NDDN Committee Meeting

    I bring to order this meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence, as we continue our study on the defence of North America.

    Before we begin, committee, you will notice on your agenda that we were to go in camera near the end of the meeting. We were going to talk about when we would receive the report on the ill and injured.

    I have been informed that the in camera meeting is not necessary, because we will have that report before the committee on Thursday. It will come before you in printed form on Thursday, so there will be no need for the in camera portion of this meeting. It was the chair's desire, and it continues to be my desire, to get that report before the House before we adjourn for the summer.

    I thought it was to deal with Ms. Murray's motion, but I was wrong.

    Yes.

    So at that time on Thursday, after our witness, we will have the executive summary of the report, just to permit the researchers to fill us in on a basic summary so that we can go away better prepared to roll up our sleeves and get it passed before the summer.

    It's my pleasure today to welcome two witnesses: Lieutenant-General Stuart Beare, commander of Canadian Joint Operations Command, and Brigadier-General Loos, commander of Joint Task Force North.

    Welcome, gentlemen.

    General Beare, you have the floor for 10 minutes.

    Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, thank you for allowing us to be here with you today. This is my second time appearing before this committee, and it's a great pleasure to be back.

    Let me start by saying how grateful we are for the National Day of Honour that took place on Friday of last week from coast to coast across our country, with a major event here on Parliament Hill recognizing the men and women of our forces for their service in Afghanistan and providing us the opportunity to recognize and thank Canadians for their tremendous support for us over those 12-plus years of our mission there.

    So thank you for the National Day of Honour. We really appreciate that it took place and in a very public way with Canadians.

    I take great pride in coming here to highlight today the great work of our men and women in the armed forces focused on the defence of Canada and the homeland. I am accompanied, as you mentioned, Mr. Chair, by Brigadier-General Greg Loos, who is my commander of Joint Task Force North. We both thank you for the invitation.

    Today we will speak with you about the defence of North America. In this context, the Government of Canada has made it clear for us, in the Canada First defence strategy, that we must defend Canada while we also remain a strong and reliable partner with the United States in our shared responsibility to defend our homeland, the continent.

    On the national front our mandate means that we not only provide first line military defence, but we also have an important role—and you see us routinely playing it out—in providing for the safety and security of Canadians as we support our federal and provincial partners in their mandate to deliver on safety and security missions.

     For example, when we support law enforcement, whether it be in counter-terrorism, in illegal smuggling, or in responding to disasters such as floods, we work in partnership with a broad range of partners: Public Safety, the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency, the Correctional Service of Canada, Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the coast guard, and Environment Canada, to name a few, as well as territorial and provincial partners.

    A key part of our mandate in Canada is to conduct sovereignty operations all across the country. We are an Arctic country, and the Canadian Armed Forces affirm that. We conduct regular patrols for surveillance and security purposes, including of the northern airspace as part of NORAD, and maintain the signals intelligence facility at Canadian Forces Station Alert. A key part of what we do in the Arctic is in cooperation with other federal departments and agencies as well as with the territories. My command has a planning process that includes long-term plans, such as the northern employment support plan and the Canadian joint operations command planned for the north, both of which lay a solid foundation for the synchronization of our current and future activities and our collaboration with other government departments in the north.

    The home front is our core mission, and the continental game is no less important.

    The defence of North America is carried out in a joint, integrated manner. As you know, the military relationship we have developed with our American allies over more than 50 years is proof of the importance we attach to NORAD. From an operational perspective, the synergy that exists among the three continental commands—the Canadian Joint Operations Command, NORAD and USNORTHCOM—provides a solid foundation for developing our capabilities and accomplishing our mission.

    The realities of today's world make this mission that much more difficult, since current threats are diverse in nature and have many different sources. To translate the synergy among these commands—which is the key to success—into concrete results, we must work to ensure that our two armed forces are wholly interoperable and coordinated with our civilian partners on both sides of the border.

    In military jargon, this means striving every day to discover and comprehend what is happening, to be ready to respond and, when we must respond, to do so effectively. We watch, we prepare, we practice and we conduct operations.

    We conduct daily surveillance operations in all domains. We do it to ensure we have the best possible understanding of the continental environment. We also prepare plans for every contingency, which means making sure that our partnerships with other government departments and agencies are working efficiently, as well as regularly exercising to maintain operational readiness. In other words, our goal is to achieve an optimum level of preparedness with our partners. In recent years we have implemented plans that highlight our willingness to have an effective, integrated response in particular with our United States Northern Command and U.S. partners. We have the civil assistance plan, which is a framework that provides guidance to the military forces for our two countries in support of civilian-led operations, such as in the case of natural or man-made disasters. We also have the combined defence plan, which details processes and procedures for interaction and interoperability between our two militaries during combined and parallel operations across multiple domains.

    Planning for all contingencies cannot be successful without a solid tri command. That is a Joint Ops Command, NORAD, and U.S. Northern Command relationship. We hold annual tri command staff talks in which we continue to improve the defence, safety, and security of our nations. Furthermore in 2009 all three commands signed the tri command framework, which laid the foundation on how to operate and interact. It paved the way for the three commands to identify a series of action items aimed at improving cooperation, efficiency, and interoperability. In a similar vein, we also developed a tri command vision and strategy and a tri command Arctic framework. Finally, we exercise these plans together.

    Long-term planning is also a key part of what we do. NORAD was renewed in perpetuity in 2006 while adding a maritime warning function. This means for us that we have to ensure that we keep the agreement relevant. Last year, under the direction of both Chiefs of Defence, Canada and the U.S. initiated a strategic review to analyze and examine the threats and ensure that NORAD remains informed, ready, and above all, capable of responding. We too in CJOC, partnered with NORTHCOM, are evolving in parallel with NORAD. The result is ensuring that the sum of CJOC, NORAD, and NORTHCOM actions keep us on top of any threat we may face.

     Finally, as you may be aware, I come before you today probably for the last time as I am retiring this fall. It has been and remains an honour and a pleasure to serve Canada with so many superb Canadians in uniform being so well supported and admired by a great nation.

    I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.

    Thank you very much.

    We hope you have a long and fruitful retirement. We appreciate that information. We will hear your response to some questions. I suspect that General Loos will also receive some questions.

    We'll begin with Mr. Chisu for seven minutes.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

    Thank you very much, generals.

    Thank you, especially General Beare, that you are here again. It was a great honour to serve with you in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2004.

    What are the Canadian Joint Operations Command's five most difficult challenges right now? What is the plan to overcome them?

    Mr. Chisu, thank you for the question.

    In terms of the defence mission in the homeland, be it in Canada or partnered with the United States, the perennial and persisting challenges include natural disasters and the requirement to provide for the safety and security of Canadians in the face of natural disasters; and man-made disasters, be they accidental or deliberate, in particular when in comes to hazardous materials and what we've seen recently, for example, within Canada itself in terms of man-made disasters.

     In the homeland we're challenged to ensure that we provide for the aerospace defence mission and to be confident that we're on top of aerospace threats into the continent. Clearly, NORAD is leading in addressing that particular challenge. Approaching our nation are threats and challenges that can be related to illegal immigration, transnational criminal organizations, and their influence within Canada and North America. And last but not least, we remain responsible for and capable of providing for the defence and security in our maritime domain on the approaches to Canada. Clearly, we're undertaking that responsibility with our maritime security partners, as well as our American partners.

    Within the homeland, man-made and natural disasters keep us preoccupied every day. We are preoccupied every day with the approaches to the homeland aerospace and maritime space, and with the human networks or the threat networks that know no boundaries.

    Could you please provide an overview, General, about the activities in the Arctic? We have three oceans surrounding our country and I understand that the United States has pivoted toward the Pacific. The Arctic is becoming a very interesting place for some nations who would like to claim a little bit more than they need to. In this context I would like to ask you if you could elaborate on what the threats are in the Arctic, what kinds of operations are conducted by some other nations, and what we can do to preserve our sovereignty in the Arctic.

     I'll definitely defer to my Commander of Joint Task Force North here in a moment. I know you've heard this before, but there's a universal consensus that we see no direct military threat to our interests in our Arctic. But we do see an incredible increase, a significant increase, in the civilian activity and commercial activity in our Arctic. All of that creates the requirement for better domain awareness and understanding of what's going on in our Arctic so we can provide for the safety and security of our people and our interests in the Arctic.

    That said, I will ask General Loos to give you a bit of a better feel for the kind of things he's seeing, especially with the security and safety partners in the Arctic on a routine basis. Greg.

    Thank you for the question.

    I believe there are two parts to it. The threat has already been dealt with, but certainly there's an increase in activity across the board. One of the first parts of my mission in exercising sovereignty is knowing what's going on. That's a big thrust for us, to get better at surveillance, and get better at integrating and fusing information from different sources and from partners, so we know what that activity is, where it is and, if necessary, how we can get there after being able to locate it.

    There is more commercial activity and other shipping activity. There are certainly more adventurers there, both summer and winter. We make it part of our business to try to keep tabs on that activity, in the event that we get a request from other northern partners—whether they be federal, territorial, or municipal—to come and help with search and rescue, or to respond to any crisis situation.

    In terms of activities more broadly, I would say that I administer and look after one group of activities under my own command to exercise sovereignty, and to prepare and posture ourselves to respond to any kind of operation—safety, security, or defence. We hold operations on a regular basis, and we call them the N series. Operations Nanook, Nunakput, and Nunalivut are in different areas with slightly different focuses, but in all cases we look to work with other government departments to get better at that piece.

    I won't speak to the details, but the army as well has ramped up its activities in the north so that it's better prepared to come up and operate when I call for it in time of need.

    The air force has regular activities in the north, whether it's resupply to Alert, surveillance missions with the CP-140, or NORAD activities. For anything that we call to move north, in terms of forces, we've got airlift support that goes up.

    The navy also has a presence in the north through fisheries patrols, and also through something we call Op-QIMMIQ, which is about surveillance and presence.

    Those activities are integrated, and in our premier northern operation, Nanook, they're meant to be joint. We bring all those forces together. We bring our interagency forces together, and some of our allies, with a different set of scenarios each year.

    Thirty seconds.

    How is the cooperation going with the United States in the Arctic, if you can say? You know, the Arctic has Alaska there, so....

    I'll just say, through the tri-command Arctic framework, with joint-ops command, the United States Northern Command, and NORAD, we have put in writing, and then translated into action, very routine interactions about our shared Arctic interests in safety, security, and defence. JTF Alaska is a battle buddy, U.S. Joint Task Force North, sharing an Arctic frontier.

    Thank you very much, General.

    Mr. Jack Harris for seven minutes.

    Thank you, Chair.

    Thank you, General Beare and General Loos, for coming to us. In particular, and thank you, General Beare, for your long service to Canada in the forces. Sometimes when I see young men like you leaving, I'm wondering where all that experience is going and whether it could hang around for awhile to benefit the Canadian people. I wish you well in your retirement.

    Your command, sir, is the combination of three previous commands: CEFCOM, the Canadian Expeditionary Forces Command; the Canada Command; and the Canadian Operational Support Command, which was stood up in 2012. Is that still the case? Do you still have all those responsibilities?

    You talked about the primary role being the defence of Canada and Canadian sovereignty, as well as disaster relief and other aspects, or what I call defending Canada and protecting Canadians. In that mandate, is the search and rescue responsibility there? They answer to you?

    They are—

    And the nods won't be picked up on our—

    Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

    Mr. Jack Harris: —transcript, but I appreciate the answer.

    Sorry. I'll have to learn how to translate this into a “yes”.

    Thank you.

    So you are responsible and they report to you as well.

    That is correct.

    Also, General Loos mentioned the availability of the patrolling of the north and you mentioned the coast guard. Are the activities in the north—I don't want to call them integrated—are they integrated in the sense of, do you work on planning for patrols to create presence? Presence is obviously an important matter, as you mentioned, General, but is that something that you've worked out with the coast guard in terms of timing, in terms of who's going to be where and when?

    I would say that we absolutely have a normalized relationship. We don't have an integrated plan for surveillance and presence, but we're certainly aware of each other's activities and end up providing support to each other.

    The one thing I will say is that it's been very refreshing in my time commanding in the north that the whole government collaboration really is—

    I get the collaboration part and I would be extremely disturbed and surprised if there weren't collaboration. But just from a planning perspective, there is no idea that there should be one ship in there at any particular length of time for coverage or whatever?

    No, that kind of collaboration is managed between our maritime component and the coast guard headquartered out of our maritime component headquarters in Halifax. We do have very good understanding of how each of us is manoeuvring and we're making best use of each other's presence for mutual benefit.

    That leads me to my next question relating to “maritime readiness”, I guess is the term that may be used. You talked about how it's important for us to be able to defend the security of our maritime domain, both in terms of domain awareness and responsiveness.

     I, along with a number of Canadians I suppose, am wondering whether or not we are up to the game when it comes to maritime activity. According to the latest newspaper reports, 17 of our 33 ships are not in operation and we have ships in other parts of the world. Do we have enough ships available within the Canadian maritime space to be able to do the job that's required in terms of “maritime protection”, I guess is the word, or maritime security, interdiction or presence if necessary, or whatever is required to ensure that we are establishing our presence, sovereignty patrols, and have the ability to respond?

    If you don't mind, I'm just going to back up a little bit and speak to some of your earlier comments to feed back to you a better understanding of where we are in terms of using all the capabilities of the Canadian Armed Forces.

    I only have seven minutes so if you could answer the question that I asked, not with a yes or no, but at least—.

    Sure.

    —give me an idea whether you think we're below the mark.

    The answer is that today I don't feel any inadequacy in our capacity to understand what's going on in our maritime domain.

    You're not concerned about that.

    I'm not concerned about our capacities around that today, because it's a consequence of multiple systems and capabilities space-based.

    So domain awareness is okay.

    Domain awareness is delivering and it's an effort that is civilian and military. It's space-based, airborne and surface. It's also bilateral, binational, with the American NavNorth. So my American partners who execute the maritime defence mission under Northern Command are partnered with the Canadian maritime component partner headquartered in Halifax to share domain awareness. Our response to the requirements for safety and security at sea are delivered by the military, civilians, coast guard and others. It's is working and is delivering. You see it in airborne maritime safety and security efforts routinely.

     It's a matter of how many ships we have today and how many ships will be coming online as they come out of the modernization and as new procurements come online. All of those things are to our benefit.

    I'm sure they're all to our benefit. Sir, I know you're leaving at the end of the summer, so maybe you can tell us, are there enough? We have some now. We have lots that are not in service. We've taken our patrols out of service, the 12 patrol boats that were operated by the reserves have been taken out of service.

    I can certainly assure you, sir, that we're not incurring any more risk at home by committing maritime capability abroad. We are delivering on our domain awareness at home and we have adequate capability with partners to continue to deliver on the defence security of the homeland.

    Everyone operates with limitations in terms of capability and capacity and the great thing about this new command model that doesn't have three separate commands, one away game, one home game and one support, but all three are integrated into one operational command. That allows me as the operational commander to have a better appreciation of where sequencing or gaps may occur and how to best sequence and manage any gaps that may occur and how to manage those with our operational partners.

    So in your judgment then, having been in this role since it was stood up as a tri-command, I won't call it a tri-command but those three responsibilities, would you give it a good grade for operational effectiveness and being the best way to manage these resources?

    I wish I could always write my own report card.

    I'm giving you a chance.

    The answer is, you bet. I'll explain why very briefly.

    You have 10 seconds.

    Because the agility to reallocate resources and manage the support to different mission types no longer knows a geographic boundary, it all exists in what's on command. For example, General Loos can call his neighbour, can call the maritime component or the air component or support component because they're all in one command, to help him in his mission.

    Thank you very much.

    Mr. Leung, go ahead for seven minutes.

    Thank you, Chair, and thank you, General Beare, and General Loos.

    In the eighties when I was at graduate school, I had the opportunity to participate in a discussion on combat readiness in the north Pacific. This was before the new age of cyberspace and these very high-tech communications links now.

    What I'd like to know is, in our ability to defend our sovereignty as well as our geography in the North Pacific, do we have coverage in our cyber capability to maintain a division of the geography and the coastline, as well as the ability to communicate with our assets on the ocean and on the ground?

    Let me put some specific samples in place. What happens if there's another Exxon Valdez type of oil spill? How do we respond to it? Are we ready for the next potential rogue state firing a missile from North Korea or are we ready to respond to a zone 3 earthquake off the ocean coast, thereby creating a tsunami through the Pacific north coast? Perhaps you can share your thoughts with us on that.

    Certainly. I'll speak from a global context and ask General Loos to speak specifically to the north.

    What I can assure you is that the capabilities of the networks allowing us to see in the maritime, air, land, and the cyber domains, the sensors and the networks belong either to us or to our operational partners; and the protection of those networks is our responsibility or our partners' responsibility because it's their network we're leveraging. We are on top of understanding what's going on inside our networks and assuring the preservation and defence of those networks so that they can be used even when challenged by irregular actors or otherwise, so those networks are ours.

    The networks beyond that, of course, as you know, do not belong to Defence, and as they come to the federal or provincial authorities or the private sector, those fall under the domain of Public Safety and others. We're connected with them to understand their read on the capability and the vulnerabilities that may exist in those networks. Day to day, I am provided an understanding of what's going on in our networks and how, if those networks are being affected, that's being detected, attributed, and mitigated by our own network defenders, so we're seeing that absolutely day to day.

    I have high confidence that the networks we have today, including the relationships we have today with the partners that would respond to the contingencies described, pre-exist the crisis. We don't have to make them up when the crisis manifests itself: they're pre-existing. Day to day, the liaison exchange and communications keep us connected so that they're resilient if and when a crisis manifests itself.

    The north is more of a challenge, of course, because the infrastructure there is more distributed and requires more space than does terrestrial.

    Greg, go ahead.

    Thank you, sir.

    I'll pull out a couple of those threads. What my commander here expects of me is that I anticipate and be prepared for any eventuality in the north, whether that be on the safety or security or defence-end of the spectrum, to include some of the examples you gave.

    We try to tackle that through a couple of ways. Certainly, we do so through operations and exercises. We get out on our own with our own forces—air, land, and sea. We also bring in other partners, because in many scenarios, especially the safety and security side, we're not going to be the lead department. We'll only be participating if we're asked to come and help as a force of last resort. It makes good sense to have those pre-crisis relationships sorted out at higher levels, and also at my level, across the regional, federal, territorial, and municipal organizations that would be implicated and involved. So we get together with them, we practise, and we have the relationships.

    We also have one other forum that I co-chair with the regional public safety rep called the Arctic Security Working Group. Biannually, we get together a couple of times. We draw out on different themes, including, for example, coming up at the end of May, we're going to have a look at oil-spill response to find out what we know and what we don't know, and try to identify gaps and ways ahead on how we can share information and how we can get better.

     Then, can you assure us that there's no blackout zone, no dead zone, from the mid-Arctic all the way across to the southern boundaries of Alaska and the northern tip of Vancouver Island?

    I think your question probably has two parts. One part you're talking about is surveillance, and the other part is the ability to communicate for command and control. I can assure you that there are all kinds of blackout areas. We have a network of networks and system of systems that overlap to the greatest extent possible, but the north is still developing in many different flavours of infrastructure, including communications.

    Do we share with our partners, like the United States, for example, any satellite imaging or satellite communication that's within our cooperation, that is, our defence of North America cooperation?

    Absolutely. We share on many different levels—strategic, operational, and tactical. So, I'm sharing out to the flanks, with folks in both Greenland and in Joint Task Force Alaska, at my level. At the operational level, for Joint Operations Command, they have networks that draw on some of those other information sources and bring them together to create a fused picture.

    What about at the submarine level, where I understand we don't have that capability? Do we the ability to request for that below the ocean?

    Ah, okay.

    Well, I'd say two things. One is just to return to the blackout nodes. The places where we're not blacked out is where people are, so I wouldn't want to leave you with the perception that we have blackout nodes right over top of where our citizens are. That's not the case. It's the unpopulated, vast spaces where we're prepared to accept a degree of blackout noding, which our safety and security interests there may be able to anticipate.

    That said, the subsurface is a highly compartmentalized discussion, and we have great confidence that we're sharing what we have with our own subsurface fleet, which has been deployed in operations recently to include a joint inter-agency task force south, in the Pacific waters around Central America, just before Christmas. That submarine put us into an operating environment which required full exposure of the subsurface picture that we understand.

    Thank you very much—

    Thank you, sir.

    —Mr. Leung and General, and now we have Ms. Murray for seven minutes.

    Thank you very much for being here, and I also want to wish you all the best in your retirement and thank you for your service to Canadians.

    Thank you.

    I have three questions.

    Before I go to them, I just want to ask you about the sentence on the top of page 2, where you say “While the home front is our core mission, the continental game is no less important.” I'm trying to understand if there is priority-setting in the Canadian Armed Forces. By “core mission”, does that mean that takes priority? So, if you have to weigh, and there are constrained resources and there's a need on both fronts, is the home front the priority, or is it equal?

     I'd say, very simply, that the absolute responsibility for defence safety and security through military means at home is our unique responsibility. We have to satisfy that.

    So that would be your priority, given a challenge in putting resources in two places.

    Our defence of the continent is a partnership with U.S. Northern Command and Canada-U.S. NORAD.

    In terms of international, the home front in Canada is the priority over deployment overseas.

    You bet.

    If you could, if you recall the G8, G20, and Olympics of the 2010 era, notwithstanding our incredible international contributions at the time, there was no limit to how we would use our military to deliver the safety and security around the Olympics, G8, and G20, for example.

    I understand, and this ties into other testimony we've had that the choice of replacement for CF-18s should take into account what the priority is. If the priority is Canada, with its large spaces and long-range needs, then that may be a different statement of requirements than if the priority is deployment overseas.

    Thank you for that.

    So, are special forces in your command, as well? They're not listed in our briefing note as specifically under your command.

    No. There are three operational commands that serve the defence mission under the chief, NORAD, CJOC, and special forces command. From time to time, special forces operators will be put under my operational command or control for specific missions.

    Okay. Well, then, could you confirm that the special operation forces will be deploying to Nigeria, and if so, when and for how long?

    No, I can't confirm that.

    Okay.

    But I can tell you they served under my predecessor command, Expeditionary Force Command, in Afghanistan in the training mission, for example, and in Kandahar and combative operations, for example.

    Are you able to share information as to whether Nigeria is agreeable to a deployment of troops on the ground from Canada?

    No, I can't speak to that.

    All right. I'll go to two other questions that I have.

    I wanted to follow up with the question about naval capacity on the Pacific Ocean. I'm from the west coast. I understand that the lone tanker in the fleet is disabled and probably will not be put back into commission. What joint, continental, or even international exercises have been affected by the lack of a supply ship?

    Thank you for the question. The answer is, at this stage, everything we do to deliver on our safety and security mission is being done. It has not been adversely affected by that specific capability. Our participation in the rehearsals for contingencies like the rim of the Pacific exercise, for example, this summer, which is where we actually practise our contribution to international missions with our international partners, has not been adversely affected either. So we're able to deliver on the things we need to get out of, training our soldiers, sailors, and airmen to be ready for the next contingency, and we're also being a very relevant contributor to an international activity with great capabilities in the air, at sea, and on the land.

    If you have four ships in some area of the Pacific and no tanker or supply ship, do you beg or borrow supplies from other allies? Or do you have to pull them back and keep them back? How do you deal with that?

    Thanks for that.

    Everything we do in the maritime, air and land domains is supported and enabled by a collaborative support framework.

    Okay, so you work with the U.S.

    LGen Stuart Beare: Absolutely.

    Ms. Joyce Murray: Talking to a naval officer recently, the comment was that we'll always be the last priority, so we get the dregs of what's left over after they supply their own fleet.

    I'd offer that has not been our experience in operations nor in the training we do with the—

    So ongoing, do we need to replace the Protecteur, then? As one of our other witnesses suggested, in the constrained era we're in, should we be relying on our allies for resupply while we provide some other kind of capacity they don't have, and do that kind of collaboration? Is that in the plans?

    The design and delivery of this generation, the next generation of maritime capability, is in the hands of the command of the navy and strategic leadership. I'm not going to go into what their choices are, but what I can assure you is notwithstanding how many vessels of what type we have today, we are incredibly effective in the operations we're doing today because they're based on partnerships.

    Great.

    My last question is around the budget cuts that have affected training budgets. I understand that there has been a severe reduction in training missions, especially to the Arctic. What is the reduction in the cycle of training or the volume of training? Is it 50%? Is it 20%?

    Thank you for that question. The realities are that there are four major consumers, five if you count special forces command, of the training program: the service chiefs who train their maritime, air and land forces for general-purpose combat capability, and special forces for their high-end capability.

    Then as a joint operation commander, my training responsibilities are to take those inputs and put them into exercises, which are like rehearsals for contingencies in the future. To be specific, in the north Operation Nanook is the opportunity we provide to bring our people into the north to operate alongside northern partners and federal partners, to rehearse the kind of contingencies we could foresee coming in the future and leaving behind at the end of the experience more capacity, more capability, and more understanding of each other, of how we do our business.

    Ms. Joyce Murray: How is that—

    Thank you very much, General.

    —no cut in that budget.

    We're 20 seconds over.

    Ms. Gallant, for five minutes.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and, through you, I will adhere to our study of North America as opposed to Nigeria. We all care deeply about the girls who have been kidnapped and we wish our civilian forces who are cooperating with those agencies all the best in finding them.

    It was an extreme pleasure to have Admiral Truelove, on the Pacific coast, host our NATO parliamentary associations when they came from Europe to study Pacific security in North America. He gave a very kinetic overview of what was going on, took us on brand new patrol ships, patrol boats that were new, built on time, and on budget. As well, we learned about energy security on that. But if you're speaking to him, please let him know how much we really appreciated what he did, and how it continues to be of interest, and our Arctic sovereignty is also of concern to our NATO partners.

    In terms of the study that we're doing right now, reference was made to Operation Nanook. I'm wondering if you can tell us any plans for this coming summer, in terms of what may occur.

    I'll be turning this one over to Greg Loos in a second, with his chapeau, around Operation Nanook. Conceived about 10 years ago, or described 10 years ago, was this requirement to not be episodic, but persistent in a return to exercising our competency, capability, and capacity in the north—not for our benefit, but for our collective benefit. The collective in this context are, in the first instance, municipal authorities, first responders, territorial partners, federal agencies, and the Canadian Armed Forces in our north.

    Operation Nanook has moved across different population centres through our north over about eight years and has gone to different places to leave not just an experience in the people who have flown north and come south again, but leave an enduring effect within our north. That is driven by the idea of the Government of Canada's strategy, which is to enhance governance in the north, provide for the safety and security of our citizens in the north and to advance social and economic well-being in the north. Those are the motivators that inform how we operate in the north, and Operation Nanook has been helping, as part of our program of activities in north, to do that.

    I'll ask General Loos to speak to the summer of 2014.

    For the summer of 2014, the activity is scheduled to take place from mid-August through mid-September, including deployment out and redeployment back, with the majority of the activity at the end of August and start of September.

    We've got two lines of operation. The first is an Arctic search and rescue scenario, with a specific view to testing out some of the ideas and intent behind our international Arctic SAR Agreement that we signed onto a few years back through the Arctic Council work. That's the first scenario.

    The second line of operations is a consequence management scenario, with a stricken vessel pulling up on shore somewhere along Frobisher Bay, and we have to deal with that situation. It becomes more a rescue as opposed to a search, involving all of the responders out of Iqaluit.

    We offer our training venue as a platform for them to exercise and work on those areas that they think are important to them, and where they have to get better. That's worked really well as an approach to making it a more appropriate whole-of-government venue.

    We will see elements from the army, navy, and air force participate. We're also expecting any SAR scenario to have a Danish ship and a U.S. ship participate, and there may well be other Arctic nation observers coming to have a look.

    Very good.

    What suspicious activity have Canadian Armed Forces members come across in the past in the north?

    What suspicious activities....

    Well, the first thing is that we're not looking for suspicious activities per se, but at what our partners are perceiving as a regular activity in the north. What is our law enforcement seeing as a challenge? What are the Public Safety officials seeing as a challenge? What are the first nations seeing as challenges? We feed that in, to inform our own understanding.

    Clearly what we're seeking to surveil is activity in the north that could result in a requirement to respond to a safety or security need.

    Thank you very much, General.

    Mr. Larose, go ahead for five minutes.

    Thank you, Chair.

    Welcome to our witnesses.

    The approach we are taking here is to ask what is it that we need? What are the tools that we need? What are the new realities upcoming? Mr. Harris mentioned that in the Arctic, 17 out of 33 ships are apparently not operational, and some of them are elsewhere. Now, you mentioned that when it comes to intelligence we know what's going on, but the question here is what are the tools you need to be able to do the job? You mentioned, with your thumbs-up, if I understood correctly, that everything was fine. But at the same time I'm a little confused. We're not going to get those ships for the next 20 years, so what are the threats coming in? What is it that we need?

    I don't want to leave a perception that bringing a modernized fleet of the current warships back into operation is a bad thing. That's a great thing. We're going to get fantastic, new warships, modernized, that will be employable until the next generation comes along. So I don't want to communicate that there's not a desire to see those back in the water as quickly as responsibly possible.

    That said, we are seeing an investment in the capability sets we require to prosecute our mandate. Number one is the domain awareness. So space-based surveillance exists, it's improving in terms of delivery to the customer, and more capability will be coming online in the future. RADARSAT Constellation, I believe, you are familiar with—

    Basically, if I understand correctly, with the tools that we have right now, we're doing the best we can do. Correct?

    I would say that we are achieving the effect we need to achieve with the tools that we have today, and we will always benefit from having more tools in the future to help mitigate new threats or challenges that may be coming our way. But none of this is being done alone. Again, we're doing this with partners.

    Can you speculate on what we would need those new tools for? If we're on top of things and everything is hunky-dory, sorry for the word, what do we need them for? What are the threats?

    I think the thumbs-up was about being in operational command. The thumbs-up wasn't indicating that the security environments are getting any easier to manage.

    So the security challenges in the north will continue to include the following: the civilian activities in the north that could result in a safety or security challenge; the very real potential for environmental challenges in the north; and the requirement to provide for a response to the safety and security needs in the north today, which will continue to be required in the future. It's also the capacity to understand what those challenges are today and that our capacity response to them today is still meeting our needs and is adequate. Furthermore, bringing new capabilities online will help us not just deliver on the home game, but also provide the assurance that the home game, as we were talking about earlier, is also able to enable the continental mission and the mission overseas.

    With the end of our participation in the Afghan conflict, a lot of the tools came back that aren't necessarily adapted to our homeland defence. Can you mention the tools that we do need more specifically? You mentioned environmental challenges. Are we even looking at pandemic? What is the participation? What are the tools? Are we relying on the U.S. that much, or do we have what we need? What are we going to do if there is more than one crisis at the same time?

    Probably the most significant capability that came home from Afghanistan is our people. I think what you will see is that the majority of our operational activity in the homeland has been the mobilization of people with tools to provide for safety and security—for floods, fires, and the like—and to be able to prepare to conduct security operations around pre-planned activities like the G-8 and G-20, when required. So that is definitely home and available to us for use where and when required. A lot of that is a high readiness to respond day to day, as we are today in Kashechewan, for example, or yesterday in evacuating citizens from floods there.

    That said, the tools that exist and are coming on line will continue to enhance our capability to provide all the main awareness, will continue to enable us to move around our country through strategic lift, to get to places of need, and to be able to operate with great quality in the maritime domain, in the air domain, and on the land. So I don't have a list of gaps in my capabilities to do the mission I'm required to perform today. I am tracking the new capabilities that are coming on line to make sure we integrate them to achieve their best effect, not just for the north, not just for the home game, but for the entirety of our operational missions.

    We have limited resources in Canada. Of course, we have to do the best that we can. We've heard that less with less is what's coming up. If we had a priority between ballistic missiles and equipment to defend our homeland, what would be your choice?

    Your choice will have to wait until the questioner gets another chance.

    Mr. Williamson, for five minutes.

    Thank you, Chair.

    Gentlemen, it's good to see you here today.

    General Beare, I want to refer to some answers you provided to my colleagues, Mr. Leung and Mr. Harris. When Mr. Harris asked about coverage, you responded with respect to domain awareness and it sounded like a very satisfactory answer. When Mr. Leung asked about blackout zones, it seemed to raise some follow-up questions.

    How do you reconcile those two answers? On the one hand, it sounded as if with the various capabilities that all is covered, but in a follow-up question from Mr. Leung, I was left with a sense of doubt or uncertainty, at least from my point of view.

    I'd like you to respond to that, please.

    Absolutely. I will turn it over to General Loos to speak specifically to the northern piece, but what I want to assure you is that where people are and where our interests are, we're assuring that we have domain awareness and the ability to communicate with them.

    Greg, go ahead.

    Simply to reinforce that point, when it comes to surveillance, that's not the issue. There isn't communications infrastructure across 4,000 square kilometres of Arctic zone. That's my area of responsibility. When we go to operate in the north, it means we have to plan for and take with us the necessary means for command and control to undertake our operations, so we're not relying on civic infrastructure to carry out our business. My error was in not clarifying that earlier.

    Where and when we're called into action, almost exclusively, that's going to be in areas where there is population. There are 72 communities in the north. That's how I bound the problems from a safety and security perspective and where we practice and prepare and build relationships to make sure we can use what's there, understand what's not there, and bring it with us when we have to operate.

    Okay, thank you.

    As a point of maybe interest or education, a number of years ago a foreign vessel of Sri Lankan migrants approached the coast of Canada. Would that fall under the CJOC in terms of awareness of that ship well before news of it hits the Canadian media, for example?

    Absolutely. Public Safety leads on the illegal immigration agenda. They have an international network and partnerships. They have embassies and missions overseas that seek to anticipate and monitor.

    There is a framework of contingency plans that allows for a request of Canadian Forces' assistance to the RCMP and Canada Border Services in the eventuality that one actually gets close enough to our shores that an intervention is required by Public Safety's partners.

    Thank you.

    In discussing the north, you mentioned several key mandates: civilian, environment, safety. One that was missing, from my point of view, was both to highlight our sovereignty, and even the ability to project force.

    A number of weeks ago NORAD scrambled some fighter jets as Russian planes were approaching North American air space. I'm curious, given the goings on in Ukraine—and Canada has taken a vocal and principled position that has run counter to what Russia might have hoped for or anticipated on the world stage—is the thinking going around, or are you prepared for the possibility that the bear might decide to poke us up there, and what would the response be from the forces?

    I'd say that, first, is our understanding of where Russian forces are positioning and what their activities are as a voice to their north, which of course frontiers on ours. It's pretty high. We have a pretty good understanding of their physical activity. We also have an appreciation of what their capabilities are, and in the aerospace domain, North American Aerospace Defense Command is paying attention to that every day. There is a series of routine activities that are maintaining our confidence that we're seeing and responding as a demonstration of will and also as a demonstration of our capacity to defend ourselves and preparedness to do so if required. That is happening under NORAD routinely.

    Of course, then there is the question of intent. If what you're speaking to is intent, I won't speculate on what people's intentions might be. What I would offer is this: We have a current posture and a five-year plan for advancing our posture in our north, not just activities in the north but with forces from the south in the north. That is, in my estimation, effective in demonstrating our continued investment in and the reality and execution of our sovereignty over our northern aerospace—

    Thank you very much for that response.

    Mr. Jack Harris for five minutes.

    Thank you, Chair.

    We have to talk about RADARSAT.

    Excuse me. We have a bunch of items on the table here. I'd like to talk about ships a little bit more. It's kind of like either we have too many or we have too few. If we have 33 and we're only using half of them, then did we have too many before that? We've got 12 coast patrol vessels laid up, which I understand was for financial reasons.

    I'm not asking you to tell our potential adversaries what the vulnerabilities are. Maybe we should have a more in-depth, off-the-record conversation, but do we have enough maritime assets to do the job?

    Mr. Harris, I'm not in a position, nor is it my responsibility, to represent the full upkeep and requirements of the entirety of the armed forces, and so I'd defer that question to others.

    But what I'd like to assure you is that, with the capabilities we have today, with the sailors who are manning them today, we're delivering incredibly effective maritime operational effect at home, in and around our continent, and internationally. I see no compromise in our guarantee to Canadians on our capacity to deliver on the defence and security in the maritime domain at home.

    I would offer that any calculus around how many, how long, is really not mine to speak to.

    You're essentially the operations commander.

    I am the commander of the employment of the forces that the Chief of Defence assigns to all specific operational challenges.

    So the naval assets, the army assets, and the air force assets report to you for operational purposes. Is that correct?

    When they're assigned by the Chief of Defence for those operations, that's correct.

    They have to be assigned for a particular operation, not in general?

    Yes, that is correct, sir.

    Let's go back to the domain awareness side for a moment. Obviously we have the Auroras that you mentioned, the CP-140s. We have coastal patrol with the coast guard and with our ships.

    Let's talk about the use of our CF-18s, for example. Are they engaged in regular patrol of our coastal or our sovereignty extent? Is that part of the ongoing program of either domain awareness or sovereignty exercise?

    Clearly in an aerospace defence mission they're into a system of systems that helps detect and then inform where you want to take from a surveillance mode to a specific target mode. The CF-18 and fighters aren't the systems that provide you broader surveillance. The systems that you send into those areas where wide surveillance capabilities have told you that you need to be....

    So in the maritime domain awareness mission for us, we're using the wide-band sensors to the maximum of their utility, including RADARSAT constellation and other sensors. We're using maritime patrol, who are built for the wider surveillance mission, and then we're using surface assets, who are part of a network of maritime presence, which is hugely dense.

    If I were to bring you into the Maritime Security Operations Centre, or MSOC, east coast or west coast, and provide to you an illustration.... You've seen it?

    I've been in Halifax.

    As for the CF-18s that we have, we don't just have them parked. They're obviously in operation. Is part of their operation performing regular patrols of our airspace and being there looking around, showing their operational capability, and having a presence in the air throughout Canada's airspace? Is that part of their work?

    That absolutely is part of what they do in the North American aerospace defence mission routinely from Bagotville to Cold Lake.

    I want to ask that question in terms of the suggestion that one of the ways of extending the life of the CF-18s is to reduce the number of flying hours. I'm just wondering, does that involve the reduction of the amount of patrols that the CF-18s would be doing over the next six, eight, or ten years?

    I think you had the commander of the Canadian NORAD region speak to you, General St-Amand. The answer is that he is not compromising on his NORAD missions or on his assurance of provision of fighters to the NORAD mission set, nor am I being affected adversely on any national safety or security missions by virtue of that.

    Again, that's not a platform that I would want to be using for wider surveillance. It's a platform you want to use for interdicting or looking at a more focused target when that is required. We have other systems that do that from a domain awareness perspective.

    Mr. Bezan, for five minutes.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I want to thank our witnesses for being here.

    General Beare, I want to congratulate you on a great career and strong leadership. I've always enjoyed our conversations and the candour that you always have when you're at committee and talking to parliamentarians.

    I want to dive more into tri-command. As a committee, having been down to Colorado Springs, we can see how NORAD's there and how it has integrated operations with United States and Canadian officers working side by side. We see that USNORTHCOM is stood up right beside NORAD. Of course, General Jacoby is double-hatted; he's both USNORTHCOM and NORAD commanding officer.

    How does CJOC fit into that, and have that interoperability?

    It's interesting. Perhaps I could give you a bit of a word picture. We have been practising how NORAD, NORTHCOM, and CJOC as commands, charged with similar but different defence missions, as a triad create something bigger than the sum of their parts. The NORAD mission is clear: binational aerospace defence and maritime warning. NORTHCOM is clear: defence of the American homeland. It's an American national command. It doesn't have any responsibility to us. Then there's CJOC: defend the homeland, partner on the continent, and missions overseas.

    When General Jacoby, as commander of Northern Command, puts a slide on the wall and shows his area of operational responsibility, he draws a big circle around North America. Within that is Canada. So I laugh at him and I tell him, “Well, General, that's awful good of you to be defending Canada.” When he replies “No, no, Stu, that's your mission”, I tell him “I get that, but let me show you my area of responsibility.” Then I put up a map of the world and say, “General, you're in my area of responsibility, just so you know.”

    Fundamentally, the missions that we perform individually and in a tri-command team have an effect in terms of defence, safety, and security on the continent, which more than the sum of its individual parts. We have selected the binational aerospace command to defend in the aerospace domain: read, I don't need to worry about that mission that's being prosecuted by NORAD. I have a defence, safety, and security mission in the homeland and around the world, which I prosecute noting that the mission is going on. Then of course General Jacoby at NORTHCOM does his U.S. home game mission.

    So the tri-command provides us a way of sharing our definition of what's going on as it relates to all missions. We're not tunnel-visioned on the threats or challenges to the continent, we're looking at all threats. We're not tunnel-visioned on any one domain, we're looking at all domains. We're not limited in our approaches to an individual command's approach, we're able to leverage one command or another's approach to dealing with specific challenges.

    In the combined defence plan for defence action and the civil assistance plan for assisting civil authorities, those pre-existing arrangements allow us to leverage each other's capabilities for individual or collective benefit. We don't just talk about it, we practise it. We practise it as operational commands and we practise it from time to time in the field, including search and rescue, for example, which is working day to day.

    Taking a look at the entire continent of North America, when the U.S. has something like a 9/11 or a Hurricane Katrina, what is expected of CJOC in those situations because we work together?

    If you recall the hurricanes off the east coast last year, as they're tracking up the eastern seaboard we're maintaining a shared picture of the natural phenomena coming our way. One thing about Mother Nature and the enemy is that they don't really care about boundaries. We had the shared view of what was coming, and we were able to share our assessments of potential impact. We were able to enhance liaison where required, connected to in this case our civil authorities, because the response would have been a civilian-led response.

    We dusted off our pre-existing arrangements whereby should the requirement for military forces to support the civil authority be required, our military forces would be leveraged by going across the border to help somebody else, as we did with Katrina many years back. All of the pre-existing relationship in terms of planning and collaboration was prepared to be used, should that be required. That's how we as a tri-command operate.

    Just as a final question, we have this great relationship with the United States, but we do share Arctic territory very closely with Denmark. What type of joint operation do we have with Denmark in the defence of North America, especially in Arctic security?

    I'll let Greg speak to that because it's a pretty—

    Greg can speak to that after the next questioner.

    Mr. Harris, you have five minutes.

    Thank you, Chair.

    I think you've answered one question I had. Your counterpart is NORTHCOM and General Loos' counterpart is Joint Task Force Alaska, I take it.

    Yes, sir.

    So you're looking at the northern side.

    On the search-and-rescue side of your responsibility, General Loos, you mentioned the Arctic. I guess there are two kinds of search and rescue. The preparation in the Arctic seems to be for potentially a maritime incident in which a ship has run aground or we need a response at that level.

     We had a plane crash in the Arctic, as you know, and very fortunately, it happened at a time when Operation Nanook was there. We had assets and personnel on the ground, but aside from that kind of incident, it is generally thought that we have inadequate search-and-rescue capability that far north, in terms of individual rescues. For example, in Labrador, people are complaining about inadequate search-and-rescue capability there and inadequacy of response times, with our two-tier system of thirty minutes or two hours depending on the time of day.

    It has been suggested that when we're looking to obtain fixed-wing SAR, we're leaving it to the contractor to decide where assets might be located. That seems to me to be a departure from the perspective of us as a nation trying to determine what level of service is going to be provided in particular parts of our country and how it is going to be provided.

    I know you see it from the command point of it, General Beare, but it's something we as a party are certainly concerned about. Where I come from, the people are particularly concerned about it. Is there a plan to improve search and rescue in the Arctic to have a faster air response to an individual disaster, a lost person, or even a greater disaster?

    Sir, I believe you're very aware of the different responsibilities for search and rescue on the land, at sea, and in the air. On the land, provincial and territorial authorities supported by law enforcement take the lead and are responsible for land-based search and rescue. It's the coast guard in the maritime domain and then the Canadian Forces in the aerospace search and rescue domain.

    The network of search and rescue partners is very alive and very practised at collaborating and cooperating and bringing different assets to support the different search and rescue leads, be they land, maritime, or air. The predominant employment of our search and rescue capability, aerospace, is typically in the maritime domain, as you're probably aware, in support of the coast guard search-and-rescue mandate.

    I have three search-and-rescue regional commanders headquartered in Victoria, in Winnipeg, with its coordination centre in Trenton, and in Halifax, and they are co-located and are cooperating with the coast guard in those locations. Their aperture for the search-and-rescue system—

    I'm familiar with the system, but I'm also familiar with the fact that several years ago it took four days to get an Inuit hunter off an ice floe in Resolute Bay, travelling from Greenwood, Nova Scotia. It was regarded as a success, because he was rescued, but it didn't seem to me to be responsive, shall we say, in terms of where our assets are located and how quickly we can get to someone in danger.

    With the five locations from which we operate our airport search-and-rescue forces, we deliver consistently with 30 minutes' and two hours' notice. Whether or not that's quick enough is not conditioned by how fast we can fly to where they are but by all the conditions that have preceded the call, the search-and-rescue event itself.

    We do an annual revisit of where the search-and-rescue calls have come from, and I direct the reposturing of how we use the quick response and the normal two-hour response, or the secondary SAR capabilities to be prepared for the next season of, most likely, search-and-rescue demand signals. While it's understandable that people may perceive that we might be more responsive by having bases or operating locations in the north for search and rescue, that has not been the decisive factor in how successful we've been in our search and rescue in the north to date.

    Last year, I believe the number was 56 responses by our aeronautical SAR to search-and-rescue requirements in the north. That was 56 out of 10,000 potential calls coast to coast to coast.

    Thank you very much, General.

    Mr. Williamson, you have five minutes.

    Thank you, Chair.

    If you'd like you can take a few minutes to respond to the question that my colleague James Bezan posed to you but you didn't have a chance to answer last round.

    It was a question on Denmark and the type of cooperation on Greenland and Arctic security.

    We have an MOU for cooperation that has enabled us to reach out at a commander-to-commander level. We've had reciprocal visits and exchanges of personnel. We'll have a Danish ship participating in Operation Nanook this year. I would characterize that as an initiated and growing relationship. Beyond that, we haven't necessarily operationalized any specific plans. We're certainly looking at the Arctic SAR provisions as a starting point for seeing what we need to do next to make collaboration and working together more normal.

    Thank you.

    You mentioned earlier that you were going to look at oil spill response. Could you explain that a little? Is there a geographic area you had in mind in particular: west, east, or north?

    Let me start by framing the Arctic security working group, our team north partners that I referred to repeatedly: the federal, territorial, regional organizations; first responders; and emergency measures. We come together twice a year to look at what we have, what we don't have, what we need to do together, how we need to get better at doing it together. What we've circled as a theme for this year—not because Defence or Public Safety has the lead—from the group that gets together is the increasing maritime traffic, and the potential for drilling to come to the north. There is drilling to our west on the north slope in Alaska. We chose that the theme to look at across-the-board responsibilities, capacities, and capabilities. It also supports our wider Arctic security working group effort to try to do that kind of capability mapping more broadly, so that we know who has what in times of crisis or emergency. It really is a deeper dive into both what the risks are going to look like as we move forward, and how we're postured for a collective response, and if we have to respond, what that might look like.

    What is the vision for the military role? Is it coordination? Do you rely on civilian equipment for any kind of disaster, challenge...?

    To be clear I don't envision any specific role for the military in that other than the more general role we have as a force of last resort. When it comes down to another department running out of capacity or capability to respond to a specific event, they will normally ask us if we've got something to offer. The biggest challenges in the north, which we touched on earlier, are infrastructure, geography, and climate. The fact that we regularly practise getting places and operating there is a great enabler for other government departments when it comes time to do something anywhere across the north. We are relied upon to do that in many different situations.

    That's very good.

    General Beare, is there similar planning or thinking on the east and west coasts? If so, what, and if not, is it necessary?

    If I could, I want to amplify what Greg commented on. Typically people see the capability of the Canadian Forces through the ships, the troops, or the planes that are being operated. But there's an under-appreciation of everything that's behind that: the command and control, surveillance, logistics, transportation and the like, the back office functions. Those are the things that are typically in high demand in a complex emergency response. While we may not provide thousands of soldiers or dozens of ships and planes, we're really good at providing the ability to communicate, providing headquarters locations, surveillance of all types, and enabling through logistics, getting to places that are hard to get to and sustaining them. We can see that as a very valuable contribution of the Canadian Forces to mission partners who are in the lead.

    On our coasts, the problems our coastal joint task force commanders rehearse with our agency partners are typically led by what those inter-agency partners see as their biggest challenge. On the east coast, maritime security and the challenges of threats coming ashore are the focus areas. On the west coast it's being prepared to deal with natural disasters.

    Thank you very much, General.

    For the next five minutes, we'll have Misters Harris and Harris, starting with Jack.

    I'm going to share my time with Mr. Dan Harris, my colleague on the left, but I have one or two questions first.

    We had a representative, a once-active U.S. military leader here the other day talking about cooperation on disaster relief. One of the questions I asked him was about the situation in Haiti, where we were trying to get our assets there and the airport was full. He said that something was being worked on. I wonder if you could give us your view as to whether that's been resolved or not.

    The secondary and related question to that concerns our of cooperation with the U.S. When we spoke about that and the disaster relief, the only trouble that he seemed to come up with was the problem of getting our linesmen, who were going to assist in Hurricane Sandy, across the border. It seemed to be an American problem. Are there any issues that need to be sorted out there?

    I'm not an authority on it. I can't speak to the civil agency-to-civil agency support measures, although beyond the border is the framework within which our public safety and security organizations work cross-border with each other. I know that those provisions exist, but I can't speak in detail to any perceived challenges on either part.

    In terms of working internationally in disaster response, I have to say, what we do through the vehicles of things like the disaster assistance response team is world-class in time, quality, and capability contribution to humanitarian assistance overseas. And it's seen that way by our international partners.

    And by us. I just wondered what the response time was for standing up that facility.

    For the DART, are you referring to...?

    In the Philippines, for example, when it was clear that we would be deploying there—some 13 time zones way—we were amongst the first to arrive and to be effective on the ground, including partners within the region, who were almost within the same time zone. It was a very fast, very effective, very significant contribution.

    I would say that our partnership is not limited to what we put on the ground. It's how we use the strategic lines of communication, in our jargon, for air and sea and other means of transportation, and what method we use to cooperate with our partners in that. I have to tell you, the Canadian-U.S. partnership, in moving ourselves around the world by military and civilian means, is fantastic. And it's regularly exercised, and it's so normal that people don't know that we're doing it.

    Mr. Dan Harris.

    Thank you.

    I'm going to go on to RADARSAT actually, because when the RADARSAT program was being funded and created there were some operational changes made to the program by DND and also some delays caused when, unfortunately, the last bit of funding wasn't put into the 2012 budget, which actually pushed back the RCM's mission launch date beyond the expected operational end date of RADARSAT-2, which is what is up there now. There is a significant possibility of a mission gap between those two.

    What would that actually do to domain awareness, should that come to pass? What steps are being taken to mitigate that risk?

    Thank you for the question.

    I'm not aware of the potential risk of that capability gap. From my perspective, we're tracking to be able to sustain the capability, and that RCM will deliver a much enhanced capability in the future. That said, I won't speculate on whether or not there will be a gap out there in the future because I'm certainly not anticipating it.

    The capability today is being leveraged routinely in our maritime domain awareness and in our surveillance and our arctic spaces, to the tune of hundreds of demand signals every year for that imagery, for our application. That doesn't include other partners, the coast guard and others who are using it routinely as well.

    It has been used around the world, in Hurricane Katrina and the gulf oil spill—

    And fisheries patrols and....

    The Americans have made use of it. And also the tsunami in Japan....

    The operational expected end date is now before the anticipated launch date of RCM. If RADARSAT-2 actually goes down when it's supposed to end life then we'll have nothing up there until RCM gets launched, correct?

    I'd rather speak about whether or not a date that's been declared as an end date really is, and/or when things are going to start, and offer that the space team underneath the vice-chief can speak to that. As an operational commander, we love what we get out of that capability.

    Absolutely. I fought tooth and nail when the funding was missed in the budget that year, about that issue.

    You're going to have to fight tooth and nail for another question, because we're going to Mr. Chisu for five minutes.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

    General, I have two questions.

    First, can you say how the Canadian Joint Operations Command is using the reserve forces? What is the role of the reserve forces in your operations and how are you pursuing the use of them?

    Thank you. That's a great question.

    The Canadian Armed Forces isn't two forces. It's one, with a regular component and a reserve component, each of which provides a complementary effect to operations as well as everything we do to train and prepare for operations. I'd like to make that point right up front.

    For the forces we employ—as we were speaking about earlier, Mr. Harris—and that are assigned to me by the services, by virtue of Chief of Defence direction, the services decide how they're going to package regular reserve forces to be part of that contribution. Let me describe to you where we see them being employed in our operations today.

    In the maritime domain, we see a routine employment of reserve component sailors in our domestic and continental operations. The majority of the maritime coastal defence vessels we employed in JIATF South—Joint Interagency Task Force South—in the multilateral counter-narcotics operations in the Caribbean and on the Pacific coast were manned by reserve sailors. They did superb work.

     In the home game, when we respond to crises and contingencies at home, the quick responders are naturally your full-time component, and behind them are reserve component potential responders when required, and the army would provide them, to include reserve component responders that are optimized for the north. I believe you've heard of the Arctic Response Company Group, coming out of the army. The air component is the same. At home or at an away game, the services will decide how those two are integrated.

    But I don't see nor do I command operational activity that distinguishes between a regular or reserve member in operations. Their soldiers and sailors are men and women provided by the services, and they deliver every time we ask them to.

    Thank you very much for the clarification.

    Again, I would like to thank you for your long service in the Canadian Armed Forces, General.

    I do have a question about the situation in the Pacific. Actually, we are looking at the Atlantic. We are surrounded in the North Atlantic by NATO countries, where we don't have any perceived threat. However, in the Pacific, we have nations who are building up their armies very strongly, with exceptional emphasis on the submarines.

     As I know, the Chinese army is rebuilding their blue-water fleet. They are giving a lot of subsidies to the armed forces for doing up the armed forces blue-water fleet. Obviously, we have seen that the Americans have done the pivot to the Pacific, the gap between Alaska and the United States.

     How are you assessing the threat, if there is any threat? As we know, the Chinese are flexing their muscles in the Scarborough Shoals of the Philippines, in Japan, and so on, and of course North Korea is becoming more aggressive. As for the Russians, they are not even friendly.

     What is the perceived activity there? Should we call it a standoff?

    I think we talked about the approaches to the homeland or east and west coasts. It doesn't matter in distinguishing between either of them: illegal immigration, transnational criminal organizations....

     But we're not blind in the Pacific, because we are fully partnered in the Pacific as well. I have an exchange officer, a liaison officer in the Pacific Command, quartered in Hawaii. We have a general officer as a J-3, an operations staff, inside Pacific Command. I have liaison and exchange officers in Australia in Joint Operations Command. Like they leverage us for understanding our neighbourhood, we leverage them for understanding their neighbourhood.

    The challenges we're seeing in the Pacific are real. But certainly in the Pacific, like elsewhere, there's no “same as last year”. Everything seems to be changing, and “the same as last year” is a term we used in the Cold War. We don't use it anymore, because next year is different from this, and this year is different from last. We're not blind to what's changing, nor are we blind to the risk of threats that exist in the Pacific.

    Thank you very much, General.

    Ms. Murray for five minutes.

    Thank you.

    I want to go back to the discussion about the capacity and the Pacific coast.

    Given the absence of a supply ship, never mind funding cuts for training and inability to train on a ship when there isn't one available, I'm wondering if the replacement joint supply ship is delayed by several years--and that looks likely--how would this affect the ability of the Canadian Armed Forces to accomplish the objectives of the Canada First defence strategy itself?

    Again, what I can assure you of is that with the capabilities we have, we know what's available and not available today and/or into the future. I'm confident we're not going to compromise at all on the requirement to deliver our mission at home and to deliver within capability our contribution to missions overseas.

    I can assure you that while people—

    Can I ask you to clarify? Are you basically saying that your job, given what's available in equipment or not, is to define what you can deliver, so therefore logically you're going to be able to deliver because you've defined your delivery based on the availability of funding, equipment and trained troops?

    I'd say that when it comes to understanding what's going on in our air and maritime domains, we are delivering on that. To be postured to respond to military threats to the continent, to be included with our partners, we're capable of doing that. We haven't had to do it recently on the homeland, but to be able to provide a real contribution to safety and security at home and on the continent, we're capable of doing that as well.

    Every capability in quantity and quality has a limitation in any organization. So with those, we're delivering on the mission we've been directed to perform, and we're welcoming—

    Obviously, you're not setting your budget, so I understand the....

    In terms of delivering, I asked an order paper question on search and rescue and it turned out that because of, I guess, old equipment there were some 14 search and rescue requests that the armed forces were not able to deliver on. Is that not possibly leading to the risk of a loss of life, if the equipment is not available to respond to a search and rescue call?

    I'd say I'm not tracking...that's not responding to any missions. However, whether or not a particular aircraft on a particular base was the source of the response may be the point you're making. The search and rescue system is a network.

    Search and rescue helicopters and there were not enough available to respond to some 14 requests for a response. Does that concern you?

    That's a level of detail I have to go back and confirm to what degree that meant...if a particular platform didn't respond or the system didn't respond. To my knowledge, we respond to every event from elsewhere in the system, if that's required.

    Also, you were answering a question by Mr. Larose and your time ran out. His question was about the missile defence program that is under discussion.

     I had a meeting with a former general from the United States who said that it would likely cost Canada a billion dollars a year to participate in that program. I think you were being asked if resources were constrained, would you see that as the highest and best use of a billion dollars of the national defence budget in terms of the obligation to defend our country.

    We all know that the choice on whether Canada would participate in it and how much it would invest in a program like that is clearly not mine, so I prefer not to comment on that particular subject other than to say we are, as we discussed earlier, delivering on the mission we have today with the resources we have. Our men and women using those resources are doing very well at it.

    Okay, so you're delivering on the mission. We don't necessarily need a billion dollars for an anti-ballistic missile program partnership.

    That kind of decision is a policy choice that is not mine to make and others will make it.

    No, I understand that.

    Do I still have time, Mr. Chair?

    You have six seconds.

     Use them well.

    Thank you very much, Ms. Murray.

    Ms. Gallant for five minutes.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I just wanted to mention how rich it was to talk about search and rescue and helicopters. I think we can all recall when the Liberals fought a campaign on the cancellation of the EH 101, which had several different versions, one of which was for lift and utility, another one transporting troops, and another for search and rescue. Of course, we still haven't had the replacement for the Sea Kings, which would have been one of the variations. The beauty of that contract was that they were all basically the same helicopter and we could have interchanged parts.

    Now what we see, especially for search and rescue, is that when one helicopter is missing parts we have to cannibalize others in order to maintain that one in the air, which has a large effect on whether or not we can respond when a helicopter is required. There was mention made of some general [Inaudible--Editor] to pay $1 billion for BMD. The discussion has not occurred yet in Canada, nor do we know if it will be discussed in terms of that aspect. I just wanted to clarify that.

    One thing I haven't heard about yet is the JTFN operation, where they sent a technical team to Ellesmere Island to perform maintenance on the high Arctic data communication systems. What is the role of HADCS?

    You may be familiar with Canadian Forces Station Alert, based up on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island. It's a direction-finding and signals-intelligence station, as well as a weather station. It doesn't sit within any satellite footprint so we can't have satellite communications into it from the south. For it to communicate south, we have a microwave system that travels the length of Ellesmere Island down to Eureka, where Environment Canada has a weather station. At that location, the microwave system connects to a satellite system to allow communications with Alert.

    Because it's a very unforgiving environment for battery systems and microwave systems, they have to be tuned and maintained. So every year we run Operation Nevus, which is basically a month-long maintenance mission. We send up soldiers, and helicopters, and maintenance folks to go and look after the batteries and to remediate anything that needs to be remediated, and to bring it back. It's an annual task.

    Speaking of annual tasks, I'd like to go back to the exercise Nanook. In 2013, what military assets were used in that operation?

    There was quite a long list of military assets used. In terms of air force assets, we used every flavour of lift aircraft, including C-17s, Hercules, and our utility Twin Otter aircraft. We also had CP-140 support.

    Our operation was across four different lines in four different areas across the north, from Whitehorse, Resolute Bay, to Gjoa Haven, to Iqaluit. We had naval ships participating as well. The Kingston-class ship was participating in the one scenario off Iqaluit, and then there was a range of the normal equipment for moving troops up to respond to crisis and disaster response.

    Very good.

    Just as an aside, when the NATO PA was in Victoria, we did see the Chicoutimi and, apparently, they had just finished their chamber dive and it had been successful. So we're really pleased to see two subs in the water working for our Pacific security.

    That's all, Mr. Chair.

    Thank you very much.

    Mr. Jack Harris for five minutes.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    I want to talk about two issues. We talked about domain awareness as being the first step in doing the job of protecting Canada. What's our domain awareness in the subsurface? I'm saying that in regard to the huge coastline and area of ocean that we have, but also in the Arctic and in the Northwest Passage. What is our domain awareness subsurface and where does it come from?

    I believe the chief of defence intelligence had this conversation with you, as well, a few weeks back. We maintain our understanding of where subsurface capabilities are in the world. We do that with our own sensors and with partners. We benefit from contributing to, and deriving from that partnership an understanding of where subsurface capabilities may be around the world.

    That's about as specific as I can be. It's a highly compartmentalized, necessarily classified, capability and activity.

    It goes beyond where we're operating our submarines.

    Absolutely.

    The next area has to do with operations in the Arctic.

    One witness to the committee last week was Paul Stockton, who has significant defence experience in the U.S. and was responsible for coordinating the U.S. military response to the Deepwater Horizon event. He talked about significant naval assets being used in the U.S., and it being absolutely necessary to have them and to use them in the response to the oil spill of the Deepwater Horizon. He spoke of the concerns about the Arctic and has suggested that one of the most significant threats to the Arctic would be environmental, in the event of an oil spill, and perhaps the most likely....

    Do we have any capabilities, at a military level, that could assist in that, or are we just looking at what might be required?

    Thank you for that question.

    I'm very conscious that the American approach to environmental stewardship and safety in their Arctic is incredibly multi-agency. The U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. military environment, have a very robust and mature multi-agency view on the problem, and capacities to respond to it. Their population density is different than ours, and their distribution clearly is different than ours. We too have a multi-agency view on the nature of the challenge and the potential requirements to respond to environmental disasters in our Arctic.

    Again, General Loos spoke to the intent to work with Arctic security partners, to plan for an exercise that would simulate an environmental disaster response in our Arctic in the summer of 2015.

    Do we actually have any oil spill response capabilities currently?

    Could you be even more specific in terms of what we do have?

    As it relates to recovering vast amounts of hazardous material, we have a limited capacity for our own use, and that could complement somebody else's capacity.

    The capabilities we would have to bring to that kind of complex response are not just limited to the ability to recover the hazardous materials, to help coordinate, provide logistics to—

    I know we have lots of logistics—command and control.

    Mr. Stockton told us they actually had assets involved in operating the skimmers and doing that type of work in the Gulf of Mexico. I can't imagine the Canadian Navy doing that sort of work in the Arctic.

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems pretty clear to me that we don't have those kinds of assets.

    Well, we certainly have it where we're operating today, with our warships today and the bases we work in today, and whether or not that's transportable and usable, I really can't speak to that point.

    Greg.

    I can't go much further.

     I'm aware that the navy has capabilities, but primarily for their own purposes. They're not specifically designed or envisioned for that kind of response.

    You mean for their own purposes, in the event of a spill from their own ship.

    Yes, for cleaning up anything small, in ports, wherever they are, but not necessarily envisioning that kind of response.

    I believe the lead agency is the coast guard, as it applies to the north. I know they have undertaken some preparations in the north, to and including distribution of community response kits and providing some training at the community level.

    I think that what we're looking at going forward is having that broad view of what the demand is, how it is growing, the threats and risks and whether they are rising, and, if so, on what kind of time scale; in which case, how do we collectively have to get better at that game?

    It's not because we're specifically looking at military-specific capabilities in that area, but how we might be called into action to support others who have the lead role.

    You're basically looking at what role you might play in assisting someone else, not in terms of taking a military mandate.

    That's correct, sir.

    Thank you very much, Mr. Harris. You're 20 seconds over.

    The chair is trying to be as generous as he can.

    Thank you.

    Mr. Bezan, for five minutes.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    Since we struck CJOC, in 2012, what are the lessons learned? How has CJOC functioned in bringing together all of the components of the Canadian Armed Forces? How do they work multi-agency, as a whole-of government-approach?

    We haven't even talked about how the coast guard ties in with CJOC. Are there lessons learned with our multinational approach, not just within the NORAD context, but beyond that?

    Thank you, sir, for the question.

    This may be my swan song, as I'm retiring this year, so thanks for giving me the platform. Mr. Harris more or less asked the question earlier on, what's different?

    Number one, the motivation to integrate three commands into one came from five-plus years of experience post deputy chief of defence and the staff approach to operations, four operational commands, and from commanding operations with full-time staff, to now occupying a middle ground.

    What the middle ground allowed us to do was achieve an economy in structure. I gave back 140 positions of staff from headquarters to the Canadian Forces for reassignment to higher priorities. Concerning efficiency, when you have to go higher less often, you're more efficient; I think everybody can appreciate that. Finally, on effectiveness and agility, the devolution of the responsibility to coordinate operations one layer down—for Canada, internationally, and support to both—makes us more agile.

    That played out in continuing with home operations in the period before Christmas, when we did the DART. We were recovering troops from Afghanistan, and all of a sudden the DART launched. The next thing you know, we were projecting Canadian Forces 13 time zones away at speed and were still recovering forces from Afghanistan without skipping a beat by leveraging other partners, other partnerships, and using other sources of transport, for example.

    So that's the result.

    Internally, if I were to offer a professional military man's view on what is different now for folks such as General Loos today, as compared with three years ago with the four separate commands, when General Loos and his predecessor were executing Nanook in 2012—when he was planning and then conducting that operational activity—if he looked up, he saw “Canada Command”. Canada Command had to go over to Support Command to go down to get the support requirements. He had to go to another command and strategic level to get airlift. He had to go to a lot of places to get what today he gets by going horizontally, because they're all in the same command today.

    What we have now is a structure that isn't a building out on Star Top Road here commanding all operations. You have a structure today that includes a maritime component in Halifax, with a home and away game; an air component in Winnipeg, with a home and away game; and a support component in Kingston delivering support to everybody: deployable command and control, regional joint task forces, global support hubs—the list goes on—all in one command framework.

    So the agility and the flexibility is very real, the economy is real, the efficiency is real, and the effectiveness has not gone down. In some cases we're more effective, because we're more recognizable to our partners as a singular versus plural command. Those partners are here in Ottawa, in safety and security; they're in the provinces and territories; they're on the continent, in USNORTHCOM and NORAD; and they're international—U.S., U.K., French, Australian, UN, NATO.

    It's a fascinating little construct for what is a relatively small military compared with others, with incredibly huge territories and incredibly distributed actions. It's working for us.

    Thanks for giving me the platform to tell that little.... That's my report card, Mr. Harris.

    Thank you.

    Thanks for giving me that platform, because this does work for us. It's still new in the Canadian experience, so it is still being learned and understood. Every time we practice, exercise, or operate is another learning opportunity that allows us to get better.

    Thank you.

    You have 45 seconds.

    Here is a quick question, then, General Loos.

    In Joint Task Force North, how important are the Rangers?

    The Rangers, as you know, are a special reserve component, and they're absolutely vital. They were first envisioned back in 1947 to provide the eyes and ears of the north—surveillance and presence. We have more than 1,800 in one Canadian Ranger patrol group, the one that serves my area of responsibility. There are four others further south in other regions.

    I have 1,850 rangers spread across 60 patrols across the land. You can imagine little circles across all of the north with about a 300-kilometre radius that they can get out on, whether by ATV and boat in the summer or by snow machine and komatik in winter. So we can get places, we have eyes and ears, we have mentors and guides for when forces come from the south, so that they can not only survive but survive to operate.

    Thank you very much, General Loos.

    We will go to Ms. Murray for five minutes.

    Thank you.

    As this is a defence of North America study, we've been very interested in collaboration with the United States.

    General Beare, could you tell us what you think are perhaps the top three most effective coordinating mechanisms or projects between the U.S. and Canada in the defence of North America—not including, obviously, NORAD and some of the structured cooperation, but those happening at different levels down the chain of command that are perhaps examples that could be replicated and are scalable into other parts of the military.

    What are the three that are working the best, and what might be three areas in which you see opportunities for more cooperation and collaboration in order to manage with constrained resources, of course respecting sovereignty?

    Thank you. We call that in military terms the “after action review”. So “three things to keep” and “three things to change” is our language.

    Among the things to keep and reinforce are the coordinating mechanisms that allow domain awareness and the effective exchange of information in all domains—space, cyber, land, maritime, and air.

    What are the mechanisms as opposed to the effects?

    The mechanisms are the headquarters, the sensor systems, and the networks of people who collect and analyze the information and transmit it to their partners.

    Every morning, when I get an operational update at my operations centre, there are 23 networks informing my domain awareness. The folks who run those networks—and there are many—are both civilian and military, national and bilateral.

    The other thing that is working very well is the provisions for the pre-planned military support to civilian authorities for natural disaster, man-made disaster, or other contingencies.

    Planning matters. Some people think we do it just to keep ourselves entertained. Actually, that's not true; it's hard work—

    That is the process for coordinating the planning with the U.S.

    —with our partners. From the Canada-U.S. perspective, military to military we have a high degree of coordinated planning capabilities. Our connection to our civilian authorities—national and state in the U.S., national and federal-territorial in Canada—is very high. It's routine. Again, it's something you want to be good at before the crisis manifests itself.

    Our interoperability military to military is exceptional. Interoperability is not just technology and equipment; it's ways of seeing problems, ways of solving problems, ways of working together as people. Those are working very well.

    The things that we continue to improve on are practising the plans and testing the interoperability of people and not just of equipment and technology. This is something we continue to pursue with our American partners. For that, training and exercises are the vehicles we use; they precede the actual problem itself.

    We do that at my level, we do it at the regional level. The people who are really doing this.... I have six regional joint task forces in Canada: Joint Task Force North and from the Pacific to the Atlantic, and they have relationships north-south that they practise with our U.S. partners or—

    But there are other levels at which you need more of that practise happening.

    They are continuing to advance that.

    Then, the other domain that we need to continue to clearly work on is to understand, beyond the military cyber domain, the national critical infrastructure domain and how civil authorities see that domain being challenged and how we might be postured in preparing to respond to it, should that be required. That's a continuing work in progress.

    What would be the biggest challenge in terms of this cooperating with the United States on cyber security, especially when it comes down to protecting or defending or preventing attacks on critical infrastructure? What's in the way?

    Defending our network infrastructure is uniquely our responsibility, and we have a very good relationship with the U.S. Cyber Command on that.

    As it relates to infrastructure beyond what belongs to us, it really belongs to other authorities, and they would need to speak to that. I know that CSEC and others are thoroughly on that mandate.

    In terms of how you see the responsibility of your role as the joint deployment organization, given that the defence of the country includes attacks not just on the military but on civilians or civilian infrastructure, how do you take action on this responsibility, which National Defence has, so that we don't have critical infrastructure disabled, even if it belongs to Ontario Hydro or...?

     That response will have to wait, General, to a response in writing. I've given you a note, so I'll give you time to digest it.

    My question has been asked of several witnesses on this subject prior to or at the end of their testimony. It basically is about what I think is a very needed piece of equipment in Canada's armed forces, in particular, in the air force, and that is the F-35.

    The other witnesses were asked to look at the F-35 and the possible purchase of other aircraft and to be able to tell us the benefits to Canada from an economic perspective. I am most interested, in particular, in interoperability with our friends and allies in NATO and those who belong to the consortium, and how that aircraft or others would be able to respond to interoperability and some other crises or operations that we may find ourselves in the future. So those witnesses were asked to get back to me as chair in writing, and I will do the same with you.

    General, I just have to say that you and I talked before the meeting, including about my earlier occupation. I don't know if you want to talk about your future, but I left you a question. Because you have held very senior commands and this might be your swan song before the committee today before retiring, my question has to do with your experience during your career. Have you seen any improvements in the way our Canadian Armed Forces acts for the dominion of Canada, and in particular, in meeting our responsibilities to the rest of the world.

    General, the floor is yours for a few minutes.

    Chair, did you say I have one hour?

    Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

    The chair is going to cut you off in about three minutes.

    Thank you, Chair.

    Thank you for the opportunity. I would offer these observations after 36 years of wearing our uniform.

    The environment in which Canada's men and women in uniform have served during my time of service has included the Cold War and the degree of pseudo-predictability that it provided, notwithstanding the fact I was glad like everybody else to see it end. Then we lived through and discovered the new realities of a post-Cold War world where the peace dividend and tranquility did not manifest themselves, but new forms of challenges, be they international or national, started to emerge and we ventured into learning how to deal with those. I'm a blue beret and a green-helmet wearer from the Balkans experience.

    So I know how the world has changed and how we had to change with it to the post-9/11 world where a new paradigm of threats to the homeland turned into a form of reality that we have since responded to with partners, including the Arab Spring. The Arab Spring has created a definite no-same-as-last-year reality in the international peace and security arena, and now there is the new challenge of a major state acting in Ukraine and in the Crimea in a way that is no less a significant worry for many. All of that, of course, is going on concurrently with other challenges.

    So I've seen us through all of these different security environments. Throughout all of that I've been in a profession that has, without fail, responded and fought when called upon, as well as delivered on being prepared the best we can with the tools we had, to be effective in that response. I couldn't have been happier to sling a sandbag in Winnipeg or to fight an ice storm in eastern Ontario during a challenging decade—and I won't use any terminology for that decade. It was a very challenging decade for our profession and Canada's perception of its military during that period. We served Canadians selflessly and became more known to our fellow citizens.

    I have to say that since we embarked on the decade-plus experience in the Afghan mission, in which we delivered on our commitment—and thank you, again, for Friday last week—I've discovered some things. One is that I perceive a greater consciousness and understanding among Canadians of the dynamic, changing world we live in, where threats and risks are very real. It's useful to know how good we have it in a role that's this challenged, and to know that challenges really do exist out there.

    I believe Canadians are conscious of the fact they have security organizations, law enforcement and others, and a military that are prepared to respond to those challenges home and away. I see it on the street every time I get thanked for my service, and there's an ownership of our military in this last decade by citizens that I didn't see in the 1990s. I couldn't be happier to see it today, notwithstanding that the security challenges are real and there are wicked problems out there to be confronted. Our stock in the world is first class. I can say this having served in military—maritime, air, and land. It's not limited to or fully enabled by their platforms alone, but it's about the people who wear the uniform who really are the strength of our force. We've got great people.

    If I could leave you with a last thought, it is that I'm proud to have served and I'll continue to serve through my family's next generation who are in uniform today, a daughter full-time and two sons part-time. They didn't pick it because Dad told them to, just for the record. They're proud Canadians, proud to serve, and they're thrilled by how they're respected and admired by their fellow Canadians in or out of uniform.

    Thank you very much, General, and may your retirement hold all that you hope it does.

    This committee is adjourned.