ratio of about 4:1.
Senator Munson: Could you describe ODA?
Mr. Regehr: ODA is the acronym for Official Development Assistance. It is essentially the CIDA budget and some other development elements that other departments also do.
It is obvious that defence will always require the major funds in any security envelope, because of the extraordinary personnel, equipment, training and all of those resources that go into it.
The point is not to even them out, but it does lead to the question of whether the proportions that we have or that we are moving towards are in fact the right ones. We must consider the extraordinary ways in which people experience insecurity, not as the result of threatening armies or weak national defence, but because of extraordinarily debilitating social, political and economic circumstances.
I put that question before us: Do we have the proportions right?
My bias is probably not that much of a secret. When we plan for a five-year development and still only reach 0.33 per cent of GNP on overseas development assistance when our formal objective is 0.7 per cent, I think either we do not believe that contributes to security or we are being negligent in some way.
I will conclude with just a few comments on the military elements of a constructive Canadian contribution to international peace and security.
First, the specialization debate is more or less over. The Canadian forces are small, and they will not be able to perform the full range of military tasks, and there will be specialization.
We will always function in tandem with others internationally, and we must plan for the kind of contribution that we will make and for the kind that we will not be able to make.
Second, military forces become engaged in nation building or human protection operations as much as they become engaged in major combat operations, and the experiences of both the Americans and Canadians in Iraq certainly reflects that statement.
Third, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which issued the report Responsibility to Protect, made towards the end an important recommendation. They said that the international community needs to develop new models of military operations internationally that are between the traditional peacekeeping in consensual environments and traditional, full-combat, war-fighting operations.
We need to develop military models for operations between those two extremes. We need to look at the kind of particular training, equipment, rules of engagement, and so forth that apply to those kinds of operations that we face in places like Afghanistan or would if we were to enter into Darfur and those kinds of places.
As my last point, the failure of the international community to act militarily in support of people in extraordinary peril, in places like Darfur, parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and so on, is not in the end due to a lack of global military capacity.
The key impediment to effective peace support and protection operations is, rather, the lack of international consensus on when such operations are required, who decides and who carries them out.
Somalia, for example, is in urgent need right now for direct intervention by peace support forces. The international community outside of Africa is not responding to that need. The regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development, IGAD, which is regional body in the Horn of Africa, is offering to put troops into Somalia, but is facing a great deal of internal resistance because of the feeling that immediate neighbours have particular interests that they will pursue, so there is wariness there.
The development of consistency in the international community's response to the extraordinary situations in which external security forces are needed is an urgent requirement.
The document entitled Responsibility to Protect is increasingly acknowledged rhetorically and theoretically, including in Secretary General Kofi Annan's statement today, but the practical implementation is in its infancy. To move from theory to consistent lawful action is the challenge.
Canada can bring diplomacy to that challenge, as well as a commitment to contribute to full-spectrum peace support operations in troubled societies of extraordinary human insecurity. Canada can be involved in not only military stabilization forces, but also in the resolution of enduring conflict, the restoration of trusted governance, and the implementation of disarmament. Canada can help to combat poverty by generating economic opportunity in these troubled societies.
Mr. Ryerson Christie, Researcher, Centre for International and Security Studies, York University: Thank you for the invitation to speak today. I will start by saying that my research has been funded in large part by the Department of National Defence through their security and defence forum scholarships and currently through the Canadian Consortium for Human Security Doctoral Fellowships, which is funded by Foreign Affairs Canada.
As I understand from discussions with the committee's staff, I am here to present the alternatives to the traditional approach to security. I will explain how the implications for such a shift in thinking about security might affect the structure of the Canadian Forces.
I have no doubt that you have heard how Canada must carefully consider its interests in setting a defence policy and that we need to be aware of the threats to our country as well as our vulnerabilities. This framework dominates our thinking about security and has informed our security and defence policies. The difficulty, I would like to suggest, is that this type of thinking misrepresents what we need to secure and what we should be striving to protect. Traditionally, the focus has been on the security of the state, and in terms of international relations, in stabilizing the international state system.
I believe, and I am echoing David Dewitt, that Canada's defence and foreign policies should share a common overarching approach to security. Security is not something that is objective; it is a political and ethical position that declares who we wish to protect and determines how to protect them. We cannot treat security issues as if they are some scientific given, rather what are and are not legitimate security concerns are political decisions, and as such must be debated.
Rather than putting states at the centre of our thinking about security, an alternative position would be to put people at the centre of our security framework. Following from this, our policies as a country should be guided by the premise that Canada has a responsibility to promote and achieve human security both at home and abroad.
This has a number of profound implications for our national policies with respect to security in general, and more specifically for our foreign policy, our foreign assistance as well as our defence policy.
I will limit my comments here to what the broad policy implications are of altering the frame of reference of security. I have written elsewhere about how adopting a human security framework might translate into more tangible effects for the Canadian Forces. If you wish, I will speak to these points during the question period.
Removing the state as the focus of security means that we should consider moving the maintenance of Canadian sovereignty down our list of priorities for the Canadian Forces. If our priority is human security both for Canadians and for people in other parts of the world, then maintaining sovereignty is a means to achieve this end, not an end in itself. As such, it should be subordinate to other security concerns.
I would add here that the Canadian Forces is not, contrary to the popular argumentation, the lead ministry in the defence of Canada's sovereignty, or in the preservation of the security of Canadians. This does not mean abandoning the ability to defend Canada but rather that this is not the primary source of Canada's security.
Rather than putting the defence of Canada or the maintenance of international security in the fore, we need to put the promotion of human security at the top of our policy mandate.
This is not a position that I advocate based on an evaluation of Canada's self-interest; it flows from ethical commitments. We live in an interconnected world where we are engaged around the globe, and our economic strength, our standard of living, in a large part, has come at the expense of other regions of the world. When you look at the demographics of Canada, you see that we are about as true a multicultural community you can find. Canadians come from around the globe and have a legitimate right to expect that the government will take an interest in their native societies. We need to see to the security needs of peoples overseas, and have a responsibility to do so.
Working to promote human security abroad does not mean military action. In most instances, the source of insecurity is poverty, environmental degradation, health concerns and other political issues. We have a broad range of possible ways to address these issues and Foreign Affairs Canada and CIDA should be at the fore of most of our security considerations in these respects.
However, there are instances when the most pressing security concerns come from armed conflict. Here I would back up what the Canadian position on human security has been historically, which has asserted that during periods of armed conflict or the risk of it, the long-term security needs of peoples cannot be met. Under these circumstances, we must be prepared to act and have a military capable of doing so. Our first option should be multi-lateralism for purposes of legitimacy, preferably through the United Nations and other forms such as NATO, if required. However, I would disagree with Mr. Regehr. We should be prepared and capable of acting alone in a limited capacity if necessary, which does not mean we need a military fully capable of a full range of combat activities.
Finally, I would like to consider how the nature of military action changes under a human security framework. Modern militaries are structured around the idea of doing combat with opposing state militaries. Military structures, doctrine and tactics are aimed at killing opposing soldiers as efficiently and effectively as possible. The culture within the institution values armed conflict and sees it as the main role of the organization.
Our military culture is reflected in the distinctive cross that was awarded to soldiers who served in Afghanistan. The cross is put in front of medals awarded for service in peacekeeping and peace building operations in places like Bosnia. This reflects military culture with respect to how they perceive the respective worth of different operations.
Rather than a military that places war fighting as its core mandate, the human security framework would put the protection of people at the centre. This would represent a profound change for the culture of the military, for its structure, and its doctrine.
Let me end by saying that contrary to some arguments that human security represents a Utopian position, human security is entirely realistic and reflects the current policies of the Canadian government. At the same time, putting such a security policy in place would not mean that we abandon working with the United States in protecting North America, or from continuing to combat terrorism. It would not mean losing the ability to fight, but the purpose for killing and the goal of it shifts dramatically. Such a position would not erode our national interest but would recognize that our lifestyle in Canada is connected to the broader world and cannot be disassociated from it.
Senator Banks: Mr. Christie, you mentioned that we should have the capability of acting alone. Canada has never acted alone. Canada has never undertaken any kind of military action on its own, so that would be odd.
Each of you has mentioned the necessity of Canadian involvement in countries where citizens are being mistreated and so on. You have given us examples and we know they are terrible places to be right now.
You have also both said that we should try to work through the United Nations, when that is possible.
How can you rationalize the concept of the right to protect and Part 1, article 1, of the United Nations?
How can you rationalize involvement in Darfur, or Congo, when the United Nations makes clear that we cannot go in unless we are invited to do so?
I do not recall any such invitation, although, there might have been an invitation to enter Korea, in a manner of speaking.
Mr. Christie: I disagree with your first statement. I argue that our sending DART abroad to operate independently within Sri Lanka is an example of how we can operate independently to meet a human security mandate. It is not a combat mission.
Senator Banks: I am referring to belligerents.
Mr. Christie: In terms of rationalizing R2P, there has been a gradual change in the understanding of sovereignty. The notion of sovereignty was put in place, under the Peace of Westphalia, as a means to bring about stability and security. The idea was that through the recognition of sovereignty, we would be able to see the elimination of armed conflict. If we see sovereignty as the means by which to secure societies, then we do not only look at it as a right but also as a responsibility. If a state is incapable of meeting the obligation of protecting its citizens, then they have also lost that right of sovereignty. There are a number of such instances for us to see.
If we look at the role of Canada, a privileged state in the international community, along with other states with similar status, then I would argue that we have a responsibility to intervene to protect the peoples who cannot be protected or are not being protected by their own state. In many instances the source of insecurity for these people is the state itself. We can look at Sudan, Rwanda, historical examples like Cambodia, to see where this has been the case. Ethically, I would argue, we have that responsibility to take action if necessary.
Senator Banks: The standing government of Sudan might take exception to that view.
Mr. Christie: Absolutely, and without parsing the issue, we could look at Cambodia, which is the example that is used throughout the literature on sovereignty. We must ask the question: Should we not have intervened if we knew what was going on during the Pol Pot regime?
The government was trying to control the state; it was imposing taxes et cetera. Should we have stood back and let them go ahead with what they were doing?
I would argue no. They are not fulfilling their obligation to protect their citizens.
Senator Banks: Will the United Nations General Assembly ever agree to abrogate or dismiss Part 1, article 1, of the Charter?
Mr. Christie: I do not believe it is a question of abrogating it as much as a question of the reinterpretation of the article. I believe they have done that. Kofi Annan used the term "revolutionize" to describe the new thinking to reflect the document Responsibility to Protect. This represents and recognizes the historic trend we have witnessed over the last decade.
Mr. Regehr: It is fundamental principles that interventions in the affairs of another state need to be collective. It is not the prerogative of any one state to decide when intervention in Darfur or elsewhere is necessary. That needs to be a collective decision, and the UN is the vehicle.
When Tanzania invaded Uganda at the time of Idi Amin, there was no possibility of getting the Security Council to declare that dictatorship a threat to international peace and security and to authorize invasion. The OAU would not go anywhere near it, but when Tanzania did it everyone cheered and welcomed the invasion.
We have to allow for the possibility of these extraordinary circumstances in which you act and later you plead the defence of necessity.
Senator Atkins: What about Rwanda?
Mr. Regehr: In Rwanda, there was no action; we did not plead the defence of necessity. In a sense, the response to Rwanda was to try to prevent what had happened in Somalia.
The UN Security Council has the means to authorize lawful intervention to overturn sovereignty of individual states. I think that shift needs to take place, and it is a diplomatic enterprise. The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty has gone a long way toward fomenting debate on that issue: What is the nature of the responsibility of the international community and when is it appropriate to exercise that responsibility.
We need to make collective decisions, and to our great shame, we see Darfur and Rwanda before that. If the major European powers made a decision to mount a force into Darfur, it would be a repeat of the Tanzania-Uganda experience. You would get an after-the-fact resolution to the invasion, while at the same time, providing stability to the citizens of Darfur.
However, the blatant and extraordinary circumstances in Darfur and Rwanda, and Uganda, are the exception.
Senator Banks: Those are precisely the arguments that were used by the British when they undertook to colonize east central Africa. They said they had to do so because the way things were going there was not good enough, and the world applauded.
There is a very thin line between your intervention, and colonialism and imperialism. Russia and Germany agreed that it was in the best interests of everyone that Poland should be invaded.
Mr. Regehr: We now have institutional checks and balances in place. Britain did not consult with what would have been the OAU at that time. You need to have the engagement of states in the region. That is why it is not the prerogative of any one state. It needs to be a collective enterprise, and it takes diplomacy, discussion and international debate to develop the criteria.
Senator Meighen: Would NATO be a legitimate collection of states, like the OAU?
Mr. Regehr: NATO does not have the prerogative to make decisions about intervening in Africa, unless it decides to, and then, in the extraordinary circumstance, they may get the Security Council or the international community to say they did the right thing. The United States took the initiative in Iraq and I do not think they are getting that kind of post-intervention confirmation.
Senator Stollery: It seems to me that these interventions have, generally speaking, been unsuccessful. Consider Somalia. The United States was run out of town. There is a list. Everyone says, "We should go in there and save these people," and we all agree, but when it comes down to actually doing it, it seems that the experiences are not so rosy.
Mr. Regehr: That is true, but that was not the perspective of a villager in Darfur or a villager in the interior of Somalia when the Americans arrived. The American intervention saved tens of thousands of lives, but it turned sour after that.
You certainly get no quarrel from me that similar operations do not often succeed.
Senator Stollery: If you asked a citizen of Baghdad, they might have a different view of the situation. I know Somaliland pretty well, and I cannot believe that they managed to see off the world's greatest military power.
Senator Banks: This seems an odd question to ask a co-founder of Ploughshares, but would you subscribe to the idea that in pursuit of peace, stability and human security we need to have capable and robust armed forces?
Mr. Regehr: I think it is a fact that in most of the chronic and ongoing conflicts that we see. In Sudan or Republic of Congo, there are neither short-term military nor short-term diplomatic solutions, but only long-term and very difficult solutions to their problems. We need to have in mind the perspective of the victims of those conflicts while doing our slow, painstaking diplomatic work.
I live in Waterloo, and when there is violence on my street I can dial 911 and get a response from someone at the other end of the line. In Darfur, there is no 911 to dial. There is a sense that the international community has a responsibility. We as an international community have a responsibility to the most vulnerable people to try to bring to them the extraordinary military resources that are available.
We have a responsibility to understand and develop ways that we can bring those resources to the protection of the most vulnerable people.
That is the challenge. The international community does not have a solution to that challenge yet, but in its search for a solution R2P is helping to advance that discussion, and is part of the search for a response.
Senator Banks: Mr. Christie, you talked about the practicality of North American defences. What do you think about ballistic missile defence of North America?
Mr. Christie: I am not prepared to answer that question.
Senator Banks: You have been looking at these questions for a while.
Mr. Christie: Yes, that is true. I would argue that our security is not harmed by opting out of ballistic missile defence. If it is a question of co-operating with the Americans to keep them happy — and I would argue that the national security policy puts a premium on ensuring that the Americans are satisfied that we are doing our share — I think there are many other ways to do that. I am a strong believer in the importance of international regimes and norms, and I do not believe that eliminating the anti-ballistic missile treaty is an effective way to move forward on international regimes.
Senator Banks: Mr. Regehr, you talked about a different kind of armed force that would be specialized. We have heard many arguments on each side of this debate.
What kind of specialized armed force should we have?
Mr. Regehr: That is a difficult question. We need to have armed forces that are capable of participating in collective engagements in situations where populations are in extraordinary peril, such as Darfur, for example.
It will take military planners to define the details, but you need to be able to get to those places and you need to be able to move around within those places.
In many cases, protecting the people of Darfur from the Janjaweed is just being there. It would take a relatively small presence in the community to ensure that the Janjaweed does not come into that community.
You need to have infrastructure capabilities. It is a good thing that Canada did in providing $20 million to the African Union to provide helicopter transport facilities to the OAU forces.
You do not need to engage tanks, fighter aircraft, and missile air defence to go into Darfur.
Senator Banks: Would you not need that if the other guys had tanks and fighter craft?
Mr. Regehr: In most of those situations they do not.
The Deputy Chairman: I thought seven young Irish women accomplished a hell of a lot in the last 48 hours that we do not seem to be able to accomplish over the years.
Senator Meighen: It is a dilemma to be in favour of supporting international law and rushing in without invitation to Darfur. It troubles me as to how we recognize the difference.
Within which context and which organization should we as Canadians devote our efforts?
Maybe we have to do it across the board to bring that sort of world and organizational direction to pass.
If you concentrate on the United Nations, you will grow old concentrating and not achieve much change. If you concentrate on NATO, which is a representative organization, you might achieve something more quickly.
I am interested in your assessment of the United Nations and whether or not we are moving in the right direction or are we wandering around in circles or going backwards?
Mr. Regehr: I do not think we have an option but to build this up within the United Nations. That is the instrument that we have. Maybe the point at which there is some consensus developed on the need for military force then you can go to NATO for the resources. NATO is not the decision making body.
What we need is a set of automated escalatory steps. When the commission of human rights identifies serious levels of human rights violations, the highly politicized Human Rights Commission should not make the decisions.
There ought to be a sense that when human rights violations pass a certain threshold, there should be a monitoring investigation. After infant deaths pass a certain threshold, or the number of internally displaced goes past a particular number, it should trigger a response from the international community. There should be a set of escalating diplomatic and investigative responses, which respond to an escalating crisis. This method builds a larger consensus in the international community. It moves the international community to believe that it has a responsibility for the situation.
I believe that this method would move us toward earlier international recognition of potential problems and will decrease the need for extraordinary intervention.
I think it is at that level that the UN can develop some of those graduated, but inevitable responses to changing conditions.
Senator Meighen: I have no quarrel with that. I think it will take a while, particularly when you have all the people sitting down trying to decide what those various steps are and how to define them.
In the meantime, I go back to Darfur where we all seem to agree on one side. Suppose there were 40 countries in the United Nations who thought the situation in Darfur warranted intervention but we could not get it past.
Should Canada go in or should we wait until the majority agrees.
Mr. Christie: This is a serious problem and it is one for which I do not have an easy.
Senator Meighen: I do not know anybody who does.
Mr. Christie: I wish I did. I would be set academically. In terms of where to focus attention in terms to multilateral institutions, there is only one organization with true broad representation, that is the United Nations, and we cannot abandon or lose focus in that institution.
It has been going through growing pains and will continue to do so. Kofi Annan announced a plan to rejuvenate the organization and it is going to be a messy process, but it does not mean we should be looking elsewhere. That is an organization where we have hung our hat for a long time and it is where we should continue, I think, to place the majority of our focus.
At the same time, we have to continue to work through regional organizations, which have the ability to move more quickly. We need to try to get local solutions to local problems.
In terms of the decision about how or when we will intervene, I think we need to have some markers. We need to have an international consensus on what would trigger an international intervention. The Responsibility to Protect documents are a good starting point in terms of having legitimacy of the intervention and having a political plan for rebuilding the state over the long term.
We have to be aware that 90 per cent of our conflict prevention has to take place before it begins. If we lose sight of that and run around trying to put out fires after they have begun, it is a poor way to look after security.
It is unfortunate that when the military has to get involved, these are the ugliest and most complex emergencies and it is very difficult to extricate ourselves from it.
It is difficult at times to judge what effect we are having on the big picture. The international community condemned Vietnam when it moved in to eliminate Pol Pot. My academic experience with Cambodians is that they all think that despite the problems that followed, that intervention benefited the state in the end. We cannot lose sight of that.
The purpose of intervention is not Canadian interests per se. The purpose of intervention is to help the people on the ground.
Senator Meighen: You could argue that is also a Canadian interest to have fewer oppressed or starving people.
Mr. Christie: It should be a Canadian interest. The difficulty with that language is that the language of interest is very much loaded in terms of realpolitik and a rational decision of what will be best for Canada, not what is best for the people we are trying to help. That is why I shy away from the language of interest.
Senator Atkins: Who was it said that if there were no UN, we would have to invent one?
Is the UN such a big elephant now that it cannot move; is it caught in neutral?
There are so many places in the world where there is the need for intervention, but you get the sense that it is not getting the kind of response that it should be getting.
Mr. Christie: I think we lose sight very quickly, of just how far the UN has come since 1990. The number of interventions, the number of activities that the United Nations has initiated since the end of the Cold War is quite dramatic, considering the previous 30-year history.
Is it a white elephant? No.
Senator Atkins: I am not saying a white elephant, but a big elephant.
Mr. Christie: It is a large, complex bureaucracy. It has problems that other large organizations have. All you have to do is take a tour of the UN building in New York and you quickly recognize there are a lot of complexities and politics just in the day-to-day running of the place.
Senator Atkins: Can the UN fix its problems?
Mr. Christie: First, I think that misrepresents the case and says that it is completely broken. It needs to be tweaked rather than fixed; and can it be tweaked? Absolutely.
Part of the difficulty is that we have a few large states, which represent some of the largest funders, who do not want to work through it at the moment. That situation hamstrings the organization, which is not a reflection on the United Nations so much as a reflection on some of the participants within the organization.
Mr. Regehr: That last point is something we have to keep in mind. We have a particular administration in Washington that has a particular attitude toward the UN. John Bolton will focus that attitude even more in the UN, but that is a temporal presence that will pass.
Ten years ago, we had a very different view of the United Nations. There was a great deal of optimism in the early 1990s about what the Security Council could do together in cooperation.
You now also have China, and particularly in Africa, with a particular set of interests related to its need for energy and its relations with the government of Sudan; it is obstructionist in that particular instance as well. The United States would probably be cooperative on that one if it were not for China.
While at that level, all of these things play out and they will change over time, at the lower level we have to do the diplomatic work and the studies on R2P to develop criteria in anticipation of the day when the political climate will be more open to responding.
Senator Atkins: Does the Secretary-General have enough clout within the structure of the UN?
Mr. Regehr: I do not know enough about the internals of the system. I think if you run afoul of Washington, you have less clout than you might want.
Senator Meighen: Is the defence-to-ODA ratio defence versus the basket of expenditures on promotion of democracy, disarmament and diplomacy?
Mr. Regehr: No, it is specifically defence toward development assistance.
Senator Meighen: What does ODA mean?
Mr. Regehr: ODA is the acronym for Official Development Assistance.
Senator Meighen: Can you tell about the development.
Mr. Regehr: Development involves CIDA, and addressing poverty and those kinds of things.
Senator Meighen: It could take many forms.
Mr. Regehr: Yes; but I take that as a kind of broad indication of where you think insecurity lies and what you need to do in order to address it.
Senator Meighen: You point out that we are at a ratio of about 4:1, whereas the Nordic countries and Netherlands are 2:1. This committee has often come out in favour of substantially increased military expenditure, and has pointed out that the Dutch and many Nordic countries spend more money than we do on their military. They spend the money either absolutely or in terms of ratio to GDP.
If you boosted both, they would not be in contradiction; one could, mathematically reach your ratio of 2:1. However, it would take quite a bit of additional money, would it not?
Mr. Regehr: Yes.
Senator Meighen: At the end of your presentation, I thought you made a plea for a military force that while combat capable, fell somewhere between the military as we understand it today and — how shall I put it without sounding disparaging — a constabulary.
In generalized terms, is that what you advocate?
Is it solely because of the Sunni triangle in Iraq that the Americans are subject to continuing and escalating attacks, suicide bombing and what not?
With some very notable exemptions, the British in the south of Iraq do not have anywhere near the same level of trouble in that regard.
Could you argue that the British troops have a different degree of understanding of internationalism, a different degree of training in terms of dealing with civilian populations — perhaps drawing on experience quite close to the United Kingdom itself — or is it just the fact of where the two nations happen to have assigned their responsibilities within Iraq?
Mr. Regehr: I suspect it is a lot of the latter and part of the former.
The point that I was making about some military capability between those extremes is the point that the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty made toward the end of their report. They said that the intervention needs to be very careful, that you do not simply come in with overwhelming force that destroys infrastructure and undermines the capacity of a country to recover. You obviously cannot go in there with blue helmets and binoculars. They made the point that it is something in between those two things. That is a challenge that we will need to take seriously.
I know there is a tendency to say, "The best soldier is the best peacekeeper," but I question all of the implications of that statement. It implies that there is no special kind of training that you need for peacekeeping or middle-level kinds of intervention. I suspect that there is particular training and preparation for that kind of role, which understands that you have a different mission than in traditional war fighting.
Senator Munson: I am curious. Is this government getting it right or wrong in its foreign policy and defence policy?
Mr. Regehr: If they were ever to release a document, we would have a way of knowing. My sense is that our defence policy is pointing in the right direction. The emphasis is on building up the new brigade strength and forces on the ground. The Prime Minister has been very multilateralist in conversation, but we need to see it articulated in more concrete terms.
Senator Munson: How long can we afford to talk?
You presented your documents here today. We talk about what you are saying today. You are saying the government is dilly-dallying on coming up with any particular policy.
Is that what you are saying?
Mr. Regehr: It was promised a long time ago.
Senator Munson: Mr. Christie, what are your comments on this issue?
Mr. Christie: I echo Mr. Regehr on this subject. We probably do need to wait to see the documents. I have had conversations with people within the Department of National Defence and within Foreign Affairs, and there has been speculation about what will be happening, and rumours are running rampant. Until we see the documents, it is difficult to make a comment.
What seems to be the direction now, through public statements, is promising.
Senator Munson: In what sense?
Mr. Christie: In the sense of putting together a restructured Canadian Forces with the capabilities in terms of manpower, resources and equipment, to be able to engage in the types of activities that we have been doing over the last several years, and being able to sustain those on the ground. I think that is promising.
I am not sure I would agree with all the procurement decisions, but that is neither here nor there. We will never have agreement on all that. The comment about pursuing the logistic vessel is important. The decision to sent DART abroad was also a very important political sign that we want to stay engaged in these parts of the world.
We must remember that it is not just an act to save or ameliorate suffering abroad, but it is a political gesture to say we want to be involved and are interested in what is going on. Even a very modest investment like DART sends all the right signs and is important.
Senator Munson: Is what you just said enough to restore our friendship with the present administration in the United States?
Mr. Regehr: If that is a reference to ballistic missile defence, it is not my view that the friendship was greatly damaged by that decision. In fact, Canada provided the United States with the main element of what it wanted. They never offered, nor are we ever going to get, Canadian participation in the actual operation of ballistic missile defence interceptors.
Throughout this whole debate, there has never been strong pressure from the United States for us to sign on. Obviously, they like symbolic statements of support, but the integrated tactical warning and attack assessment through NORAD was there, and that was an act of co-operation on the part of Canada with the United States.
We were able to say that we would co-operate with them but that it was not a priority for us. There is a big tempest in the journalistic teapot over it, but I do not think elsewhere.
Senator Munson: Speaking of the U.S., when you have a superpower reorganizing the world as President Bush sees it, where does your philosophy fit? Is it not a voice in the wilderness?
To me, there is a new philosophy in the United States of America, which may be around for some time. I do not think it will be temporary, as you suggest. I am curious from your perspective of looking at your philosophy where it fits with this completely new reorganization, whether it is the World Trade Organization or the United Nations. There is a big sheriff in town.
Mr. Regehr: I have spent a lot of time in the wilderness, so it is familiar territory. Leaders need followers. Superpowers can throw their weight around, and certainly they can, and this may be more wishful thinking than analysis, but I think it is a passing phenomenon. I do not think that you can give moral and political leadership when much of the world rejects it.
If pristine democracies emerge in Iraq and Afghanistan and the dominos fall and the whole region goes, I will be at the front of the line to tip my hat to them, but I do not think that is an imminent thing. They will have to change.
The U.S. position on the nuclear non-proliferation in Iran has changed in recognition that we have to come in line with the Europeans. We will not be able to make headway until we do come in line with the Europeans.
John Bolton used to be the delegate leader to the non-proliferation treaty, and if we use his tactics, we will drive Iran into further marginalization and to a more aggressive pursuit of the nuclear option. There is recognition now that we have to become closer to the Europeans. I think there is already some change there.
Senator Munson: Bringing it back to the original discussion with Senator Banks, it is your own question when it comes to the peace process: Who decides and who carries it out at the end of the day?
Mr. Regehr: The Secretary-General has ideas about changing the Security Council. One assumes that the rules of the Security Council will have to change. Whether the strict claim on the veto remains by the five, one does not know.
Canada needs to promote a sense of collective responsibility and collective decision-making within the international community to help the international community come to agreement of what the criteria are for these extraordinary moments when we have to intervene and overturn the sovereignty of a state.
We do not have the capacity to enforce that consensus but the time will come when the politics change and the political environment will be more open to that consensus.
Mr. Christie: It is sometimes easy for us to forget that there is a long history of moral leadership in the United States. Woodrow Wilson, with his 14 points, believed that they had a moral right, a moral obligation, to operate in the world. The difference there was it was a commitment to multilateralism which is lacking today, or which I would argue is lacking. We are beginning to see that the United States is recognizing that in fact they need that multilateralism. Their actions are not perceived as being legitimate by the international community if they act alone or if they act with a very small coalition and that they need, wherever possible, to operate through the United Nations.
I think the pendulum will swing back, even with the current administration.
To what extent should our concern about American perceptions affect our foreign policy?
My read on this is that it serves the American interest to have countries that are willing and able to operate with a degree of perceived legitimacy in many of these smaller messy places like Rwanda and Sudan.
There is still a perception that countries like Canada and the Scandinavian countries do not have the same power interests in those regions. The perception is that we are able to operate with less concern for our presence because we are not as powerful as the U.S.
There is a perception by other regional countries that when we do get involved we do it out of a sense of legitimate concern for the states that we are trying to help. I think that serves the interests of the United States as well.
Senator Stollery: In the paper by Professor Regehr, I agree with points five and six, because they go together. Darfur, from what we read it is a terrible story and we would like it not to be and we would like to fix it but the fact remains, that the day-to-day existence in so many of these countries of basic insecurity brought about by poverty and all of that, kills an enormous number of people every year. Poverty and basic insecurity, brought about by all of the things that poverty brings about in countries, is really a much bigger challenge.
We do not even seem to be able to deal with that, never mind what seems at first blush, if you put a bunch of soldiers in there that will solve it, but that actually often has not been the case.
I have had questions about this business of doing away with the Westphalian system. When we went down that road into the Balkans life got pretty dangerous.
It seems to me that what everyone is talking about is almost a form of neo-colonialism. I am not saying it is an awful thing. You said, for example, in Darfur, and in the days of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan if there would have been district officers and district commissioners around watching all of this, that maybe it would not be happening. Is that what you are saying?
Was that one of the things that you said: If there were people there on the ground that would make it more difficult for the bad things to happen?
Is that what you are saying?
Mr. Regehr: If there were external people on the ground — the point I was making there was that it is a place of anarchy and I do not think that there is a major presence to deter these raiding groups from entering into villages. Huge combat forces are not required. In a sense the villagers need an accompaniment program, and monitors and that sort of thing.
Senator Atkins: Just to reinforce your point, if you saw 60 Minutes last night, the way they have been able to buy weapons in the United States over the counter and ship them over to these places. They are not buying tanks; they are just buying small automatic weapons.
Mr. Christie in your brief you said:
We live in an interconnected world where we are engaged around the globe, and our economic strength, our standard of living, in a large part, has come at the expense of other regions of the world.
What do you mean by that statement?
Mr. Christie: We have an international economy. We rely on our engagement, our trading around the globe. Many of our profitable countries which provide tax revenues to Canada are operating in many of these countries we are talking about today. We can use Talisman oil; I would not want to speak to it in any great detail, but there is evidence that Talisman Energy Inc. oil has not had a beneficial impact on the people of Sudan.
Global trade regimes have not benefited all of the people they claim to have benefited. In Southeast Asia, which is my academic specialization, there is a growing middle class that is doing exceptionally well, while there is also a growing disparity between the people that are doing well and the people who are not doing well. The lowest class are worse off today than they were 10 to 20 years ago. These are trade regimes that benefit Canada. To argue that countries cannot subsidize their agriculture when we do has a dramatic impact on the societies to which we refer.
We should not be pushing for liberalized trade, but we have to recognize at the time we are pushing for this that we have an obligation to help make up for those differentials. We have to stay involved and we have a responsibility because we do not live in isolation.
Senator Atkins: We sure are not alone.
One of the things we found out in our travels across the West in our town hall meetings is the concern about the Northwest Passage, where the Americans may be coming from eventually.
Are we doing enough and what should we be doing to address the concerns that are obviously beginning to emerge?
Mr. Christie: We need to move on this now before it becomes a more pressing concern. Environmental change seems to be indicating that the Northwest Passage will open up and become more economically viable. There are all sorts of implications for environmental security, in terms of who has access to the North.
I would argue in this case against militarizing that security. I think the Coast Guard is in a far better position to operate up there. First of all, we do not have the capacity, unless I am mistaken, we do not have any military vessels capable of operating up there in the ice. It is an excellent opportunity to push for a demilitarized solution, because not all Canadian security issues are military solutions.
Senator Atkins: Our presence is important.
Mr. Christie: Yes, but presence is, but presence by whom?
Does that mean putting a Canadian destroyer up north or putting a Coast Guard vessel up north?
I think that sends a very different message but at the same time indicates sovereignty.
We have to take it seriously and we have to move on it. However, I am not sure the Canadian Forces are well suited to that area.
Mr. Regehr: I agree. Canada has a responsibility for the Northwest Passage regardless of the sovereignty question because it is within our economic zone and the 200-mile limit. We have economic and environmental responsibility for that area, as we have in our other waters.
Senator Atkins: If I did my arithmetic correctly, your recommendation almost coincides with ours. We recommended a $4-billion increase in the budget, and you said that an appropriate budget for the Canadian Forces would be from $16 billion to $18 billion.
Mr. Regehr: That is in the context of spending on the other security elements. The primary point is that the way in which insecurity is experienced will be alleviated by development spending, promotion of democracy, promotion of respect for human rights and all of that. My concern is that in the 1990s our spending on that area of activity declined more rapidly than our spending on military.
Senator Atkins: Can we catch up?
Mr. Regehr: We need to catch up. I would not favour significant increases in military spending at the expense of replenishing those security items. I think that the competition for resources will get more intense, not less. Rebuilding our cities, health and all of those things will demand resources from Canadians, so there will not be an endless pot available for security. How we proportion the spending within that broadened security envelope is the key political question. I am a bit afraid that the public climate is so strong in support of increased military spending that we will go that route and neglect the softer areas of security that have a more immediate impact on the security of the lives of people in villages and communities.
Senator Stollery: I agree that the other issues will save more lives than military expenditures, even though I also think that we may have let this whole thing go too far.
Do you think that the threat of military intervention is far more effective than military intervention itself?
Mr. Regehr: I am thinking about the Janjaweed in Darfur, and I am not sure if it applies there. I am sure the threat of military intervention has a sobering effect on Tehran.
Senator Stollery: So many of the interventions have been failures.
Mr. Regehr: It is a good point. I am less certain whether it applies in extraordinary situations like Darfur and Rwanda.
I will make a brief comment about the link between poverty and small arms. The most lethal combination is extreme poverty and a population that feels genuinely aggrieved, and the easy availability of small arms and Kalashnikovs within that aggrieved population. That is the formula for converting political dissent into violence and armed conflict.
We need to work at poverty reduction and eradication, but we also need to work urgently at controlling the now uncontrolled diffusion of small arms into areas of political grievance.
The Deputy Chairman: Thank you very much, gentlemen. The committee is most appreciative of your taking the time to come before us. It is refreshing for us to have had this secondary course in procedure, which is it is, in essence.
Senators, our next witness is Professor Andrew Cohen, a well-known author and journalist who writes a weekly column for the Ottawa Citizen. Professor Cohen will offer his comments on a variety of Canadian and international affairs.
Mr. Cohen is also an associate professor at Carleton University's Norman Patterson School of International Affairs, School of Journalism and Communication. He is a former foreign editor and columnist for The Financial Post. He also served as a member of the editorial board of The Globe and Mail. He was the Washington correspond from 1997 until joining the School of Journalism and Communication in 2001. He is author of While Canada Slept: How We Lost Our Place in the World.
Mr. Andrew Cohen, Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Communications, Carleton University: I do not have a prepared statement, but would like to make a few comments.
It is a good time to talk about Canadian and foreign defence policy. There is an opportunity that was not here several years ago. We are in a time of economic prosperity. We have a budgetary surplus that we did not have 10 years ago when our aid, our diplomacy and our defence spending was cut disproportionately. Had we tried to have this conversation then, we would not have been able to because Canadians were focused on spending money on other sectors that did not include national defence, diplomacy and foreign aid.
There is a relatively new government in the last 15 months, led by a Prime Minister who I would suggest sees the world differently than his predecessor. He wants to be engaged, and return Canada to the world. I think he is set on doing that.
I think public opinion is ready for a change. The response to the tsunami showed that Canadians have a great desire to be engaged. I do not think Canadians get up in the morning thinking about Burundi or Darfur, but when asked they are ready to respond.
These three factors combine to make it propitious to talk about foreign policy and about our national defence. Our government is ready to act, and we will see a foreign policy review or statement within three weeks.
It is a good time for a policy review. I hope it will have something to say and I am hoping the government will seize the day and take guidance in the future from your committee and others who are consulting Canadians now.
As you know, Foreign Affairs Canada, National Defence Canada, and CIDA have consulted on this international policy statement, but the people of Canada have not been part of the consultation process.
I hope you will bring the public in, because the public is important to this process. I will leave it at that and I am happy to respond to questions.
Senator Atkins: Thank you and welcome. It is good to see you.
What is your reaction to the budget?
Mr. Cohen: My response is that it is a good start. I am pleased that there is more money for national defence. I am disheartened that the spending is heavily concentrated in the last two or three years because if the government changed or lost faith the commitment to national defence might fall by the wayside. I wish there were more money earlier for national defence.
The aid budget, despite good intentions, and much of this is the rhetoric of good intentions, will still only bring us to 0.35 per cent of GNP, which is only half the figure set by Prime Minister Pearson and his colleagues in 1969. We are only halfway there.
I did not see a lot of money for diplomacy, and I am concerned about that fact. I think about the manner in which we treat our diplomats, how we pay them; they are still the lowest paid professionals in the government. Without a commitment to them and the finest foreign service, which we once had, we will not have the kind of foreign service that we need in the service of our higher ideals. The budget was a good start but it is not enough.
Senator Atkins: When you talk about the foreign service, you refer to a high-risk occupation, an occupation that assigns people to different jurisdictions around the world.
In your opinion, what are the principles and the factors that define Canada's place in the world?
Mr. Cohen: I think we are a product of our history, our geography, our prosperity and our diversity. Our history is a proud one. It always saddens me to teach young Canadians who are unaware of our military history, except for peacekeeping. I teach exchange students from Holland who know more about our role in the liberation of Holland in 1945 than our Canadian students do.
We have a history of engagement at least since the Second World War. Militarily, it goes far earlier than that. However, in the First World War, the Second World War, Korea and a number of other places, we have a history as a warrior and as a peacekeeper. We were involved in every peacekeeping mission from the early 1950s to the late 1980s. Canada was once a country that contributed 10 per cent of the world's peacekeepers; it was the leading peacekeeper in the world, but it is no longer so.
In 1959, John Kennedy referred to our foreign affairs department as perhaps the finest in the world. Canada built much of the architecture of the post-war era. Canada was instrumental in the establishment of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the general agreement on tariffs and trade, and NATO. Lester Pearson and Hume Wrong were signatories and both were asked to be the first Secretary-General. Thereafter, we were there with other organizations. We saw that as part of what we did in the world.
Lastly, in aid, in terms of our history, we were there at Colombo in 1950, which was the world's first aid program. Lester Pearson and others were there. That became our calling.
In the 1950s and 1960s, during the "Golden Age of Canadian diplomacy," we were doing interesting things. Our sense of national mission may have been unspoken but it was there.
We had, as Charles De Gaulle said of France, an idea of Canada. My lament is we have gotten away from that idea of Canada in the last generation.
When we talk about where we want to be in the world, we have to begin with that sense of history. Then we move to geography, living in North America but nonetheless conducting a global foreign policy.
"Our values" is a phrase that is overused today, displacing "interest"; nonetheless, our values of freedom, the free market, pluralism and diversity are all values we hold dear.
Of course, our interests guide our foreign and defence policy. We live in North America and we have to be concerned with the defence of our continent. We have, in our way, projected international power modestly through peacekeeping. That is something we want to do. It is part of our iconography as Canadians.
In history, geography, diversity and prosperity, we are a wealthy country and we should act like it. What a wealthy country means is if you are the eighth, ninth or 10th biggest economy, it comes with responsibilities. My sense is we have abdicated those responsibilities.
Our aid is too little. You are experts on what we have done to our military. We live a country in which a book entitled Who Killed the Canadian Military can be a national bestseller in this country, and also be largely a case that is not refuted.
These are all responsibilities that come with a past — interest values, demography, diversity — and these define who we are in the world.
Senator Atkins: You are suggesting we are not doing enough.
Mr. Cohen: We are not doing enough. In the three areas, the three Ds, defence, diplomacy, development, we are at 0.28 of GNP. We were committed to an amount three times that in 1975-76; we were at .53 per cent under Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
This is a country which opened the external aid office in 1960 and established CIDA in 1969. For a while, we saw ourselves as a leader and innovator in foreign aid. We do not do that any more. The government has moved generally in that direction. We do not have the kinds of accountability or transparency we need, and we are in too many countries.
I understand, incidentally, the minister for International Cooperation will be giving a speech tomorrow in which she will be addressing a number of the criticisms of her agency. One is she will reduce the number of countries. We are in too many places with too little money and too many sectors, without clear objectives. In aid, we are doing too little
Diplomacy, I would suggest, is unfocussed and has been for some time. That proud Department of Foreign Affairs has enormous problems of recruitment and retention and low pay. We are now dealing with the division of the department, which has left virtually everyone I talked to stupefied in this town. They cannot understand why a department that was merged with some difficulty in 1981 is being divided once again into trade. No one can understand it and no one has taken responsibility for it.
That department needs help inside, and then it needs a focus. As a nation, we have to decide the balance in our foreign policy. Should there be a balance or should we understand that we live in North America and maintain an American policy? Should we look at the rest of the world through multilateral organizations, which we have done as a counterweight to the United States? My sense is there ought to be a balance.
Defence is the hardest nut to crack. We are not doing enough for all the reasons you have heard and we have discussed. Our military is unable now to act in the service of our diplomacy. We would like to do good things. We would like to be in Darfur. We would like to be part of more peacekeeping missions, although peacekeeping is peace-building now and we are doing good work in Afghanistan. The soft rhetoric of good intentions belies the absence of capabilities despite the good work we have tried to do in places.
In all three areas, my sense is we are not doing enough for a country of our wealth and stature. We can rest on our laurels. The satirist Tom Lehrer said years ago, "What good are laurels if you cannot rest on them?"
We can do that and we would still be doing more than 190 other countries in the United Nations. We have to ask ourselves as a mature, self aware, blessed people if we are doing enough in all those areas. Is that enough for a country with our interests, which generates 45 per cent of its wealth in trade? Is it enough for a country of our diversity?
That is the question I hope government in its policy statement will ask Canadians — and will have some answers. I hope the answer will be that we are not doing enough. It is signalling that, and we will find the resources to do those things we think appropriate with all that we are.
Senator Atkins: If we are not doing enough, it means we need more money.
Do we get it through taxation or by reprioritizing government spending?
How would you suggest that we approach this issue?
Mr. Cohen: I would hope we would have a national debate. If we had this conversation 10 years ago, you could have justifiably and understandably said to me, "you have a laundry list and yet we do not have the money." In those days, we were running the deficits we were running. I would have said that you were probably right. Even then, however, I would have hoped to have a conversation about what is important to us. We were a less wealthy nation in 1955 and 1965, when we had to commit a certain percentage of our national wealth to military spending, particularly in the 1950s. We found the money to do it.
In 1945, when we expanded our foreign service, there were a number of requests coming after the war to put money to social programs. We felt it was necessary as a nation to build a bigger foreign service and we did. We recruited the best people we could find and it was a marvellous foreign service.
We were able to find the resources to do what we wanted to do. I am not saying we have to raise taxes. I think we have to set priorities. We have to ask Canadians, as a mature country would, "Do you want to do these things and do you want to pay for them? Is there something you want to do less of?"
Although it may seem heretical to ask, are we spending too much on other fields? Are we spending too much on health care, for example? Are we spending too much on transportation or education? Those are tough areas. However, are there areas in which we can find savings to do the kinds of things that are necessary? I am not convinced we have to raise taxes. It depends on the kinds of projects we would like to do. I am not by any means saying we should do everything. We are not the United States or Britain, which project power, but we are a country in the G8 with responsibilities.
Many Canadians are quite content, which worries me, with what we do today. I think they think it is enough. I think they think the iconography of peacekeeping is enough. We never make war because that is unimportant. A mature nation cannot think that way. We have responsibilities both on this continent and beyond, and if we want to be the player we were and the player we can be we have to commit resources. Does it mean raising taxes? I hope it would not. Maybe it would in certain areas if we feel, and if we have a consensus, that we have to. I am not sure, with a surplus of $11 billion or $12 billion that that should be the way we have to go.
We just launched a new child care program. That was a choice I do not think we debated in this country. It was promised. Do we need child care more than a reconstituted military? I would say probably we need a more reconstituted military, but we did not have a debate about that question.
Senator Atkins: What fundamental changes are required in the Canadian Forces of the future?
Mr. Cohen: My sense is probably to agree, and I say agree because I am not a military analyst, with a lighter and more mobile force that does the things that we clearly decide it should do.
If we want to be part of a rapid reaction force, if we want to wage a three-block war, if we want to be in peace building, we will probably need to reconfigure things; that is what the experts keep telling us. We may not need submarines, we may not need fighter aircraft, and we may not need some of the equipment we now have.
I would hope, though, that how we spend our money would follow a very clear definition of what we want to do. We will have to be capable of waging war in some capacity, but more likely, given public opinion, we will probably be involved in more interventionist, peace building capacities. I would think that we would want to equip ourselves in that way, but I would hope first we would decide what we want to do and then acquire the equipment we need.
That process seems to be going on now under new leadership in the military, under General Hillier, but I am not so sure we have had the conversation. Although I think we have seen some of what will emerge, I will await with interest the defence review and the defence policy statement.
Senator Atkins: What are Canada's vital national interests?
Mr. Cohen: I think it is in our interest to defend, as much as we can, our borders, to contribute to international peace building missions, to fight terrorism, to secure our ports and our airports, that kind of thing.
Senator Atkins: What about the North?
Mr. Cohen: If you believe the predictions that the North will be ice-free by 2050, maybe earlier, we will need to have some capacity there to defend our sovereignty, which we have not had to do there for some time, or ever, really.
Those are all things that, again, we will have to spend money on. I would not say we would need the all-singing, all-dancing forces. We may not have to do everything. We will probably not have public support for everything. There is a very steep hill to climb here.
I think it will be very hard to convince Canadians, and this generation particularly, which is that much farther removed from some of the things we use to do, that we should make the kind of expenditures that we may need to make in our Armed Forces to do the kinds of things we would like to do. It may mean cutting our cloth accordingly and not doing and being less ambitious.
Senator Atkins: When you ask Canadians what they feel are the most important issues facing Canadians today, you get health, education and the economy, and then down the scale, hardly still on the scale, you get the environment, national defence, and other issues.
How do you change the mindset of the public?
Mr. Cohen: It is interesting you should mention that. I thought I saw a poll taken before the last budget in which the issue of national defence was higher than that. It was about fourth or fifth. I think it got 27 per cent, but I could stand to be corrected on that.
Senator Atkins: I thought it was lower than that.
Mr. Cohen: I may be wrong. I do not know if anyone else saw it. How do you overcome that? I believe the answer is education.
Senator Atkins: Would you say the answer is leadership?
Mr. Cohen: We need a prime minister, a cabinet, parliamentarians and senators talking about what we did, talking about what we do, and talking about what we can do. In other words, we need to revisit questions that two generations ago were natural and were part of the conversation after the Second World War, in the Cold War, into the 1960s, when a Nobel laureate was our Prime Minister. Up until 1965, when our armed forces were about 120,000, and even later, that question did not have to be asked. It does have to be asked to my students who have grown up in these times.
We do not have what I would call a "military culture" in Canada. We have a military, and we have a history, but I am not so sure we have a military culture like other nations have. We have allowed people to grow up thinking that it is all free, that defence does not cost anything, and that because we have not had to put money into our Armed Forces, that we are fully protected.
Senator Atkins: Are we taking too much for granted?
Mr. Cohen: Absolutely. I do not want to sound dark or apocalyptic, but my fear is that there will only be a change in public opinion if there is a catastrophe here or if we have something like September 11. I am not saying Canadians will not agree to find some resources.
To develop rapidly the kind of Armed Forces we might have had a generation ago we will need to do quite a bit of selling to the public. I do not think it is top of mind.
I was at a forum at the University of Toronto last week with some politicians and others, and we talked before an audience of students. I was amazed at how comfortable they were with our stature today. It surprised me, because I am not so sure it is real. I am not so sure they understand that we have been under the American nuclear umbrella for a long time and that the United States has essentially given us a defence subsidy for all these years. I am not sure they understand that.
There will be a time when we will have to take more responsibility, without being apocalyptic about it. We will have to take more responsibility for the defence of our borders and this continent and against terrorism and anything else that might arise.
Senator Atkins: Would BMD be a leadership issue?
Mr. Cohen: Yes. If I was an American, I would have opposed it, but as a Canadian, I think probably for a number of reasons it was the right thing to do — that is, joining it would have been the right thing to do. I regretted the manner in which it was done. If you look at the Prime Minister's statement and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, you will not see them explain the reasons. All you have there is platitudes and rhetoric about other priorities, when in fact this was not an either/or agreement. We could still do what we were doing in the military and what we were doing in the budget the day before or the day after, but that whole decision was cast in a way that speaks to the inability of our leadership to level with Canadians.
My sense is that if you wanted to stay out of it and you believed it was the militarization of space or you believed it would cost us money or you believed it would cost us land or you felt it would contribute to an arms race, you should have said it. We could have said that to Canadians and made a case. I might have disagreed, and you might have disagreed, but it would have been contributing to a national discussion of an important issue.
Instead, the issue was framed far differently. It was not addressed. No one argued for it. When people cite polls they say most Canadians were against joining. Very few people argued in Canada, there was no government arguing, it had left the field a year earlier that we ought perhaps to even discuss the matter. In my sense, it was an opportunity lost and I think it has probably hurt our stature in Washington. I do not think there is linkage. Mr. Martin will go to the ranch and be welcomed there by the President. Having lived in Washington and watched Congress and the Executive Branch for several years, I would think that our stature has fallen again. We will not be considered a reliable ally and will not be taken seriously.
Senator Atkins: Did you get the feeling that there is an incredible ignorance about Canada?
Mr. Cohen: Yes, but that is not news. I do not think it is a radical thing to say that knowledge of Canada is not a strong suit of the United States.
Senator Atkins: How do you explain the fact that we have this long border and the states that are right on our border, would you not think there would be more impact on the Americans in terms of media exposure?
Mr. Cohen: Maybe in the border states. If you live in New England, in Vermont or New York State or Montana, Washington state, perhaps so, but power has shifted in the United States, the seminal event in the United States is the shift of political power from the Northeast.
You will remember there was a time in the Republican party where people, like Red Tories, there were a wing of the Republican party in northeastern United States and through New York and other places, which was progressive and liberal-minded. That is gone now, and it is almost all democrats there. There are red and blue states.
The shift in political power means George Bush knows Mexico far better than he knows Canada. His father knew more about Canada. Bill Clinton was from the South as almost all leaders are in the United States, but had a little bit of a sense of Canada. Largely it is harder and harder to get attention in a Congress that is headed no longer by northeastern Liberals who might have shared our view of the world, but by southern conservatives whose orientation may well be in Mexico and not us.
It is harder and harder to get attention, and I do not think we have ever been top of mind in the United States among the average American. There have been times when we have done things that have certainly got their attention. I do not think BMD was an issue among ordinary Americans. It was a question in Washington, but I do not think we helped ourselves with it.
Senator Atkins: We are coming up for renewal in NORAD. Do you think that Canada should make every attempt to come to a resolution?
Mr. Cohen: Yes. It is next year, I believe, and it is important that we be there and do all we can to make our presence felt in NORAD.
Senator Stollery: I must say that you paint a picture of the 1940s and 1950s that I do not recall. I recall a very Eurocentric world in which we were an important country, but when I lived in Africa in the 1950s there was no Canadian representation anywhere. I was issued a British passport because there were no Canadian consular offices.
It seems to me in a very Eurocentric world, a very small world, really, we were an important country, but in the larger world of today, we are invisible. I must say, because unless I am the only one here at my age of nearly 70, I remember that very well. I travelled extensively in those countries and I had to have a British passport.
My question is really about this policy review. In the 1980s there was a joint committee that went across Canada asking Canadians what they thought about foreign policy, I believe under the Mulroney government. We did that for quite a while, and I am not clear on the result. It seems to me that predicting foreign events is a very dicey and difficult business.
I am not a regular member of the defence committee, but I am the Chairman of the Standing Senate committee on Foreign Affairs. I always have difficulty; let me give you an example. What would you say to the question: Would you have predicted five years ago the events of the last five years?
Mr. Cohen: No.
Senator Stollery: How does a government position itself to deal with the kinds of almost cataclysmic, certainly, if you lived around the World Trade Center, events of the last five years?
Mr. Cohen: You give yourself as much capacity in the arms of your internationalism as you can. In other words, you attempt to give yourself the tools militarily to do some of the things you think you will have to do. Of course, you do not know, but you give yourself some capacity to do some things, aid policy the same thing, diplomacy the same thing. In other words, you cannot predict the future. You do not know who your enemies are. You have to come to the table with something that reflects a commitment.
Senator Stollery: To what?
Mr. Cohen: If you believe in, say, the multilateral world.
Senator Stollery: Which we do.
Mr. Cohen: You continue to push our report The Responsibility to Protect, the grounds for humanitarian intervention. You are in international organizations that matter. You are innovative. You continue to recruit the best people, experts in their fields. Your aid policy is focused and clear and well funded. Your military, while you cannot predict the conflicts you will be in, you can at least give yourself capacity in certain areas. Maybe if you choose a rapid reaction force, you go and do that. My sense is we are not doing any that of clearly now. You are right; we cannot predict what will happen in the future.
Senator Stollery: For example, the military, and this committee is working very hard at advising the government on what kind of military we should have. It seems obvious to me that a major part of our military will be working with our American friends in the Pacific and on the Atlantic and protecting the coasts and this sort of thing.
To do this, certain kinds of ships and survey aircraft and all of these things have to be bought and manned and trained, et cetera. I suspect there is quite a bit of lead time in order to do the things that are the basic nuts and bolts of patrolling our borders because obviously we will always have to work closely with our American neighbours. It will go up and down, we will have little fights, I suppose. Generally speaking, we will be doing that. That cannot wait, that cannot sit around waiting for us to try to predict the future. That future we can predict, can we not? We can predict that the United States will be there, and we will be working with them. However, we cannot predict the events such as foreign affairs, multilateralism, and development.
I agree with you that we have some questions to ask about the degree of development aid, which we all know has been on a downward spiral for some time.
We can predict our relationship with the United States, generally speaking, but we cannot predict the relationship between our neighbour and various other nations. The U.S. has many problems with nations that we may not have problems with, and it is hard for us to predict their future problems.
I am not clear what a country is supposed to do. Was it Prime Minister Pearson who said, "Ask me at the end of the year what our foreign policy will be?"
Is there not a lot of truth in that statement?
Mr. Cohen: All that you say is true. The trend of the last five years has been failing states and conflict within states rather than between them.
Senator Stollery: They have been going on for much longer than the last five years.
Mr. Cohen: That is true, but the Cold War has contributed to disintegration, lawlessness and terrorism within states, and we will continue to have humanitarian crises. We have to ask ourselves about our values, to use that contentious word.
Senator Stollery: I am never sure what that means.
Mr. Cohen: Wait for the government to find it. We have a "minister of values" now called the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He talks about values endlessly.
Would you not want to give your military the airlift it needs, however expensive that may be, if it reflects our national will or what we ought to be doing?
Do you not want to have the big planes and the sealift that can get you into places where you will be doing peace building?
Do you want to let our Canadian Forces continue the kind of work they are now doing in Afghanistan, the three-block war, which we do so well?
Do we want to be the good governance nation, the nation that does that kind of thing well?
My sense is that there will be more of that in the world, and if we were to equip ourselves to do that, we would make an international contribution. That does not mean that we will not be doing things with the United States concerning the defence of this continent and particularly the war on terrorism. I would think those are some of the things that you would see, if you had a crystal ball. This is a trend. I am not talking about peacekeeping any more; it is peace building. It is not what we did in your father's time or even what you may remember from the 1950s and 1960s. I think you can plan in that way. Of course, we cannot know where the next threat will come from, but if this is a trend and we do not have the capacity to do those things, we will not be there.
Senator Stollery: You talk about heavy lift airships; this is not only a Canadian problem.
Mr. Cohen: Almost everyone does, other than the United States and Russia.
Senator Stollery: That is because it is so expensive to build planes that are not used very often. You know those things as well as I know them.
You have touched on the argument between foreign trade and foreign affairs. I do not want to get into that because I have probably heard some of the same stories that you have heard.
Since the 1960s, our foreign trade has become a major business, and not just with the United States. As you know, 13 per cent of our exports to the U.S. goes through a pipeline and along a transmission wire and 26 per cent is the Auto Pact, so that is fairly stable.
I agree with you that we have had a very high-quality foreign service and I could not agree with you more that they are underpaid, but we now also have the whole foreign trade establishment.
It is no longer just foreign affairs or just diplomacy. We also have a huge interest in foreign trade, and we have some of the top foreign trade officials in the world. We are described in some quarters as "the hard men" when we go to these conferences on foreign trade.
Mr. Cohen: I had not heard that term.
Senator Stollery: I have heard it from other people, not from Canadians.
Mr. Cohen: That provides me with a new image of our people.
Senator Stollery: It is because of our successful grouping with the Cairns Group on the last round. Apparently, we were very difficult people to deal with.
How do you have a policy that will deal with all these unknowns, all these things that are difficult to predict?
Mr. Cohen: You develop the policy from your best assessment of the world unfolding, as hard as that may be.
Senator Stollery: So difficult that five years ago none of us would have predicted what happened.
Mr. Cohen: Five years ago, as you have just said, there were disintegrating states and there were calls for peace building. We were doing it in Bosnia, so that is not entirely new.
I think of matching our resources and our rhetoric and deciding as a nation what we would like to do in this world. I think about a good governance nation that will do some peace building, and write codes of conduct that will train police officers in places like Haiti, but will not necessarily mount expeditionary forces as a legion in the army of the United States or the army of the empire somewhere else. I think we would be unlikely to do that.
I think we begin with the defence of the continent with international operations under the UN or NATO, because international alliances will still be important to us. I think we will equip ourselves with armaments and means that we do not have now.
We talked about heavy lift and I am sure you will have experts here talking to you about that. We have to be flexible and we have to have a good intelligence service, which we do not now have overseas.
As you rightly point out, the past shows there is no easy answer and you have to be flexible, agile, and very careful about committing to things that may be expensive and may be redundant.
I do see trends here, and I see failing states as one area in which we can probably make a difference.
Although I was not there, I would disagree with you on your sense of Canada in the world in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Deputy Chairman: That is an excellent subject for Senator Stollery's committee. Perhaps the senator would extend an invitation.
Senator Atkins: Is the UN still an effective forum in your opinion?
Can it be fixed and should Canada maintain its major commitment to the UN and other organizations?
Mr. Cohen: As you know, we have historically always sought, in international organizations, a counterweight to American power. It has served us well, and I think that we have managed, as Henry Kissinger said, to live in North America but run a global foreign policy. We have done that largely through our commitment to international organizations, which goes back to the 1940s and 1950s when we were designing many of these organizations and writing the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, which a Canadian wrote in 1948.
I think the UN is effective in some areas, which it gets little credit for, but I think we have made a fetish of the United Nations in this country and we have said that if the United Nations is not there, we will not be there.
The United Nations showed in Rwanda how ineffective it could be. There were other cases where it has also shown that it can be effective in rebuilding places like Cambodia, or, as Stephen Lewis said, in providing saline solutions that can eliminate dysentery in various places for very inexpensive amounts. There are wonderful things that the UN can do, but it needs change.
he Secretary-General announced a number of measures in response to his high-level panel, which will expand the Security Council, or try to, because it could be vetoed. They are going to modify the Human Rights Commission, and make the UN more responsive, more effective, and more creative. We have always supported that measure. Allan Rock is spending a lot of his time on these questions, and we support him. I think we should continue to support Mr. Rock, and Madame Frechette who is another Canadian at the UN. She is the deputy to Kofi Annan.
Without a change in the Security Council, without a re-examination of those things that are important in its core principles, it will not be as effective as it might.
We can play a role as a member in good standing in bringing about these changes.
Senator Atkins: Did you cover the UN?
Mr. Cohen: Not directly, no.
Senator Atkins: Is the UN so big an elephant that many things that fall through the cracks?
Mr. Cohen: Absolutely, all you have to do is read General Dallaire's book and read how tragically ineffective it was when he called on the weekend and nobody was there to answer the phone.
The Deputy Chairman: We knew that. We had been on the Friday afternoon and the war was over until Monday at 8 a.m.
Mr. Cohen: I do think that at the same time we should be wary of the conservative notion in the United States that the UN is thoroughly and irredeemably ineffective. That notion is pushing the United States to greater unilateralism. It is a mistake for Canada to think that way.
One of our emerging roles may actually be something of a broker, because traditionally we have been a broker between the United Nations and the United States. We have done our best to keep the United States in and interested and a viable member through UN reform largely, I think.
Senator Atkins: On the other hand, maybe it does not get the credit it deserves either.
Mr. Cohen: In some way it does not. Cambodia is an example. It cost a lot of money.
Senator Atkins: The arms inspection in Iraq.
Mr. Cohen: There are good things it does and it is the only thing we have at the moment, in a sense.
Senator Atkins: As someone said, if you did not have the UN, you would have to invent it.
The Deputy Chairman: Thank you. I wish we had the extra hour to explore some of these issues. I had hoped that with such great communicators we might have explored a public relations program that could at least pursue and begin to achieve a resolution to some of the problems that we face.
We have to do something drastic. We need a Patrick O'Brien to find a hero, a good soul mate and get on with a little love and romanticism, and tell the Canadian people what is going on in this distant world of foreign relations and national defence and security.
This is an interesting subject area and it is vital to all of us to pursue it with understanding, but more important than understanding is knowledge. There is a very small percentage of the population that reads the newspaper.
However, we appreciate your coming very much indeed.
The committee adjourned.