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Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence

Issue 6 - Evidence - Meeting of May 7, 2012

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OTTAWA, Monday, May 7, 2012

The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 4 p.m. to examine and report on Canada's national security and defence policies, practices, circumstances and capabilities (topic: NATO Summit); and on the status of, and lessons learned during, Canadian Forces operations in Afghanistan.

Senator Pamela Wallin (Chair) in the chair.

[English]

The Chair: Ladies and gentlemen, I am going to bring this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence to order. We have a very busy agenda today. We will be looking at the upcoming NATO meetings and the Strategic Concept there. We will be talking about cybersecurity with three experts, and we will continue our look at lessons learned from Afghanistan and talk today to the people from CIDA to get their views on a whole-of-government approach on these missions.

We will begin, as I say, with the issue of NATO. In just 13 days, the NATO heads of government, including Prime Minister Harper, will gather for a key summit in Chicago. On the table is the future direction of NATO and its new Strategic Concept, including how to reaffirm the alliance's commitment to Afghanistan after 2014, how to deal with shrinking defence budgets among member nations and how to partner with non-NATO countries in future missions and endeavours. These are just a few of the issues, I might add. We will also hear, I hope, lessons learned both from the successes and the failures in Afghanistan and Libya.

With us from Washington today is Dr. Stephen Flanagan, who holds the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in diplomacy and national security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Flanagan's CV is long and very distinguished, and I hope you will read it on your own time or I would be here for an hour just reciting the accomplishments.

As it relates to our subject today, I will note that in the decade after the Cold War he held several senior U.S. government positions where he helped develop the U.S. post-Cold-War strategy including at the National Security Council in the state department. From 2009 to 2010, Dr. Flanagan was the lead adviser to former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when she chaired the group of experts helping develop the new NATO Strategic Concept.

Welcome to you, Dr. Flanagan. I understand you have some opening remarks.

Stephen Flanagan, Kissinger Chair in Diplomacy and National Security, Center for Strategic and International Studies, as an individual: Yes, Madam Chair. Thank you very much for that gracious introduction. Honourable senators, I appreciate this opportunity to discuss NATO's Chicago summit with you. I thought it might be useful to offer some brief opening remarks just to set the stage, and then I look forward to taking your questions.

I have submitted a longer statement for the record that elaborates on some of these but, if it is agreeable, I propose to offer a brief assessment of the strategic context of this summit and then offer some perspectives on the outcomes that I think we can expect in the three principal elements of the summit agenda, Afghanistan, military capabilities and partnerships, and consider some of their implications for the trans-Atlantic relationship.

The Chair: Please go ahead, yes.

Mr. Flanagan: Thank you. I think the vision and mission statement articulated in the Strategic Concept — Active Engagement, Modern Defence, as it was so called — adopted at the November 2010 Lisbon summit remain valid. The Chicago summit should illustrate the alliance is implementing that vision and delivering on other Lisbon commitments.

Given the dramatic changes in the international environment and fiscal circumstances in both Europe and North America over the intervening 18 months, I think allied leaders need to adjust NATO strategy to cope with these shifts.

I think also, in broad stroke, the Chicago summit also needs to reaffirm both sides of the trans-Atlantic relationship. European governments should show that they are taking serious steps to staunch the declines in their national defence spending. With European leaders also concerned that the United States is turning its attention to East Asia and the Pacific, President Obama should reaffirm that Europe will remain Washington's partner of choice for the foreseeable future.

If I can be so bold to say, I think a similar statement from Prime Minister Harper would give this commitment a stronger North American character.

Let me turn to what I think we could consider a successful outcome, albeit not necessarily a robust outcome but certainly some measure of success in the three key areas. First, of course, as the chair alluded to, is the whole question of Afghanistan, coming up with a credible commitment for assisting Afghanistan in maintaining its security through the transition to an Afghan lead in addressing its own security in 2014 and beyond.

Twenty-three nations have signed on to a coalition of committed contributors to fund the Afghan security forces after 2014. It is unclear whether all allied governments will hold to this 2014 transition date. As we know with the election of François Hollande to the French presidency, he said during the campaign that he would remove French forces, a little over 3,300, out of Afghanistan later this year.

So, too, the scope of the NATO training and assistance programs in Afghanistan after 2014 is uncertain. Most allies have not met their pledges to the NATO training mission in Afghanistan over the past four years, so their willingness to do so after the withdrawal of the larger ISAF presence, when the residual forces, those trainers who remain behind, will be even more dependent on the Afghan forces for their security seems to be dubious.

Second, we need a long-term strategy for enhancing allied defence planning and integration, along with some flagship initiatives and a detailed implementation plan to ensure that NATO has the critical military capabilities it needs for collective defence at addressing emerging security challenges.

Given the tight fiscal realities, allied agreed at Lisbon to achieve a more efficient use of defence resources through enhanced defence planning, multinational development of capabilities and broad reforms of NATO structures.

Last year, Secretary General Rasmussen began a campaign for what was called "smart defence" to get more value and effect from available resources through better prioritization, multinational cooperation and specialization.

In February, U.S. Secretary of Defence Panetta called on his fellow ministers to develop a long-term plan to achieve the forces that the alliance should have by the end of the decade — what he called NATO force for 2020.

I think a successful summit should endorse a package of these three main things: those concepts of smart defence and a vision for 2020, including a package of multinational projects that addresses the critical capability shortfalls; several longer term multinational projects to include missile defence, the alliance ground surveillance reconnaissance package and air policing, particularly for the Baltic states; and it should also address some strategic projects for the longer term, for 2020, to enhance joint intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and perhaps some areas of sustainment for air operations, air-to-air refueling and the like.

Given the political and fiscal constraints confronting European governments, I think such a package strikes me as about the best that could be achieved, and it would also encourage allies to work in a more integrated fashion to maintain NATO's current level of ambition.

Last, on the partnership agenda, I think this is perhaps the least-developed part of the Chicago agenda that we can see from the outside. I think the alliance is prepared to take some concrete steps to strengthen NATO's diverse network of partners around the globe. The Strategic Concept notes that in today's complex global security environment, partnerships with other nations, regional and international organizations and many non-governmental organizations have become essential for NATO's success.

In April 2011, allied foreign ministers approved some measures to allow NATO to work on, as they said, "more issues with more partners in more ways" — the so-called Berlin package of initiatives. Further development of NATO's partnerships with Russia has been hampered by a lack of progress on the missile defence dialogue, even as cooperation on Afghanistan has continued. So there will not be a NATO/Russia council meeting in Chicago, but Russia has been invited to participate in the meeting of the ISAF contributors.

One other concept under consideration is to find ways to work more effectively with the core partners, i.e., those partners that have made sustained contributions to allied operations, particularly in Afghanistan. I understand that there are plans to have a meeting with at least 13 of those countries that have been among those key contributors.

There is an opportunity to leverage the success of NATO's cooperation with Arab partners in dealing with the Libyan crisis and in continuing cooperation with Mediterranean states on maritime security. We can find ways to deepen these partnerships and perhaps coordinate trans-Atlantic support to security sector reforms in the Middle East and North Africa.

There are several carryover issues from Lisbon for which there remains insufficient political consensus among the allies to move forward in Chicago, including the deterrence and defence posture review and further enlargement of NATO's membership. I expect the summit to provide some clear guidance on both those issues.

Thank you, Madame Chair and members of the committee, for this opportunity to present a few opening framing remarks; and I look forward to your questions.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Flanagan. Can you characterize your state of mind for an alliance with so many members that can neither pay nor play. Are you optimistic about this gathering?

Mr. Flanagan: Although we are concerned about some of our European allies, others of them have done well in maintaining their defence capabilities, even in difficult fiscal circumstances. I remain optimistic, but we will not see any expansion of defence spending. However, we may see efforts to staunch the slide that has continued over the last decade. The European allies spend an enormous amount of money on defence but not wisely. A number of governments realize that. This will require some compromise on sovereignty. They will have to accept different ways of doing business. There have been some of these discussions in the last few months. I have had an opportunity to participate in some sessions with the NATO Allied Command Transformation on Smart Defence. I see signs that a number of allies are willing to think about and make strong commitments to doing business differently. Certainly, we will not see any expansion of or improvements in defence spending, but we can staunch the slide.

The Chair: You have raised interesting points.

Senator Lang: I welcome our guest here today. Mr. Flanagan, you have an impressive résumé.

I want to make an observation with respect to Lisbon; and now we are going to Chicago. We developed another change in direction called "Smart Defence" to utilize our resources so that we can do more with the same amount or less, perhaps in a better organized way.

The chair just mentioned that some countries involved have not necessarily paid when they should have paid or participated when they said they were going to participate. How do you foresee where members of this organization are brought to the table and it is ensured that they do what they say they will do?

Mr. Flanagan: This has been a perennial NATO problem. The approach in the past sometimes has been naming and shaming — using political suasion to encourage allies to step up and meet their obligations. There is no perfect way in an organization that remains consensus-based.

There is a strong recognition. In a speech, sometimes referred to as former U.S. Secretary of Defence Gates' valedictory speech, to the alliance in Brussels in June last year, he warned about the fact that many of our political leaders in the United States could lose interest in the alliance if other allies were not showing that they were sharing more of the burden. We have seen a shift, particularly the U.S., which has gone from representing about 50 per cent of alliance defence spending in the height of the Cold War to 75 per cent of alliance defence spending. That is an imperfect metric, but it is illustrative of the fact that the burden of spending has shifted.

I know that your government, at the height of its engagement in Afghanistan, felt concerned not only about the resources but also the risks that armed forces personnel were taking in both the U.S. and Canada, compared to others. We need to continue with the political pressure out there. The alliance cannot survive by having a handful of members take greater risk and responsibility. If it is to survive in the longer term, we have to have a better sense of a more equitable burden sharing among the allies. I do not know if that completely answers your question, but it is the best we can do given the nature of the organization.

Senator Lang: If the Smart Defence strategy is accepted by all members, would that tool not ensure that each member would make their commitments if the various responsibilities are diversified and brought on by each country. For one that is involved strictly with cyberspace, for example, that would be their responsibility. Would going that route not help everyone to meet their obligations?

Mr. Flanagan: Absolutely. I see where you are going with this. There is a hope that at least you can have as the three components of Smart Defence: prioritization, specialization and better multinational cooperation. Specialization leads you in that direction. Let us recognize that some of the smaller allies who cannot have full spectrum forces can make strong niche commitments. Estonia has said that they want to specialize as a small Baltic country in cyber and in some special forces capabilities. If they make certain pledges to do that, that would be great. That can follow throughout the alliance.

There are a number of other smaller allies that cannot maintain full spectrum forces. As one of the elements of Smart Defence, and your question brings this up nicely, is the notion that Smart Defence will be more than a slogan for this summit and a way to cover continued slides in defence spending. However, it could also trigger better planning, which Secretary General Rasmussen has called for, on the key capabilities that NATO needs to have in 5 years and 10 years; and then let us get countries to say, okay. We have a process in place for doing this within NATO called the NATO Defence Planning Process, recently revised in the last two years to try to improve things in this way. The process will establish capability targets that allies agree on. Now, let us get some serious pledging: Who will have these capabilities? Who is likely to maintain them? Who might have some defence plans that will change so that we do not have them? How do we address that and reapportion the sharing?

That is the way in which Smart Defence and this improved planning process can work together to ensure that the alliance has these critical capabilities that it needs in the out years.

Senator Day: Normally at this time, Senator Dallaire who, Deputy Chair of the Committee, would be asking a question, but he is speaking in the United States at the American Psychiatric Association on operational stress injuries. I do not have the same questions he might have, but I would like to talk a little more, Dr. Flanagan, with respect to the use of slogans.

You talked about smart defence. That slogan seems to have been the Secretary General's filtering down of the Lisbon conference. In spite of you saying that it might hold the slide, I get a sense that many European nations are thinking that smart defence means that they will not have to spend as much money as they have on defence in the past. I am worried about slogans being misinterpreted like this. We talked about, in Afghanistan, the three-block war, and then we went through a number of iterations to the whole of government, which brought a whole lot of different thought patterns along. Then we talked about terrorists and we moved to anti-insurgency. The use of slogans is what I would like you to focus on a little bit. Are they helpful in helping the future of NATO?

Mr. Flanagan: Senator Day, your point is well taken. I think that is where I was trying to move in answering Senator Lang's question. We have to show that this is more than a slogan. I happened to have the opportunity to testify before our own House of Representatives committee on foreign affairs about two weeks ago. I was asked if this is really not just a slogan, or is it camouflage for continued slide? It could be, if we let it. I think it goes to this question of how we continue to keep the political pressure on these other allies that are lagging behind. If we want this alliance to survive, we really have to show that we are serious about maintaining these critical capabilities.

We have a process within the alliance, as I mentioned, through the so-called NATO defence planning process to identify these critical capabilities or capability targets. In the old days of the Cold War, we called them the force goals of NATO. It was always a process of hectoring and cajoling and convincing governments and saying you have to try to meet those commitments and we all had to do our share. It was never perfect, but we had a fair amount of success. The motivating factor in those days was an imminent threat. We lack that today. There is not that sense of imminent threat, and some of these missions seem rather complicated and far away for some countries.

I do get the sense that the political message has been received loud and clear. While a number of European governments may hope to still be free riders, if you will, I think many more of them get the message that this alliance will not survive unless there is some concrete manifestation that we are doing business differently. You already see some signs of countries working together to pool and share capabilities to develop regional cooperation. One particular success story is in the Nordic Baltic area. A number of these smaller Baltic States are working with larger Nordic states to try to enhance their overall collective capabilities and to be available to do different missions.

Governments that continue to be serious about defence have to continue to keep this pressure on them.

Senator Day: I wanted to finish off on what we should anticipate coming out of the Chicago summit in 12 to 13 days from now. Do you anticipate that this expression is going to continue, the slogan, whatever you want to call it, of smart defence, or will we get into real issues, like burden sharing?

Mr. Flanagan: Absolutely, senator. There is a series of things being discussed. That is why Secretary Panetta, our U.S. defence secretary, last month talked about this idea or slogan of smart defence but wants concrete steps, as I alluded to in my remarks, of concrete goals for 10 years out. What are the capabilities we think we need? Let us have flagship initiatives, and there will be a few of those agreed to in the Chicago summit, I believe, as well as longer term plans. The near-term initiatives will be things like the NATO air ground surveillance system, some movements on the air policing and the initial operating capability of missile defence. In the longer term, it is some further capabilities initiatives that will address some of the key shortfalls we have seen in past operations, particularly in the intelligence and surveillance area. That is what the U.S. and a number of other governments have been pushing for. Let us have a concrete vision of not only embracing smart defence and trying to work harder to get value for our money, but we will commit to some serious goals in defence and a plan for implementation.

Senator Nolin: Thank you, Dr. Flanagan. We are privileged to have you with us. Your deep understanding of the alliance is a great asset for our committee's work.

For the last almost 65 years, the U.S. — I would say North America but mainly the U.S. — and Europe have built some kind of equilibrium or quid pro quo. You put up a major effort, and European nations let the Americans run the show. If there is to be a rebalancing of the interests of North America towards Asia, are you not afraid that that quid pro quo could be damaged?

Mr. Flanagan: I think the alliance has always been about an unfailing commitment that if any member were attacked, then they could count on the response of all the others. There were serious preparations in place to ensure that that political commitment could be backed up with real military capability. We do see there is an erosion. Secretary Gates last year suggested that maybe political leaders in the U.S. had become less sentimental. The heroic struggle of the Cold War days was forgotten, and now many political leaders were being a bit more transactional. What have they done for us lately? There was the sense of a balance sheet that was a bit more realist and not too much rooted in a sense of common values and political commitment.

I do think that we have to continue to try to reinforce this notion that there is a commitment on both sides of the Atlantic to maintain the seriousness approach. Yes, we all face difficult fiscal times right now but, even in that context, we are trying to move ahead and show that there is no wavering. While many European allies may not be able to do as much as we would like, they will show that they will not let their capacity slide to the point where people will question if some of our partners are really serious about these commitments.

Senator Nolin: We only have two questions, so I will come back on the second round. I want to go back to François Hollande's election yesterday. What is the reaction in Washington? What is the perception of the dynamic in Europe now that François Hollande is the master?

Mr. Flanagan: I think François Hollande is a bit of an unknown in Washington. The immediate concern has been his announcement, as I said, during the campaign that French forces might withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2012, the end of this year, and his suggestion that perhaps France's full participation in NATO's military structure has not achieved all the political dividends and other dividends that President Sarkozy alleged, suggesting there might be some kind of review. He and President Obama seemed to have had an initial good telephone call today. Given the nature of his political career, he has not had a lot of contact with American senior officials, except as an adviser to other socialist leaders. He has made other statements suggesting that perhaps there needs to be some rebalancing and a further emphasis of the European common defence and security policy over commitment to NATO. He has also suggested some hesitancy about missile defence and whether it is worth the investment.

My sense is that Washington is reserving judgment. They do not expect dramatic shifts.

However, this one particular campaign commitment and potential withdrawal of French forces, while militarily it would not be all that significant, politically, to have such a major member of alliance accelerating the timetable, could be damaging and cause others to follow suit. That is probably the main, immediate concern right now.

Senator Nolin: We will see in two weeks.

Mr. Flanagan: Yes.

Senator Plett: Welcome, sir.

I will ask a question that will maybe be a little more political. You have talked about the imbalance of the American contribution to NATO versus Europe, Canada and other countries. Clearly there is some American resentment, I would assume, through all of this.

Maybe Obama cannot make a lot of changes right now, but in your opinion what will happen if Obama gets re- elected insofar as the American commitment is concerned, and what could possibly happen if Romney becomes the next American president?

Mr. Flanagan: I do not think I would expect any major shifts in either case. I do think that the commitment to this transatlantic relationship and to the alliance is pretty strong across the political spectrum here in the United States.

As a recent example, the sense that Senator McCain and other Republican leaders in Congress suggesting that perhaps NATO should be moving more deliberately to think about how it might aid Turkey in the case of the Syrian crisis or other steps. There is a strong sense that this alliance, for all of its limitations and frustrations sometimes, I do not see us going back to the earlier notion that perhaps we could go completely back to a coalition of the willing or other approach to address security.

There is a strong recognition, as President Bush had in his second term, that the value of the transatlantic alliance, even with some of the limitations that it sometimes brings, is greater and more reliable than coalitions of the willing. I actually do not imagine a big shift.

I think you might see a President Romney being perhaps a bit more critical and forceful in some of his approaches to the allies about burden-sharing. I think President Obama has sent some strong signals on this, but I think his own disposition and perhaps his willingness to try to continue sort of a slightly different approach of cajoling and encouraging is maybe a tonal difference, but I do not see a major shift in the approach to the alliance.

There has been strong consensus over the last 20 years in the idea that reforming the alliance, expanding it and adapting it to dealing with these new and changing security challenges, has been a strong political consensus across the mainstream of the American political system.

Senator Plett: You spoke in your comments about what, in your mind, would be the most successful outcome of the Chicago summit coming up. My question is the reverse of that. What is the worst possible outcome that we could have coming out of the Chicago summit and what is the possibility of that happening?

Mr. Flanagan: That is a good question. I, by no means, am convinced that we are there. There was a strong meeting last month of foreign and defence ministers, the so-called "jumbo" meeting, reaffirming this commitment on Afghanistan to the Afghanistan timetable, at a time when, as you recall, even President Sarkozy and some things Secretary Panetta said, suggested that the timetable might be accelerated.

If we had a summit where the commitment of both resources and personnel for Afghanistan after 2014 looked — it is still very vague. It is okay that it is vague today in that we are not very clear. We know they roughly talked about a commitment of $4 billion a year in resources, of which the U.S. may pay half, and these other 23 countries that are part of this coalition paying another $1 billion, and then another $500 million or so from the Afghans themselves and from other international donors. If that fund is not clear, if countries have not pledged to have a certain number of trainers or other forces to assist the Afghans, if that is not clear after the summer, then that would be damaging.

On smart defence, I am more optimistic on that. The second part, the capabilities, I do think we will have some flagship initiatives and a commitment to this new approach in smart defence, but if it looked as if perhaps there were last-minute equivocating on some of these three key initiatives or some reason the missile defence commitment was seen as going a little fuzzy and some countries were backing away from that, that would be damaging.

Lastly, on partnerships, we did not mention yet the question of future enlargement. There are three countries that NATO has recognized as candidates for membership: Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Georgia. If NATO also moved away from that, any sense that it was equivocating, if the time was not right now, but at some point the open-door commitment was reaffirmed or put any way in question, those would all be damaging outcomes for the alliance, I think.

Senator Mitchell: Mr. Flanagan, I am interested in your views on Turkey's role in NATO, particularly in the context of that setback and its positive work with Israel, its relationship with Israel, its continued and apparent positive leadership in the diplomacy and also in the context of its continued occupation of Cyprus.

Mr. Flanagan: Senator Mitchell, that is a big agenda, but I will try to touch on each.

I think Turkey has, by and large, if you look over the last several years in terms of the operations in Libya, the alignment of its policy with regard to the Arab Spring and other developments, cooperation on Syria, although that has not yet become a NATO issue, I think Turkey has shown itself to be a valuable ally. It has been a major contributor to Afghanistan.

There is no doubt it has some difficult and problematic political relations within the alliance: its stance, first of all, with regard to NATO-EU cooperation. Because of the feeling it has been shut out, because of the stance of the Republic of Cyprus regarding cooperation with the European Union, it has taken to using the one instrument it has in that framework of slowing progress on NATO-EU cooperation from the NATO side, which has been detrimental in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

With regard to Israel, of course Turkey has taken some rather forceful stances. It has argued that it would go along with the missile defence radar deployment on its territory as part of the European phased, adapted approach, but it did not want data shared with Israel. Some of that relates to its deteriorating relationship with Israel over the so-called "flotilla incident" where the Turks still feel that because seven of their citizens and one dual-citizen American were killed, that they were owed an apology. That has not been forthcoming. They have used, once again, this instrument — I think it is regrettable — to object to certain Israeli participation, perhaps in NATO meetings or others. Until that apology is forthcoming, they want to use that lever.

It is unfortunate that Turkey has taken that stance but, by and large, its record, in terms of supporting the alliance, it has sometimes equivocated, it has sometimes hesitated but, when push comes to shove, it has shown that it has been a reliable partner for dealing with most of the contingencies that the alliance has had to address in recent years. It has also been an important contributor in the Balkans.

The Cyprus question has befuddled and confounded many diplomats over the last four decades. It has been a difficult issue, and I think it is still for the people on the island to come to a solution here. I think that the international community, certainly the U.S. and the UN, have tried to do all that they can to bring the parties to agreement. We came very close in 2004 with the so-called "Annan Plan," which unfortunately was rejected in a referendum on the Greek Cypriot side. All we can do is continue to encourage Turkey not to hold hostage the NATO/EU relationship to this dispute and to work in good faith with representatives in northern Cyprus and the Cypriot government to try and find a solution that puts this behind us. It is really unfortunate, in a time when we have so many other bigger challenges, that this dispute on this island is still a major impediment to more cooperative NATO/EU relationships and to broader security in the eastern Mediterranean.

Senator Mitchell: While the stature of the military in NATO is shifting in a good way, there is certainly unease amongst much of the population of Turkey about that. Are there things that NATO partners can do to encourage a settling of the negative military influence and its desire for power in Turkey or is that excluded from that relationship?

Mr. Flanagan: Well, it is a delicate question, of course. You can argue that the current Turkish government has been moving in a way that would make civil-military relations more normal, in the sense of a North American or European democratic context; and that is good. Some of these arrests and the holding of certain members of the general staff in Turkey without formal charges are really troubling and bring into question how they will achieve this rebalancing of civil-military relations.

We have had three instances over the years when the military have got into politics and various coups either by direct military intervention or political pressure. We would like to see Turkey move away from that over the long term. The current government in Turkey has been moving in that direction as a way of showing that it is trying to meet some of the European standards to advance its long-term hopes of joining the European Union; or at least that is their policy. That has been a positive influence. The U.S., Canada and other countries should continue to favour Turkish membership in the EU because that is positive. There are some elements of the way that the Turks have gone about this that are not conducive to the longer term health of a civil-military relationship that respects the views of the uniformed military and their areas of expertise, while trying to encourage healthy respect for civilian control of the military. Finding that right balance in an evolving democracy will be a continuing challenge.

The Chair: I take you back to a brief point you made in your opening remarks on both the words and the actions of your President and our Prime Minister on moving toward the Asia-Pacific region. You stated that given the choice, they still prefer the European alliance, but a lot of effort is being put on the other direction. Is that a carrot or a stick at Chicago or just something that will happen in parallel.

Mr. Flanagan: It is more a movement in parallel. I have heard a number of European senior officials. At our centre a few months ago, the Norwegian Defence Minister, Espen Barth Eide, said he fully appreciated that in a time of great uncertainty in East Asia, the United States was taking steps to rebalance its military and diplomatic activities to ensure stability in East Asia — the East China Sea; reassurance of the South Koreans threatened by North Korea; and the reassurance of Japan. There was no immediate threat to security so there was no reason for four army combat brigades in Europe in a time of relative peace and stability. As long as there is still a viable U.S. military presence there to work with our European allies to maintain the interoperability, standards and practices, then that is acceptable.

At Chicago, there ought to be a reaffirmation. Some of the Obama Administration might regret the use of the term "pivot" because it means turning your back to someone. However, it is not a turning away from anyone. In fact, we want to turn with our European partners. They are increasingly affected by what is happening in Asia because of the importance of not only China but also all of the ASEAN countries, who are enormously important in the future of the world economy, trading systems and energy security. All of these countries are increasingly important. It is important that those of us who are also Pacific countries, such as Canada and United States, and all other countries are paying more attention to this. However, it does not have to mean that there is a wavering of commitment by alliance members and partner states as a whole. President Obama said about our partners of choice that when push comes to shove, who will we turn to first? It will be those governments that have shown reliability. We have several decades of cooperation that have given us the confidence to know what will happen and how it will happen when we call.

Senator Nolin: Mr. Flanagan, it was the case during your time at the National Security Council and it is still one of the conflicts that concerns NATO: the South Caucasus. It was mentioned at the Lisbon Summit. Do you expect some discussion in Chicago on the conflicts in South Caucasus?

Mr. Flanagan: NATO has made a number of statements at the Lisbon Summit and I suspect that will happen in Chicago as well, although I have had no access to the communiqué. There will be a kind of political declaration recognizing that we are continuing to work on resolving some of the frozen contracts endorsing the work of the OSCE Minsk Group's other efforts to resolve those conflicts. All the allied governments have not recognized occupation and the independence of those countries by the Russian military intervention. By reaffirming the commitment that was made in the Bucharest Summit in 2008, the alliance is committed to welcoming Georgia one day into the alliance, despite any Russian sense of intimidation, which is not acceptable.

These are political declarations, and we will not see dramatic change. As long as the alliance remains strong on that and encourages Russia and Georgia to work out differences through dialogue, it will send a signal that the alliance has not forgotten this. I do not expect any more than political declarations on that set of issues at this summit.

Senator Nolin: Armenia and Azerbaijan have borders with Iran, which will be of concern at Chicago.

Mr. Flanagan: You are right. The Iranian's have been waging a rather dangerous and troubling campaign of intimidation against the Azeris. Somehow there has been a nod to the Israelis that they might allow over flight if any military action were taken against them. In any event, it is unacceptable. Azerbaijan has been an important partner of NATO in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Certainly, you do not want to go too far in suggesting any kind of surrogate collective defence commitment. I hope the alliance will take note of that concern, in particular about Azerbaijan. Armenia has a better relationship with Iran. I understand that there are many influential Armenian ex-patriots in Iran, which helps to moderate Iran's policy. As I understand, it has been also somewhat Armenia a bit because of its objections to some of Azerbaijan's policies. We will have to see how far the alliance is willing to go on that, and at this point I just do not know.

Senator Lang: I would like to redirect our discussion to the question of Russia. You stated in your comments that further development of the NATO partnership with Russia has been hampered by a lack of progress in the missile defence dialogue, even as cooperation in Afghanistan has continued.

Let us assume we were to overcome the situation with the missile defence dialogue and the question of Georgia and any other outstanding issue and Russia were to become a partner in NATO. How would you see NATO changing if that direction were taken and we were successful eventually?

Mr. Flanagan: I think that this has been the most troubling part of NATO's relationship in the recent years that I have seen, including in the group of experts that I had the good fortune to work with, chaired by Secretary Albright and Mr. Van der Veer of the Netherlands, including your own Ambassador Marie Gervais-Vidricaire, who was a very important contributor, particularly on the partnership discussion.

It has really been troubling because many of the Russian scholars and academicians I have talked to say it is foolish for Russia to have a confrontational relationship with NATO and the West. Russian's long-term concern about its own security and stability are about Chinese encroachment in the Far East, about instability along its southern borders and the growth of perhaps extremist violence along those southern borders and in the north Caucasus from the south to north. That is where Russia's security challenges are.

Why is it that we have not been able to develop that more cooperative relationship that NATO has pledged it is prepared to develop since the 1995 NATO Russian founding act, and even as early as 1990 when we said we did not consider the Soviet Union an adversary any longer? Part of it is politics. The current Russian leadership has found it convenient to have an enemy that suggests the need for a strong leadership, and President Putin and United Russia have found this as an effective tool, and it was worked quite well for them. It is frustrating.

We still can imagine, though, a political evolution in Russia. Let us say that many of the people who are not in government now but who are sensible scholars and analysts that I respect come to power, some of the people that have been in the streets in Moscow over the past months. If Russia were to make the changes that Germany made between 1949 and 1955 or 1960 when it became one of NATO's most important member states, perhaps we would see NATO evolving into a collective security organization and less of a collective defence organization. It is hard to see that evolving now but, in the near term, we could move as had been hoped after the Lisbon Summit to show Russia and the Russian people that cooperation with NATO is not in any way a zero sum game. It does not undermine them. NATO does not gain an advantage if Russia cooperates.

We have had the ironic circumstance, even in the last few weeks, of having President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov having to defend Russian's cooperation with NATO on Afghanistan when there was this announcement of this air base that was going to be used in continuing some of the supplies, saying that as long as NATO is out in Afghanistan working to prevent problems in Central Asia from reaching Russia and slow the drug traffic and preventing instability, that is in Russia's interest. I think NATO's leaders were hoping that we could see more of that. If we could show that cooperation on stabilizing Afghanistan and ensuring that there was not wider instability in Central Asia would be of benefit to Russia, then cooperative missile defence could be a way to show that Russia could have its own system cooperating with the NATO system, and if Iran does match its long-range missile systems with nuclear systems, then they could have a cooperative defence against that. All of these were signs —

The Chair: I do not know if you can hear us. We are trying to re-establish our lines.

We can hear you again. I think the plug was pulled. We have a few minutes left, and we will try to wrap it up by five o'clock.

Mr. Flanagan: I am at our disposal. I am available.

The Chair: You were mid-sentence. You have probably completely lost your train of thought.

Senator Lang: I could go into another area. The notes I have refer to the alliance creating modest civilian crisis management capabilities to interface more effectively with alliance partners. Could you expand on that and tell us how you see that working?

Mr. Flanagan: Senator, a set of tools of cooperation were developed with the initial partners that NATO had, the so- called partnership for peace countries. Some of those countries later became NATO members, like Romania and Bulgaria, and some of the states of the Caucasus in Central Asia. It was a set of tools that was able to allow limited cooperative, combined military actions, some training activities, some exercises, some other kinds of cooperation, trading best practices. Those were some of the things that helped these countries work together more effectively to address common security concerns. There was a feeling that the partnership for peace countries had this full array of hundreds of activities that could be chosen from, like a menu. Particularly for those countries that wanted to become members of alliance, they were sort of almost like a training program, if you will.

However, many of the countries still wanted to have close ties with NATO, including a number of countries that have no intention to become members. Finland and Sweden have become close, and Sweden was a key contributor to the operations in Libya. Those countries wanted to have greater access to some of this whole set of activities and practices that could be available, but it also could be available to some of the countries in the Mediterranean area. Israel, for example, is another country that wanted to have a full relationship with NATO, almost everything up to but excluding membership. The notion was to look at ways to have this more flexible approach to partners and open up the whole tool kit to all of these partners, based on NATO's capacity to deliver but also the partner's willingness to play.

What they were trying to achieve through the Berlin document was the idea we could have a deeper relationship with a number of countries, including even some countries in East Asia. As I mentioned earlier, among this group of so-called core partners was a discussion about 13 of them that could include a number of countries like Australia and New Zealand who have been important contributors to alliance military operations of late. How can we capture that and the lessons learned and the common practices and the habits of working together for the next crisis, be it some kind of maritime contingency or some other peacekeeping activity, so that we can benefit from that those interactions we have had in the past and have an agenda for future strengthening of that cooperation.

Senator Mitchell: We are being told that one of the reasons we need F-35 jets is to facilitate operational integration with our NATO allies, the U.S. in particular. However, smart defence, which you have spoken about and written about, calls for greater efficiency, as it were, with defence resources through, among other things, specialization. Does that raise the possibility that not every NATO partner needs the same kind of jet, and perhaps there is a breakdown where we could pursue some other framework?

Mr. Flanagan: Senator Mitchell, I think not so much that, but one of the things that has been talked about certainly in specialization and regional cooperation is this notion of perhaps the model — for example, not all of the Central European countries need to have a first-line air force. A number of them, Poland and some others, went ahead and purchased F-16s. It has proven quite expensive to maintain that force.

It could be perhaps that some countries, instead of trying to have one small squadron, a couple squadrons or even a wing of aircraft, try to purchase aircraft together and pull them together into an effective squadron or a whole wing of aircraft. I think that is more what the alliance is looking towards when we talk about specialization.

Certainly some of the smaller countries, like the Baltic countries, have not developed air forces. They have had to rely on this so-called pooled air policing mission that a number of governments have contributed to.

I think we can see the path ahead to specialization, but I think the expectation would be that a country like Canada could still afford to maintain robust air capabilities and a modern and interoperable and first-line fighter aircraft that the F-35 represents. Of course, we ourselves are having a debate about how many of these aircraft we can afford and what type. I think there is still a recognition that having a NATO standard in some of these key areas for the longer term, just as the F-16 was in the past, the F-35 makes sense in ensuring interoperability.

The Chair: Thank you very much. You have managed to squeeze an awful lot into an hour for us. We appreciate this setup. We appreciate the flow of information you have been giving to us as well on the things you have written on this in the past. We look forward to your views following this.

Our thanks to Dr. Stephen Flanagan, Kissinger Chair in Diplomacy and National Security, Center for Strategic and International Studies, by video conference from Washington.

Mr. Flanagan: Thank you, Senator Wallin, for this opportunity, and members of the committee. I hope my answers were not too long.

The Chair: No, it was terrific. Thank you very much.

Mr. Flanagan: You are welcome.

The Chair: We continue this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. As we mentioned earlier, we will shift gears now and get ourselves into the sometimes very scary world of cybersecurity.

All of us in this room and all of you watching, of course, use computers; we connect to the Internet at work and at home. The corporate world, industry, governments and utilities, are increasingly plugged in as well. Today everyone is wired and we are becoming utterly dependent on being interconnected.

There is a downside to this, of course. As we know, nations and companies spy on each other and steal secrets. Cybercriminals exploit the Internet for financial gain. Hackers act as cybervandals, and their attacks are intended to destruct or destroy, directed against individuals, corporations, infrastructure, governments, et cetera.

We have three expert witnesses today appearing as individuals who work in this relatively new cyberworld who are deeply concerned about cybersecurity, and I hope will give us a bit of a cyber primer today to help us better understand how dependent we are, what the threats are and what we can and should be doing to make the cyberworld a little safer.

Let me introduce our guests now. Mr. Jim Robbins is President of EWA-Canada; Rafal Rohozinski, is Chief Executive Officer of SecDev Group, an operational consultancy; and Dave McMahon is with us today from Bell Canada.

Thank you all. I gather, gentlemen, you have some opening statements. Mr. McMahon, go ahead.

Dave McMahon, Cyber Security and Defence Expert, as an individual: Thank you for inviting me to speak to you today. I will be brief on a rather large and expansive subject.

Cyberspace is a massively complex system, much like global weather patterns and biological ecosystems. Soon the computational power of the Internet will reach that of the human brain and take on much of the attributes of neural networks, yet many people and organizations treat computers like office equipment, a replacement for common typewriters or telephones, and they manage cybersecurity in much the same fashion.

In fact, the transformational drivers in cyberspace are its strategic effects, such as markets, convergence, globalization, geopolitics, the freedom of information, disruptive technology and other social and technological factors. We have seen already how cyberspace empowered political change in the Middle East in the Arab Spring, fueled political activism, facilitated the disruption of nuclear weapons programs and was successfully integrated into Russian battle campaigns and Chinese espionage.

Let us not overlook the positive effects, like "crowdsourcing" over today's hard problems, ubiquitous communications and disaster recovery in times of need. Cyberspace is a nervous system that binds all critical infrastructures in Canada today. Telecommunications, financial and energy systems depend on cyber.

Over $174 billion in Canada transit networks every day. Network performance and volume and velocity of transactions are co-dependent and our economy is acutely sensitive to disruptions or malicious cyber-activities in a measurable way, yet there are regions of cyberspace that are still highly contested.

Cyberspace is an integral component of hostile military intelligence, criminal and terrorist networks. It is estimated that between 5 and 12 per cent of Canadians are affected by cyber-attacks at any given time. Most people are completely unaware. Such is the surreptitious nature of sophisticated and persistent threats.

95 per cent of all email is spam or malicious before blocked. Service attacks and cyber-espionage are common and the Internet also facilitates child exploitation, radicalization, shaping and influencing operations worldwide.

That being said, cybersecurity and privacy are in homeostasis: We are neither losing or winning the battle. It is just what folks are willing to pay, given the perceived risk. The system balances itself out. Experts know how to make the Internet safer, so it is not really a question of technology or money, but continuing commoditization of Internet services in the way that traditional organizational cultures handle information technology is inhibiting resources. Cyber is counterculture for most organizations.

Complex problems like cybersecurity require solutions that are both sophisticated and elegant. We need one common operating picture based solidly on empirical evidence. We need a proactive cyberdefence strategy — the fusion across the main expertise of social scientists, engineers, criminologists, diplomats, soldiers, analysts and academia; the leverage of big business venders and government; and the security and privacy demands of an educated society.

Rafal Rohozinski, Chief Executive Officer, SecDev Group, as an individual: Thank you senators and distinguished members of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence for the opportunity to appear and speak on this urgent and pressing topic. This is the first time I have appeared before a parliamentary committee in Canada and the third time doing so in the United States, which underscores the degree to which we have been lagging on this particular topic. The emergence of cyberspace as the fifth strategic domain equal to land, air, space and sea is having a transformative effect on all aspects of life in Canada and globally. It is particularly prescient that this committee has decided to address this issue as it comes at a transformative, perhaps constitutive, moment in the history of cyberspace.

Over the past 20 years, the Internet has more than doubled in size on a yearly basis. At present, it encompasses more than a third of humanity. With a concurrent mobile revolution, within 10 years every living person on this planet will be connected to cyberspace in one way or another. This has precipitated transformative effects that will exceed those of previous media revolutions, print, telegraphy, radio and television, combined.

Moreover, this revolution is not being driven by states but by the private sector and even individuals. Concurrent with the rise of technology and our dependence on it, we are also seeing the rise of individual agency expressed in myriad ways. In the Middle East, the Arab Spring is being propelled by two key factors: digital natives, those under 25 years who have grown up in the unblinking universe of the Internet and satellite television; and the technologies of social media and online communication, which allow them to think, communicate and act at speeds that outstrip the abilities of states' security agencies.

The same cyber-empowerment that propelled what is generally accepted as long overdue and positive social change is also responsible for flash riots in London last summer and numerous other new forms of online political activity, such as shadowy hacker groups like "anonymous" and others. In fact, the global rise of cybercrime is the dark side of the very empowerment that cyberspace has made possible. Put bluntly, if one wants to understand the essence of cybercrime, one must appreciate that it is a lot easier to bilk someone's bank account online in Toronto than it is to fight over a fistful of rubles in the crumbling tenements of Katharinaberg, the favelas of Brazil or the slums of Lagos. Much like the rum runners of the Prohibition Era, they are able to scale faster and use jurisdiction more effectively than locally based police forces. The global network circumvents national authority. Currently, all national governments, international law enforcement and regulatory frameworks are out of date and incapable of scaling to that task. Unlike the Prohibition Era, when the FBI was able to create a national police force appropriately scaled to the problem, it is unlikely that we will see the rise of a global cyber police force in our lifetime.

This tsunami of cybercrime, which is being well quantified in reports prepared under the auspices of the Defence Research and Development Canada's excellence in cyberscience and technology program and which should be made accessible to this committee and to Canadians as part of public record, has strategic implications for Canada's national security and defence in and through cyberspace. Cyberspace has become a domain of strategic competition. Recently, a senior Chinese military official stated that the weaponization of cyberspace was to the information age what nuclear weapons were to the age of industrial war fighting. This blunt admission emphasizes the degree to which they have correctly identified cyberspace as a central, strategic pivot point — one that promises not just strategic parity but also strategic advantage.

Our group was involved in an exercise with the U.S. Department of Defense a few years ago where we assessed the strategic importance of the cyber domain. The question was asked of seniors within the DOD: Could we run today an operation as complex as the invasion of Normandy with existing manpower and resources? The answer was no because whole levels of staff, capability and training have been replaced by machines and information systems — the very cybersystems that have become the singular target for our peer competitors.

More worryingly, the threshold for entering into the cyber-arms race does not require the billions needed to build an F- 35 and maintain a deployable expeditionary force. The mass effects can be generated by very small groups, including individuals. Arguably, some of the most innovative cyberwarfare capabilities are not being developed in laboratories of the United States, the United Kingdom or Australia but are the result of the creative energy harnessed from the cybercriminal market through compulsion or incentive in the world's most unlikely cyberpowers. Our present networks on which we depend have been built for resilience, not for security. Commercial competition, which has brought us such wonderful products as Windows, Google, Apple and others, has also created a rich target environment for clever opponents to exploit.

However, security is not just defined in military terms and is not something that can be achieved through a focus on tightening our legislation, empowering police forces or playing whack-a-mole with cybercriminals. Security is also the ability of Canada and our like-minded allies to protect our values and to enforce norms globally that uphold human dignity, the right to choose and empower individuals to hold their governments and their institutions accountable. In this respect, our ability to preserve the openness of cyberspace may be as important as our ability to secure it.

Cyberspace as we know it is under threat. Countries such as those of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as well as others with less than democratic agendas tend to see the re-imposition of national borders in cyberspace as a positive thing. However, the reasons are not those that we may see as valid — protecting domestic cyberspace from the malfeasance of crime, but rather as focused on denying their citizens the right to information and free expression. Countries like China, Iran and Syria are pressing for global norms that would permanent censorship, justifying it on the basis of national security. They do so not to protect their populations from the ills of child predation but to prevent them from exercising democratic rights and from holding those in public office accountable.

A digital curtain is descending. Unlike the iron curtain, which was built by the ideology of others, this one is aided by our own insecurities, the fear of crime and child predation and the protection of property rights. It is therefore critical that Canada not focus myopically on cybersecurity but rather consider more broadly the imperative for a strategy of engagement in cyberspace. That strategy needs, at minimum, to consider three factors: One, recognize the strategic centrality of cyberspace and elevating its importance to national security. Cyberspace deserves a degree of attention at the political, policy and budgetary level commensurate with its importance to our way of life, our values and our competitiveness in the global economy.

Two, balance domestic security with the imperative of ensuring that cyberspace remains a global commons and that our values and our norms — those of preserving human dignity and the right of free expression and the right of holding those in public office accountable — remain accessible as universal norms.

Three, recognize that this is a constitutive moment in the tides of history. Politics are moving towards the enclosure of cyberspace. This is our moment to lead. Canada as a country was forged from sea to sea by telecommunications. We can and should be the first country of cyberspace. To neglect it will not only relegate us to a second if not minor power but also strip our industrial base, the equivalent of giving away yet another Avro Arrow.

Last, it is important to recognize that the transformative effects of the cyber-revolution will be as far reaching as those of the Gutenberg Revolution, but the impact of that transformation remains in the balance. It will either continue to empower individuals at a rate greater and faster than that of any other single technological revolution, or it will be snuffed out, suffocated by the weight of regulation and repression leading to a world divided by digital walls, barriers and roadblocks.

The Chair: We took testimony on this last week from the Minister of Defence and the CDS. They have, in fact, a designated hitter now on the cyberbeat, so that is great. Mr. Robbins, please proceed.

Jim Robbins, President, EWA-Canada, as an individual: Madam Chair and honourable members of the Senate, my comments will be brief.

Thank you for inviting me to speak here today. We have been involved in cybersecurity for at least the last 15 or so years. I do have a statement I would like to read from.

I would like to talk to you today about the declining capability in Canada to advise critical sectors on the selection of information technology products and systems intended to secure our cyber-infrastructure and personal data. This includes national security, defence, critical infrastructure operators such as telecommunications, electrical, financial, health care and commercial clients.

In the early 1990s, Canada developed its own set of IT security standards to evaluate security products and provide assurance that our data and infrastructure were protected as claimed by product vendors. Similar standards had been developed in the U.S. and in Europe. In 1993, work began internationally to develop a common set of standards that was called the common criteria for evaluating IT security products. Seven years later, in May of 2000, a Common Criteria Mutual Recognition Agreement was signed by 13 countries, including Canada, Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Today the Common Criteria Recognition Agreement has been signed by 26 nations, and many more nations use this ISO standard. Over 1700 certificates have been issued in the 16 national schemes that have recognized certification authorities and accredited laboratories. The level of confidence of each product is determined by an evaluation assurance level, which could range from one at the low end to seven. The mutual recognition agreement applies to all products certified up to EAL 4. Approximately 700 products are certified at EAL 4.

NATO has adopted this standard. Many governments have mandated its use in the acquisition of products for government networks, and some countries have gone so far as to offer tax incentives to encourage the private sector to use evaluated products. In short, the common criteria are regarded as the global standards for evaluating the security provided by these kinds of products.

The use of the common criteria has expanded to include such things as smart metres that you will find in the electrical grid, chips used in electronic passports and the new credit and debit cards, credentials for health care professionals and critical components for the telecommunications sector.

However, over the years, Canada's advocacy for the use of common criteria has diminished as the role and mandates of various departments have gradually been narrowed. The most drastic change has occurred within the last 12 months. This change is the result of a U.S.-led initiative to limit common criteria evaluations to the lowest possible level, EAL 1, which is sadly not much better than a magazine review.

Canada and three other English-speaking countries — Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. — have followed the U.S. lead. The majority of NATO countries have not followed the U.S. approach, since the standards required for products intended for use in NATO and other critical infrastructures require a much higher level than this minimum evaluation assurance level.

The Communications Security Establishment in Canada, which operates the Canadian scheme and the certification body and acts as the Canadian government representative to the CC body, has also limited their certification of products used by the Canadian government. Unfortunately, no other department has been assigned a responsibility for security assurance and product certifications related to the financial sector, e-commerce, health care, local governments, the critical infrastructure sectors mentioned earlier and the Canadian citizen. This represents a major gap in the service provided to Canadians when compared to their international counterparts that have chosen to support the use of the common criteria across all sectors that are important to the average citizen.

The impact of these evolving and recent changes is also felt by Canadian product vendors who wish to sell their products into NATO and other international markets, the acquisition staff who wish to identify the most capable products to meet their client's need, the consumers who should have confidence that products being sold in Canada have met a higher standard than the minimum now being promoted by the U.S. and Canadian governments for their use and the Canadian labs that perform the evaluations.

In summary, in Canada, we have the capability, the infrastructure and the skills available in government and industry to do better than we are currently doing. All we need is the national will to do it.

The Chair: Thank you for those opening comments. Mr. McMahon, I did not make this clear before, but I know you are here for your expertise and not really speaking on behalf of Bell Canada. I just want to make it clear to everyone.

It would help if you addressed your questions, senators, to a particular witness, and then we will not have everyone talking on all topics.

Senator Lang: I welcome our guests here this evening. This is a whole new area, relatively speaking, for consumers and others with respect to what security is and how you enforce security as far as cyberspace is concerned.

Perhaps I will direct this question to Mr. Robbins. Could you tell us just how vulnerable the ordinary consumer is who has a bank account and uses the Internet for all the transactions that are involved. How secure is he or she with respect to going about their business and assuming that they have absolute privacy?

Mr. Robbins: I think you have asked two questions there in terms of both security and privacy. At the end of the day, if someone wants to get your personal information, they can. How much are you prepared to invest in securing that?

The devices that you use, a smartphone, whether an Apple, a BlackBerry or other phone, help to determine that level of security and privacy you will have. I use them, but my bank account probably is not as large as yours, so it really becomes a question of how much are you trying to protect? How much do you want to pay for that protection? That is what it boils down to, I think.

For the average consumer, I do not think there are problems. When you are talking about national assets, you are talking about something significantly different.

Senator Lang: To move on to another area, we do have a cybersecurity strategy, or at least we have been told we do, and I would like to know your opinion on the security strategy and if you have any thoughts on how it could be improved upon or what we should be doing differently.

Mr. Robbins: I am laughing because I was involved in an early draft of the strategy back in 1999, and I have seen no progress since then. We have a strategy to have a strategy. I do not think we have ever produced anything that has any material results in the last decade as relating to improving the Canadian cybersecurity posture.

Senator Day: I will ask Mr. Rohozinski to expand on the three points he made. As I understood your comments, it is important to keep this open. You see an encroachment and maybe some legislation moving in here from different countries. Can you expand on that role? How can we keep it open and still provide the level of security that we are all looking for? There are more and more infringements, and more clever people out there doing things, tracing us through our phones. Whether we are on or not, they can tell where we are with our cellphones these days. There is the international gambling going on. Those activities were considered not desirable from a community point of view and, therefore, somehow over time they were brought down. There is a lot of copyright infringement going on. Is that monitoring being done at the level of the consumer on the Internet? What set of rules would be acceptable to you that would maintain that openness but still deal with some of those issues of security and activity that is not acceptable in society?

Mr. Rohozinski: In a way, you have answered my question by pointing to the fact that we need to start thinking of cyberspace as a strategic domain rather than simply as a set of technical responses to symptoms we see as social ill. If all our energy is going towards defining cyberspace as a medium of crime, then obviously what we will be doing is designing responses against that without necessarily recognizing how it fits within our life as a country, economically, politically, et cetera.

Going to the question asked by the previous senator, numbers sometimes speak louder than anything else. Canada committed $95 million over three years for a cyberspace strategy, whereas the U.K. committed £650 million. The U.S. spends between $50 billion and $90 billion. That tells you the degree to which those countries see this as a real strategic competitive space from a national security perspective and the degree to which we do not.

Part of the problem is political and generational. You cannot have a cyberstrategy unless it is understood at the political level to be a strategic question. Leaving it to interdepartmental meetings and decisions on budgets simply means you will end up building the proverbial swing built by committee, which means it will have three ropes and swing through the middle of the tree. That is part of the problem we are facing here.

I would say, yes, if we recognize cyberspace as a strategic domain we have to clearly identify where our strategic priorities lie. Maybe in that respect we will recognize that the price for keeping a globally contiguous open cyberspace, which allows us to communicate our norms and values and defend them worldwide, is the price to pay for what we will see as criminality online. We must face the fact that just because we have a national police force and laws against various things does not mean we do not have criminality in physical space. Why should we expect anything different from cyberspace?

Senator Day: Where does the leadership come from? Are you expecting governments to get together internationally to develop these norms or, as we have heard from you today and from your colleagues, does industry have a role to play to bring together those who are interested to help develop the norms?

Mr. Rohozinski: At a global level I do not think we will have agreement between governments because each government defines security in cyberspace in different ways. When we say "cybersecurity," we mean the protection of networks through which our commerce runs. When the Chinese speak of security in cyberspace they mean security from having opposition groups being able to mobilize against the central state. For that reason alone we will not find an international agreement.

When I say "at the political level," I mean "at the national level." We need to elevate the question of cyber away from cybersecurity to a cyberpolicy. Canada has a statement to make in terms of what constitutes our foreign agenda. Cyberspace is as much part of that foreign agenda as control over minerals, trade, immigration or anything else, yet it is not talked about at that level.

The generational reasons for this are quite clear. Five years ago, if we had a committee here to talk about cyber, probably only the 23-year-old parliamentary aid who had been raised on William Gibson novels would know what cyberspace meant, yet here we are discussing it in this august body. It is new. It is difficult to understand. It is not something that is easily explainable to a voter in Corner Brook, Newfoundland or Lethbridge, Alberta. How do you tell them the value of losing cyberspace? You cannot. For a politician it is a risky proposition and yet at the national level it is probably the most crucial domain we currently have undefined.

Senator Plett: My question will be for Mr. McMahon. Senator Lang already asked part of the question I wanted to ask but I will go a little further on that. I want to know specifically, how do I protect myself? Everything I do nowadays I have to do online. I shop online, on eBay and kijiji. I bought my grandson a dirt bike today online. Everything is online. My credit card is there. How do I protect myself?

I will ask my second question as well. How much malicious activity is being reported and how much is not? There are actually two questions there, but how much malicious activity is being reported and how do I protect myself with my credit card out there?

Mr. McMahon: I will give the answer to your second question first. We have very good statistics on this. In terms of reporting you could look at help desk calls, you could look at email sent to various computer incident response teams and things like that, and then we can compare it with the rate of malicious traffic we actually see and not of incidents.

Less than a fraction of a per cent is actually reported. In fact, most of what is reported is calls to help desk about Internet connections being slow, when in fact it is their network computer or their computer is infected in some way. The vast majority of attacks, compromises and takeovers of computers are completely undetected. That is by design because most criminals do not want to be detected so it is done in stealth. They tend to be detected when you have a loss of ability or performance, which from a criminal point of view is bad design in terms of attacking.

As I mentioned before, at any given time approximately 5 per cent to 12 per cent of the Canadian population is seeing malicious activity coming from their machines. That is a pretty standard industry figure. In terms of spam, the vast majority, 98 per cent, is spam and it is blocked in some capacity. Most of that tends to resolve itself over a period of time and it has been fairly stable over a number of years.

The add-on to the first response was that those are average Canadians. If you are looking at corporations, banks and financial institutions, their security posture is obviously a lot better because they can apply much more stringent security policies, rules and security systems.

In this day and age, probably some of the most effective ways of keeping yourself uninfected would be to keep your software up to date with the latest patches, auto updates on you computers. The second most effective way is operationally, in the way you migrate and the places you go to on the Internet. You can have anti-virus firewalls and technological controls, but most of those are beyond the average citizen. In fact, they are not as effective as being careful where you surf.

In some cases, if you are very paranoid, you would have one computer for doing your banking and your important work, and one computer, such as an iPad, for doing your web browsing. You would keep the two activities separate. That seems to be the most effective way.

Mr. Robbins: One of the things we have seen is there are a large number of major incidents that never get reported. We do not have an agency that takes those reports and consolidates them in the Canadian context. We are the only G8 nation that does not have a place where these kinds of reports can be analyzed and given back to a group like this committee. Certainly, from some of the things we have seen in the last few years, and calls we have received, the number of major compromises of major enterprises has increased significantly, some to such a magnitude that we could not mobilize the large number of people it would take to rebuild their network. It has increased substantially.

Senator Dawson: Senator Plett and I had the pleasure of sitting on a committee that called for a digital plan for Canada a few years ago that arrived at a conclusion that you expressed before. After having been at the forefront for many years, with the telegraph and the telephone, we are now at best in the middle of the crowd in terms of having a digital policy. France has a plan for a digital France; Britain has a plan for a digital Britain. In some cases that was happening eight or nine years ago. Canada still does not have a plan for a digital Canada.

That being said, Estonia is probably one of the most advanced countries in using the Internet. The cabinet sits with their computers. However, the problem is that they are also the most vulnerable. As you know, they were attacked in 2006 or 2007, and after that Korea got attacked in 2009 or 2010. Most of these attacks we hear about much later. No one wants to admit that the banking community is being attacked because they do not want us to know how vulnerable they are. Where do we get that balance? You say Canada is lagging behind. Who gets the responsibility? Is it just Department of Defence or should it also be Industry Canada? I wonder where we should be attacking this problem from. People are now recognizing that we do not have digital literacy in Canada. Who should be taking care of it? Should the provinces or the federal government be addressing the issue? You are putting the problem in front of us. What is your solution?

Mr. Rohozinski: As an aside, I happen to also be the chairperson the board of governors for the Estonian e-governance Academy, which was built as a way of helping to move along the process of Estonia's "e-everything." The author of the initial blueprint for public sector reform in Estonia was an Estonian student who studied at McGill University and whose inspiration were the very first thoughts about electronic government in Canada. This is to show how we led, but others leapfrogged ahead of us.

What you are asking is a difficult problem, and it goes back to my earlier remarks. Until we understand cyberspace from a political angle, understanding its centrality to our economy, are able to quantify it in terms that politicians understand, jobs and security, it is difficult to get to a point where it becomes a driver.

In a perfect world the approach one would have to take is probably a blend between what has happened in the U.S. and the U.K., where it is elevated to a cabinet-level position, where you have a central coordinator who is empowered, both from a policy and budgetary point of view, to be able to reach across the government and in effect frame a strategy for cyber.

Note that the word I use is "cyber," not "cybersecurity," because it is not just cybersecurity. It is how cyber is employed, for example, in the Department of State policies and now plans for its engagement globally. It is the way that cyber has been built into now an operational command within the Department of Defense. It is the way that cyber is perceived and used by the secretary of the treasury and the commerce department in terms of framing the U.S.'s competitive position and what is discussed with countries like China and others. We lack that at present. It is a federal responsibility, but it is one that really does need to be framed from a high political level because of a cognizance and understanding of its importance.

Senator Lang: I want to follow up and talk about cyber. I would like to follow up on Senator Dawson's question.

Senator Dawson: What we are talking about here is a cybertourist.

Senator Lang: I want to follow up because I found your comments interesting. You say until we recognize, from a political point of view, the importance of cyber we will probably maintain the status quo with some diversification because things are changing.

From a political point of view, if you were the government today — following along the lines of Senator Dawson's question — what would you have the government do other than a budget and a ministerial position? Would that ministerial position just apply to cyber or would you have other responsibilities?

Exactly how encompassing is this as you see the world unfolding in a perfect world if you were the minister?

Mr. Rohozinski: That is an interesting question for two reasons. One is that there must be recognition that the governance of cyberspace, as well the operation of infrastructure, exists within the private sector. To some extent the government's role has to be as much stimulating and elevating the role of industry to be able to coordinate itself as it is to provide just leadership and regulation in and of itself.

Bell Canada, Nortel, RIM, these are champions. These were global champions that we have essentially let decline for a number of different reasons, including reasons of espionage if we look at what happened to Nortel in the recent past. Looking at the impact of cyber-breaches and recasting these in terms of jobs is a good way for politicians to be able to explain the problem to Canadians.

Let us look at the impact cyberspying has had on, for example, the sale of potash resources in Saskatchewan or the decline, for example, of global leaders like Nortel and RIM. These are significant and need to be understood.

If I were to use my political crystal ball, following what is going to happen in the European Union and the U.S., I would not be surprised to see a full cabinet position and, if you like, a ministry or department being built to look after cyber- affairs that takes under its writ a lot of what right now is scattered across departments: Industry Canada, trade, public safety, DND. What that exactly will look like, budget and mandate wise, is something that is very much a moving picture, but the trajectory is going there.

Senator Lang: I want to follow that up and get more specifics. You refer to RIM. Just exactly what would the government have been able to do to prevent what happened to RIM? My understanding is it is the marketplace. They are in the marketplace and management decisions were taken. How would government have been involved?

Mr. Rohozinski: It is, in part, simply recognizing that telecommunications is a vital part of our defence industrial base and economic base, and making sure these national champions get the kind of attention they require.

If you recall, before RIM's decline for management reasons, there were problems they faced with the deployment of their services in India and others, where there was requirement to break encryption. There were long silences from those government departments that should have responded right away. This is largely because there was a lack of capacity in recognizing the importance of global telecommunications, how it has changed and what competencies needed to exist in departments such as DFAIT, for example, to even engage with governments and proper international bodies around these questions.

It gets to partially the question that my colleague to my right was talking about: our inability to understand the role of standards and to push those forward. Building those as something we can continue to preserve our industrial base around is fundamental, and that has not been happening in the cyber-realm.

Senator Dawson: This is a practical example, and I do not know if Senator Plett remembers this. We were all walking around with our BlackBerrys at the committee and meeting with people from the European community and from the Belgian department. The staff from Foreign Affairs had their BlackBerrys taken away from them because they were too much of an expense. There we were trying to promote a Canadian product at the same time Foreign Affairs was saying that is too glitzy for our people.

I do not think the government can invent a Facebook or RIM, but when we can support these organizations they deserve it.

Digital literacy is a bigger problem because we are not educating the young: They are educating themselves. They are not doing it under a framework.

We saw during the last 10 weeks in Quebec the fact that the government has been trying to keep up with the students. The students were in their cyber-universities communicating with each other, and the government was trying to communicate with them.

What are we doing to ensure the government has the same level of education or knowledge of this cyberspace that these cybercitizens, the young people of today, have? We have to keep up with them. We did not teach them to do that, but how do we use it?

Mr. Rohozinski: I would make one short comment. I do not think things are nearly that bad. If I look across the spectrum of ministries, departments and agencies, they recognize that their principal interaction with the Canadian public will be through cyber and that their workforce principally will be those under 25 who were into cyber. They are taking pretty admirable steps to prepare themselves for that, but they are doing that in the absence of political leadership, rather than benefiting from it.

Senator Nolin: Mr. Robbins, in your opening remarks you referred to NATO. In Lisbon 18 months ago there was a major summit where they discussed cybersecurity as one of the key elements of our collective defence.

How do you evaluate, 18 months later, the progress the 28 NATO countries have made? We have talked about Canada, but what about the others?

Mr. Robbins: The other countries in NATO have essentially rebuffed the changes proposed by the U.S. government. They are staying to a higher level of standard than we are seeing right now. We have vendors who come to us who want to sell into NATO. If we are going to evaluate their products, we have to look offshore to find another scheme to work them in the European environment.

From my probably narrow point of view, we are letting down the Canadian vendors who are looking at selling products internationally. They either go overseas to do this or the labs supporting them have to. We are not doing it in Canada.

Senator Nolin: Does that mean that the tools are there?

Mr. Robbins: Yes.

Senator Nolin: To protect the collectivity of the 28 NATO countries, but it is not properly coordinated?

Mr. Robbins: The NATO acquisition policies are clear in terms of what they expect their authorities to be purchasing. Not only the NATO, but there are other agreements that exist within a number of nations in Europe to mutually recognize products that are evaluated in a European context. We do not share in any of those agreements.

The Chair: Canada does not participate or the members do not share?

Mr. Robbins: Canada does not participate. The evaluation of the chips in the smart cards that occurs on a regular basis in the European environment does not happen in Canada.

We attend all lab meetings in the European environment, but we are there as spectators, not as participants, because there has been no Canadian stated need for Canada to become involved in doing this.

Senator Lang: I just want to raise this question, then: As you know, there are currently trade negotiations going on with the European Union. Would this be an area covered in respect of those types of negotiations?

Senator Nolin: As a way to do business, it has nothing to do with the EU.

Mr. Robbins: To be honest, the participation of organizations that are accredited by a national authority is one thing. In the context of Payments Card Industry Security Standards Council, we are accredited by essentially Visa, MasterCard, JCB and Amex to perform evaluations in this context. Those organizations have become members of what is going on in Europe. We have a combination of an industry standard and the common criteria as practised in Europe converging on a common set of standards for this new generation of products. For the cell phones that you have that will be used for financial transactions, those evaluations have not been done and are not being considered to be done in Canada.

The Chair: Could you just comment on the chips that are now common and will become common in passports in this country and others. That is obviously an international standard. Are you concerned about that?

Mr. Robbins: The term for the statement of requirements is something called a protection profile in common criteria language, and those protection profiles have been developed primarily in the European environment for electronic credentials, so passports. I am not sure whether the new credentials coming out with the Canadian passport have gone through that or not. I do not believe any of the labs have been involved in evaluating those in Canada.

The Chair: We will check into this. Before we go to second round, I was struck by a question earlier. It is narrow. I was at a conference recently, and this is the National Security and Defence Committee, after all, where we were talking about the wired soldier of the future. They would be out there as data collectors, both visual and verbal, and sending back information in real time. Is that realistic, and does it pose real security problems with the transmission of that information? Can you make those kinds of specific systems secure?

Mr. McMahon: I will take a crack at that. It is true with a lot of things in cyberspace when we talk about cloud computing and wireless. We have been given a huge amount of freedom to either make the most secure systems out there or to do a really bad job. Before, it was fairly simple. When I started with the military years ago, we would pull off a piece of paper from the teletype machine and put it in an envelope and deliver it. The level of security was pretty cut and dried. You could not go too far wrong, but you could not go too far right either. It has limitations. Now, there is a huge, dynamic range of security architectural requirements that you can put out there and make very secure systems, but you can, again, really sort of mess things up as well.

The Chair: If you can make it, someone can break it?

Mr. McMahon: Everything can be broken. In this game, it is about making it not cost effective to break it. In fact, if it takes your adversary longer and costs them more to break something, then they are always way behind. This is part of the game we are playing right now in terms of the level of security on the Internet where there are business transactions or telecommunications. It is price driven and based on return on investment. How much money will you invest in security given how much money you will get out of security? That is what we typically play in terms of risk management.

The Chair: Is that really how we go about it? Is fiscal disincentive the only way we can prevent the bad guys on the other side?

Mr. McMahon: It is an interesting question. Now, if you look at all the various factors that determine the level of security on the Internet and cyberspace, and you can measure them, it is everything from regulatory compliance to altruism to market forces and technical factors, sociology and geopolitics and the like. The people who own and operate the Internet are industry, and one of the factors now is that it is a price-sensitive market. That tends to be the strong variable right now. In other countries, it may not be. Where you have telecommunications organizations and your military as the same organization, you have different market forces that determine what your level of security or insecurity is on the Internet.

In a lot of cases, a lot of the effort is cross-domain, academics and visionaries within government and industry, getting together in a side bar and trying to make it a better place. That has to be done within fiscal limits and what people will pay. An interesting analogy is that if you put too much security on a cell phone, even if you sell it for the same amount, it will not be long before someone says, "You know, I do not want that security. Can you take it off and cut my price?" That is where things like regulatory compliance standards and things start to create a higher level of security standards where market will not drive it.

The Chair: That is a very interesting point. Thank you.

Senator Day: I believe Senator Lang touched on the question I had, but I can think of another one if I have a moment.

Mr. Robbins, you can probably quickly answer the question of why the United States lowered its standard that you were talking about during your presentation. For what purpose would they do that? Was it to protect their local industry?

Mr. Robbins: I am not certain. I would imagine that their whole concept is one of layered defence. They are looking at how you build a system where you not only have the products but a series of products that you tie together and look for other ways to compensate and mitigate for the fact you are getting products but you are not sure how well they will work together. You can probably bet a fair amount that they have other things in mind to help them get along with the lowering of the basic evaluations.

One of the major programs that is going on in the U.S. right now is something called a security content automation protocol. Essentially, a number of vendors have gotten together to agree on how to share information among various products to get almost a near real-time situation report as to the current status from a security perspective of your networks when you bring all these products together. This would do a lot to compensate for the lesser value in terms of assurance of individual products. We do not use that approach in Canada, as far as I know, yet.

The Chair: It kind of assumes also that private corporations are interested and that the developers of products will be willing to share this for free.

Mr. Robbins: There has been a major uptake in this program by the product vendors. Interestingly enough, most of the products that are now approved for the program have been evaluated in Canada.

The Chair: Gentlemen, I do not know whether to thank you or not for raising all these questions that we will now have to study. You have all been very helpful and insightful on this issue. You have given us some fodder as we figure out what next steps should be for government, particularly as it relates to the issues for us. Thank you for joining us.

We are trying to keep everyone on their toes today, shift gears and go in different directions.

This is part of an ongoing study we have undertaken here at the committee, which is to look at lessons learned in Afghanistan. We have focused primarily on the military and what we have seen from DND and the CF. We really wanted to look at it from your perspective and with your take on the issue because we all know as Canadians that the engagement there was about far more than just fighting the insurgence. We started to hear this whole language about the Three D's and the whole-of-government approach, and I think it raised a lot of questions in people's minds about those people who work for CIDA or the Department of Foreign Affairs who did not exactly sign up in the job description to go to war. That debate sometimes carries on in the journalistic community as well.

We want to look at CIDA's role, the work in Afghanistan, what you have done and the ongoing objectives, as well as your views on what you have learned and what could work better in the future.

We are pleased to welcome Bob Johnston, Regional Director General of CIDA for Europe, Middle East, Maghreb, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That is a big bit of real estate. We also have Dave Metcalfe, Senior Director for Afghanistan specifically.

Welcome, and I assume you have opening remarks. Go ahead.

Bob Johnston, Regional Director General, Europe, Middle East, Maghreb, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA): Senator Wallin, thank you, and other senators. I will proceed with the statement.

The Canadian International Development Agency, CIDA, has held a presence in Afghanistan well before 2001 when the attacks on the United States led to significant international concern and investments in the country. From 2001 to 2011, Canada committed $1.9 billion in aid to Afghanistan, of which $1.7 billion was disbursed by CIDA.

Like all other development commitments, Canada's engagement in Afghanistan has been consistent, demonstrating sound results in the priority areas of education, health, sustainable economic growth, humanitarian assistance and human rights.

CIDA undertook an ambitious effort to deliver aid in Afghanistan post-2001 in a context substantially different, as you have noted, from any other CIDA had experienced, where military intervention was robust and ongoing, conflict was multifaceted and fluid, the ramp-up of personnel was unprecedented and the focus on results was pointed.

From our perspective, the program was highly politicized, both domestically and internationally, and under intense scrutiny. CIDA interventions were implemented through a designated agency task force and post-2008 within a whole- of-government approach. In the delivery of that aid, CIDA encountered challenges and achieved successes, especially in particular areas of knowledge management, program delivery, human resource management and aid effectiveness, among others.

In June 2008, Canada set the course for its involvement to 2011 following the recommendations emerging from the Manley panel on Canada's engagement in Afghanistan. Of course, our chair was part of that panel, so you did have significant influence.

At the same time, Canada's civilian presence in Afghanistan grew three-fold. Quarterly reports to Parliament were established, benchmarks were devised and Canada's 10-year allocation to Afghanistan covering the 2001 to 2011 period was increased from $1.3 billion to $1.9 billion.

CIDA worked closely with the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, National Defence and the Canadian Forces, Public Safety and the Privy Council Office in a whole-of-government approach to deliver a program that included six priorities, supported three signature projects and shifted 50 per cent of programming to Kandahar. CIDA was responsible for the delivery of all three signature projects and three of the six priority areas, with two of them focused specifically on Kandahar. It was the delivery of the projects and priorities in Kandahar that drew the most important links among different government departments, including the Canadian Forces.

The delivery of development assistance in a country affected by active warfare was challenging, in particular due to Canada's dual civilian and military presence in Afghanistan. Nevertheless, with Canada's support, Afghans have achieved hard-won progress in both the access to and delivery of services, which has helped to develop the capacity of the local government. In fact, CIDA surpassed, as witnessed in Quarterly Report 14, the final quarterly report for Afghanistan, the majority of the benchmarks established to assess Canada's achievements, including in education, teacher and health care training, demining activities and awareness, amongst others.

In terms of lessons learned, CIDA has engaged in a comprehensive analysis of the lessons and observations of its experience in Afghanistan, particularly from the 2008 to 2011 period. Understanding the context of the conflict, the political terrain in which it exists and the specific characteristics of the conflict itself is critical to set programming direction, develop appropriate projects and adjust programming as required. Moreover, maintaining the knowledge that is gained through implementation and experimentation is a key activity for programming.

Operating in such an integrated, whole-of-government environment resulted in many challenges for both the civilian and military officials working in Afghanistan.

Development programming is founded in long-term, predictable and consultative investments aimed at supporting the capacity development of local government and the sustainability of achievements gained. Military operations, on the other hand, strive for shorter term engagements ideally resulting in rapid and effective stabilization of a conflict or a violent situation. Such challenges involved in the respective planning horizons and differences therein, different authorities and protocols as well as the lack of understanding — or the growing understanding as we went forward — between military and civilian operations made this particular engagement all the more difficult.

All parties adopted strategies, however, to help mitigate these challenges. Certain key considerations of particular interest for this current audience include the co-location of development and military officials, joint training and integrated practices that capitalized on the mutually beneficial activities.

The co-location of the joint planning cell and the provincial reconstruction team coordination boards brought together not only whole-of-government colleagues but also other nations, including the U.S., to ensure a coordinated approach toward meeting objectives. This allowed CIDA to vigorously advocate for consistent inclusion of the development perspective in all joint planning efforts, particularly in Kandahar.

Mandatory joint training was in place for pre-departure and on a rolling basis throughout the engagement due to such highly integrated work involving stabilization practices.

As a development agency, CIDA was not well versed in implementing such quick impact projects, but the agency did get up to speed rapidly. It was quickly understood that when programs operate in or close to combat situations, extensive military presence, the nexus between development and stabilization and the insecurity of personnel and partners will pervasively affect delivery.

CIDA's mandate in Afghanistan was development. However, development cannot succeed amongst high levels of human insecurity. As a result, in Kandahar, CIDA funds were dedicated to bridging the gap between development and stabilization support to the military as long as realistic objectives were a priority in the decision-making process.

One of the most pressing challenges moving forward will be to focus on sustaining and expanding the gains made in closing the military development divide while also creating a cadre of people from each department who intimately understand the basic notions of the military rationale, development programming and diplomatic relations.

CIDA continues to develop its knowledge of stabilization practices and ensuring programming flexibility in operational time lines, risks and outcomes. Via CIDA's committee on fragile and conflict-affected states, the knowledge and expertise of such operating environments continues to flourish, with more concrete links between development programming and policy.

Even though programming from Kabul, which is what we are doing now, does not require the same levels of joint planning, CIDA continues to maintain an active engagement with the Canadian Forces through weekly dialogue at the headquarters planning level.

Finally, I will speak about our current engagement, from 2011 to 2014. In July 2011, the Canadian combat mission in Kandahar ended and Canada began a new engagement based out of Kabul with a focus on four priorities: investing in the future of Afghan children and youth; advancing security, the rule of law and human rights; promoting regional democracy; and delivering humanitarian assistance.

As is reflective of the long-term commitments involved in the disbursements of development assistance, CIDA's current 2011 to 2014 engagement was developed based on the successes and lessons learned during the 2008 to 2011 period. For example, in drawing upon the major achievements discussed above, CIDA has maintained its programming priority in the education sector, moving from the physical construction of 52 schools, as it turned out, to building on the sustainable capacity development of the Afghan Ministry of Education at a national level so that we can assist them in governing and advancing education from that level.

Similarly, in realizing the importance of continued human security on the sustainability of past investments, CIDA's current mandate also continues to provide significant support to humanitarian assistance with the intention to facilitate quick recovery from the devastation of natural disasters.

CIDA believes that all departments have a vested interest in maintaining open lines of communication in order to preserve and build on the experience gained. If tapped, this knowledge can considerably ease start-up and operations, even under urgent, high-profile and stressful environments that often accompany any such interventions in a fragile and conflict-affected situation.

The Chair: I am wondering if I can put the question to you this way, and you have been very frank in your discussions that there was obviously a lack of understanding in the beginning. You were there doing development work before and you will be there afterwards.

In retrospect, is this a good way to go about it? Should you try to be in Kandahar at the height of insecurity and vast military operations, or should you be somewhere else at that point and come in later? What is your big picture take- away from this?

Mr. Johnston: That is a controversial question. In this case, because we had already been in Kandahar since 2005, I think there had been a lot of criticism that we were not contributing enough to the development effort and the integration of our Canadian efforts in Kandahar. Following the Manley panel, there was a clear recommendation that was where we needed to go. It involved quite an organizational challenge for us in terms of tripling the number of people we had on the ground and putting in place recruitment and training systems. We also learned that we had to learn to train with the military, things like this. There was an element of learning by doing; we had never done anything on that scale before.

Going forward, were we to be in another situation where you are stepping into a conflict situation where the parameters are known, I think that would be quite doable.

The other scenario, of course, is when there is something new and different and no one quite knows what is going on. I think we have seen a bit of that in other countries, such as Haiti, for example, immediately after the earthquake. We had people on the ground. The military brought in a large task force. We were able to work together, and I think some of the links we built through the Afghan experience with CEFCOM, the expeditionary command, helped in that environment as well.

Each situation is very different, but in the Kandahar situation, we were also there just as the American surge came in, so you ended up with a lot more troops and security available on the ground. The timing kind of worked because we were able to move into what the military called COIN or stabilization. We were able to get more done in terms of reaching out into communities than we might have had there been only 3,000 Canadian troops and no more. We knew the American surge was coming, but we did not know the size or the timing and so on. In the end it worked out pretty well, but it was a challenging period.

The Chair: That is most interesting. Thank you for taking that on.

Senator Lang: I would like to refer to your notes. You state, "CIDA surpassed the majority of the benchmarks established to assess Canada's achievements, including education, teacher and health care training, amongst others."

In quick calculations, I am assuming we are now over $2 billion in Afghanistan now that we are in 2012. You have given us a number of $1.9 billion being —

Mr. Johnston: The share was $1.7 billion, so yes.

Senator Lang: That is a significant amount of money.

Mr. Johnston: That is correct.

Senator Lang: I think Canadians are proud that they can participate internationally in a significant way, as long as we are making significant strides in the areas we are investing this kind of taxpayer dollars into, along with the social commitments we make.

Perhaps you could elaborate on the benchmarks that were established and how we surpassed those benchmarks that you spoke of.

Mr. Johnston: Yes, I can do that. As I mentioned earlier, for example, there are many that are attributable only to CIDA. Some of them were joint as well. We established a benchmark or a target for Kandahar of rebuilding or constructing 50 new schools. In the end, in Quarterly Report 14, we reached 52. Those are schools that were completed, staffed, equipped and up and running during that period.

The big signature project, as everyone is aware, was the Dahla Dam. There I think we can argue that we completed all the major components; i.e., the primary, secondary and tertiary canals where water is distributed through the system are now up and functioning at the appropriate level. The entire system is working better. This year, with the next crop season, the amount of extra irrigable land that will come into service will be substantial and will probably create many more new jobs.

Again, we rehabilitated a dam that had been built in the 1950s by the Americans and had not really been maintained since. It was a considerable achievement.

There are other areas where we agreed, for example, to support the training of 2,000 health care workers. Our target was 500, so we exceeded that.

The Chair: Immunizations.

Mr. Johnston: I have to give a lot of credit to our minister in that case. She was very committed to the whole polio eradication campaign. The progress made was substantial in terms of the number of people vaccinated.

We have not yet — and we continued to push this one — hit that target. There is a wild polio virus, cross contamination principally from Pakistan right now, so we are still not there. That was the one area we continued to push to ensure that we got it done, but it has been uphill.

Senator Lang: To go to another area, every now and again, you read in the news about situations, especially with the Americans, where a significant amount of money was put into Afghanistan and there are allegations that significant amounts of it were used improperly. I would like to ask you, through CIDA and our organizations, what do we do to ensure that does not happen to our taxpayers' money when it is invested in a place like Afghanistan?

Mr. Johnston: That is a simple question with a very complicated answer. I will try to divide it into parts.

We have some funds that flow through a World Bank administered trust fund, called the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund. The World Bank is responsible for the oversight and auditing of those funds.

Under more regular circumstances, we tend to contract organizations to deliver our projects. They are routinely evaluated and audited in terms of their performance on the ground. Where there are discrepancies, we pursue those and recover the funds or justify the funds that may be in question. Largely speaking, given the difficult environment we were working in, those issues were relatively minor. We have not really uncovered large areas where we can point to losses.

To give you an idea of the level of oversight we try to impose, we had an allegation of possible fraud in a very small fund, the Canada fund for local initiatives that we run in every country. It was sort of a whistle-blower thing that we were obligated to act on. We had our chief audit executive send out an audit team to look at this. After two audits over the year, we had not been able to prove that there was any fraud that we could document, but we have now sent out a third team just to ensure that there is nothing there. These are for disbursements that might not measure $10,000 to $20,000, on average.

Senator Lang: Thank you.

The Chair: That is good news.

Senator Day: I appreciate you being here. I am wondering if you could explain the relationship between CIDA and the other non-military, government departments that were involved from the point of view of capacity-building, such as the Solicitor General's department and Health Canada that was just mentioned. Can you explain the relationship?

Mr. Johnston: As we referred to earlier, and I think as Senator Wallin pointed out, we moved in 2008 to the whole- of-government approach. We stood up at the Privy Council Office with David Mulroney, and we set up a structure where we had an intense level of coordination amongst the key ministries. It started up here but went down to the working level. At headquarters in Ottawa, we had a lot of coordination on almost a weekly basis throughout that three-year period. It also played out in the field.

Increasingly, when we talked about the civilian team in the field, while they were recruited from different departments, we had a high degree of collaboration on the ground. For example, our DFAIT colleagues would be working on governance and rule of law issues in Kandahar while we did economic growth. In some of these areas, there was a lot of crossover. We tended to work together and, in some instances, financed different pieces of the same large activity. The degree of coordination was quite high. It was the same with the policing colleagues we had on the ground. In fact, we tended to think of ourselves over time as one team with different departmental roots.

Foreign Affairs and CIDA had our own civilian task forces, which were quite robust. We were operating in a very active, dynamic environment. Our problem as civilians is that when the military are on the ground, they do their six-month rotation, they are 24/7. Our guys were there for a year, and they were mostly 24/7, too. It was a rapid pace.

Senator, I recall I took you and other members of the committee there in March of 2008, just as we were starting that. You have some familiarity with what it was like in Kandahar at the time. At that point, we had four or five people working in the PRT. Just on CIDA's side, we had 15 to 18. The overall whole-of-government team of civilians only reached about 120. It was a very different environment. Two years later, we also had 300 or 400 American soldiers and civilians, so the PRT now is unrecognizable.

Senator Day: Whereas earlier on, the international agencies would not come down from Kabul, as it was too dangerous. It was entirely a military activity. It evolved the way we wanted it to. I am a bit concerned about your final paragraph, Mr. Johnston. If the representative of Canada in Kandahar was the ranking non-military person, then that means the lead and the overall coordination was by virtue of Foreign Affairs, presumably.

Mr. Johnston: Yes, as manager of a civilian platform. Just as an embassy now, the ambassador manages the platform of other departments. It is the same idea.

Senator Day: CIDA believes that all departments have a vested interest in maintaining lines of communication in order to preserve the experience gained, if tapped. That suggests to me that you are not doing what we would hope you would be doing, which is drawing together all of these experiences and lessons learned so that if and when something happens again, we will be ready to move a bit faster than the last time.

Mr. Johnston: Actually, we do have the capacity. We are also operating in a budget constraint environment right now.

For example, many of my people who formerly did their one-year rotation or whatever in Kandahar are now working for us in other conflict-affected countries, such as Sudan. Most of the staff working on the Sudan program, both in headquarters and the field, are Afghan veterans. We have other examples like that. I think about half the people working in Haiti tend to be former Afghan veterans. Even within our organization, there is that kind of rotation. It is largely informal, but it is based on an assessment of people's experience and aptitudes.

We also tend to rotate people across departments more now. Foreign Affairs has what they call the stabilization and reconstruction team, START, and the GPSF group, which is the Global Peace and Security Fund, and a lot of their staff are former CIDA veterans as well. There are a lot of people staying in the system.

The other point I would make is that no conflict is like the last one. That is part of the problem. There are some characteristics that are the same and some that are quite different.

The Chair: That is where I was trying to go at the beginning as well. We have learned a lot of lessons, but are they applicable anywhere.

Senator Plett: Senator Lang and Senator Day both asked the questions I wanted to ask, but let me go to some of the comments you made. You stated a few times that you had been in Afghanistan before a certain date. When did CIDA go to Afghanistan and in what role?

Mr. Johnston: We have had programs there dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. They were suspended during the Soviet conflict and then resumed. We always operated in a low-level, Canada fund type activity, small projects, and humanitarian assistance through multilateral humanitarian agencies that were on the ground. Leading up to 2001, for example, we did not have a bilateral or geographic program there, but we did have engagement through multilateral channels in providing food aid or whatever was necessary. There has been a long-term Canadian engagement in Afghanistan pre 2001.

Senator Plett: You have a plan for 2011 to 2014.

Mr. Johnston: That is correct.

Senator Plett: What happens after 2014?

Mr. Johnston: A number of conferences are coming up: G8, the NATO Summit in Chicago, and the Tokyo Donors conference in the next two months, frankly, where a lot of this will be decided.

Senator Plett: Do you believe that we should be ready to move out in 2014?

Mr. Johnston: This afternoon we were briefing the new outgoing Ambassador to Afghanistan, Glenn Davidson, who asked the same question.

I am a development professional. In this business, you see that development takes a long time. Go back to 2001 and look at where Afghanistan is now. Is it better? Yes. There are 7 million or 8 million children in school; the health standards are better; and there is more of an economy. Is the government perfect? By no means. Is it better than it was in 2001? Probably.

There has been significant progress, but it is still one the poorest countries in the world and its human development indicators are very poor. I would argue from a development perspective that probably we should stay engaged in Afghanistan for some time to come to make sure that those gains are sustained and brought forward and that Afghanistan becomes a self-sustaining society and state eventually. That would be my view.

The Chair: Could we hear from Mr. Metcalfe as well? This is his area.

Dave Metcalfe, Senior Director, Afghanistan, Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA): I would echo what Mr. Johnston mentioned. In terms of sustainability and building on the results we have seen, as the senator mentioned, we have invested a lot of money in the country. To see the sustainability of those funds continue, my personal view is that we should continue on to see the gains made, especially in the area of the roles of women and girls. We have made fragile gains and built the foundation for them to stand on their own, but it would be unfortunate if we did not continue the engagement required to build that foundation and keep it moving on.

Senator Plett: What is our biggest danger if we pull out? Is it the inexperience of the military presence? Is it al Qaeda coming back and taking away these rights for children and women to study? What is the biggest danger?

Mr. Metcalfe: Are you asking about the military side or from an investment perspective?

Senator Plett: From a development perspective.

Mr. Metcalfe: The biggest risk is that we would lose the gains we have made in terms of the foundations. I am not sure that we have the solid foundation yet that is required for them to move forward and keep building upon that. It still needs a lot of, for lack of a better word, nurturing of support to build those gains so they can be sustainable and do not fall back in terms of areas you mentioned like education. Women's rights is one the most fragile areas that we have seen so far. We take two steps forward and a half step back. We need to keep moving that forward.

The Chair: If you educate the girls, then you really start to change the mindset.

Mr. Metcalfe: That is correct.

Senator Peterson: You indicated that you engage in a comprehensive analysis of the obligations and observations of your experiences in Afghanistan. Has that progressed to the stage where you will recommend changes to your organizational structure and planning methodology?

Mr. Johnston: I would go back to our earlier conversation. Organizationally, we learned that a task force does a really good job, but it is really expensive and there may be ways to do it at less cost going forward, based on the fact that we do not have to work out all these things as we get a better of sense of the steps needed. If we know, for example, that we will have a joint civilian military operation, then you look at how to do the training and define the mission and so on to do that. You would not need as much of a ramped-up organizational structure as you would need otherwise. If you talked to other civilian departments, you would find that they would probably emphasize the same issue. As we went forward, we were able to scale back and focus more on the delivery. In terms of the programming, we have learned a lot about what works best or better in conflict situations as opposed to a development environment.

In the text, we talk about the link between the stabilization efforts that the military require to help bring the local population on side. That tends to be very short-term and action-oriented and requires a lot of premises that may or may not work. We have been able to work with the military to define what we can do from a development perspective that helps in them in the short term but also builds for the long term. Those are some of the lessons, and it is context specific.

We were able to do it for the last year and a half in Kandahar before the mission wound down. What helped with that was the American surge. Canadian operations took place in a more limited area, where we had more capacity to do things as well.

Senator Peterson: What post-deployment strategy support are you providing for employees, both in the field and those who are returning?

Mr. Johnston: We have just really finished digesting the major wave of people who returned from Kandahar. Up to July 2011, we basically had 15 to 17 people on the ground in Kandahar going forward. They all departed roughly during that period, as did the Canadian military. We tend to have a decompression period for them at the end of their posting. We have developed standards across all civilian departments to provide people with the same set of benefits, and so on.

The other side of it is that throughout this exercise, there were a number of cases of people suffering from one form or another of stress, or PTSD in ultimate cases. We have been able to ensure that they get treatment from our departments. We have tried to coordinate that across the civilian departments and with DFAIT.

As I mentioned earlier, one the challenges was discovering that the civilian rotation was one year. A year in those circumstances is pretty tough on people. The average soldier in combat is six months. We learned to manage that better and look for the signs while people were there. In some instances, we pulled them out early. We also found that recruiting to keep that many people in the field for a small civilian department like CIDA was quite a challenge. We had to recruit from across government. We sought volunteers and provided the training for them to go. That was part of the challenge. Many of them have now returned to their home departments.

The Chair: That is an interesting point because a lot of the soldiers we saw were going back four, five or six times on rotation. You did not have that option in the sense of not having enough people as your base to operate.

Mr. Johnston: One the interesting things is that we have quite a significant set of people who have done two or three rotations, in Kandahar and Kabul. They really got invested in the whole thing. We have a couple of instances where people have just returned from their third rotation between the two locations.

The Chair: I am glad to know that.

Mr. Johnston: Interesting as well on the gender side is that we tended to have more women than men throughout, which defies stereotypes. Some of them were pretty tough on the ground.

The Chair: That is very good news.

I know this is kind of a difficult question, but if you take the war zone and the complications of learning to work in this situation and all of those kinds of things away, if you can push that back a bit, what was the toughest thing for you to do in development terms in the combat zone context as opposed to humanitarian efforts in Haiti or in other places?

Mr. Johnston: Frankly, it is learning to work within a high-security environment. Whether it is just the simple things like travelling in a convoy from one place to another with the risk of IEDs, et cetera, to how to get around and interact with the local population, how do the companies and organizations we hire get security and how do they operate in that environment because, frankly, past a certain point, security is their issue; we cannot provide it for them. That really defines a lot of what you can and cannot do.

Everyone has been subject to criticism at some point or another for using private security firms, but at the same time, what else will you do? There are always limits. With the relatively modest Canadian Forces presence we had there, the best they could provide us was what they called in-extremis support. In other words, if someone is under attack or has been hit, they will come in, but that is it. We always had to operate within that environment. That takes getting used to.

When we did joint training sessions with the military, I always tried to point out to our people that guy in brown or green, as the case may be, is your best friend, particularly when you get out there. Without him, you cannot do anything.

The Chair: Especially when we have him in brown.

Senator Day: We have been talking primarily about the latter part of time that we were engaged in the Kandahar province. It is good to see how that evolved, but it evolved because we had the surge and we had more soldiers to provide security so you could do the work you were doing.

During the early period, there developed within the military civilian an officer who was in the military civilian role as opposed to going out and bringing about peace and security, dealing with the local governor, et cetera. Did that role continue? That role of the military person in the military civilian role, how did that work in conjunction with the entire civilian, non-military side of government?

Mr. Metcalfe: You are talking about the civ-mil officers?

Senator Day: Yes.

Mr. Metcalfe: That role continued, even with the surge and the larger numbers of civilian development officers and diplomatic officers. Being soldiers themselves, they were able to get out into communities a lot more than we could in terms of mobility. They focused more on short-term, quick impact type projects that focused more on the military mandate. However, we worked closely with them, as Mr. Johnston mentioned, in the whole-of-government scheme of development.

You mentioned the Three D's — development, defence and diplomatic scheme — at the PRT in Kandahar, which I believe you visited when you were there. They worked together and had a project review board where all groups, including the U.S., and all the projects being worked on, whether it was longer term type projects or the shorter quick impact projects the civ-mil officers would work on were included. They worked together toward a common objective, bridging the gap between the short term, medium term and long term in terms of all development. That was definitely a needed role that continued on even after the civilian surge.

Senator Day: That would be my follow-up question. In your lessons learned that may be applied elsewhere, there is this civil military aspect that is important as part of the overall package.

Mr. Metcalfe: Definitely, and we are still working with the CF in Kingston at their lessons learned centre in terms of developing scenarios and doing tabletop exercises. We are helping to build the scenarios with them and work with them so we can understand what they do and they can understand us.

A key component we learned as we went through was the development of joint training. On the ground, we had scenarios out West, and we also did a lot of training in Kingston with the rotations just before they went out, so it was just-in-time delivery of knowledge.

The biggest thing we learned from that, as was mentioned earlier, no two situations were the same. I am not sure whether we learned specific lessons, but we learned the questions we needed to find answers to before we went. We do not have all the answers, so we know what we need to ask.

The Chair: Which is true for the military as well; no two missions are the same.

Mr. Metcalfe: Exactly.

Senator Plett: I want to get back to the question I asked earlier, and maybe I did not explain myself properly.

My question really was that we made great advancements, for example, with children and girls being able to go to school, women having rights, things that were to some extent cultural. The Taliban was one the forces, I am sure, that kept them from doing so.

My question is what is our biggest threat, not our biggest risk, to losing ground? Is it the lack of a strong military in Afghanistan, the threat of Taliban again taking over or is it cultural in that they may just simply slip back to where they were?

Mr. Johnston: I think one of the big issues right now is the transition to Afghan security forces. What the NATO members are talking about at Chicago is this whole plan that we will have trained, including 950 Canadian trainers, a complement of over 300,000 soldiers and police that we are hoping will be able to take over the better part of Afghan security by 2014. The big issue now is who pays for their salaries going past 2014.

The critical thing is that so far, a lot of transition to the security forces has been surprisingly positive. That is what you get from our military colleagues, that the transfer is working, but there is still a big piece to go. We are also making an assumption that within a couple of years after 2014, they can downsize a bit so that we can afford to pay for it.

The biggest risk in the short term is whether we will be able to sustain the progress that has gone through to 2014. Will the Taliban come back? Will the country fall into anarchy? We do not know. We hope not, but I think that will govern a lot. Security is a key issue. I will leave it there.

Senator Plett: Thank you. Is there any freedom of religion in Afghanistan? If not, is there any hope of getting some freedom in that regard?

Mr. Johnston: That is a difficult question, and maybe I should talk to Minister Baird first.

We have to remember it is an Islamic state. It calls itself the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. I know there are many different Islamic sects that live and work there. Part of the challenge in terms of managing the constitution there is balancing the differences in belief or practice between one religious sect and another.

The whole issue has been framed in terms of right to choose. For example, if you are a Muslim, do you want to become a Christian? I do not know the answer to that question. My colleagues in Foreign Affairs might be the place to go.

Senator Plett: You may be allowed to choose, but you may not like the consequences of your choice.

Mr. Johnston: That may be it as well.

The Chair: We will speak to your colleagues in the Department of Foreign Affairs, and we will be looking at the outcomes of the conferences you have cited as well.

I want to thank you both very much. As we have done with our men and women soldiers, men and women of the CF every time they or their leadership appear before us, we thank them for their work on the ground. I want to thank you two gentlemen and those who work for you for all that you have done. That was a very high-risk situation for civilians, and it still is. We appreciate you stepping up and doing more than the call of duty. Thank you very much.

Senator Day: All of your department personnel who went over there volunteered to go, did they?

Mr. Johnston: Yes.

The Chair: Absolutely. That brings this meeting to an end.

(The committee adjourned.)

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