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37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, April 10, 2003

0900

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC))

Prof. David Bercuson (Professor, Director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary)

0905

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Leon Benoit (Lakeland, Canadian Alliance)

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

0910

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Ivan Grose (Oshawa, Lib.)

Prof. David Bercuson

0915

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Claude Bachand (Saint-Jean, BQ)

Prof. David Bercuson

0920

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont, Lib.)

Prof. David Bercuson

0925

Mr. Joe McGuire

Prof. David Bercuson

0930

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP)

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Bill Blaikie

Prof. David Bercuson

0935

Mr. Bill Blaikie

Prof. David Bercuson

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

0940

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Prof. David Bercuson

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Ivan Grose

0945

Prof. David Bercuson

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Claude Bachand

0950

Prof. David Bercuson

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Ivan Grose

0955

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Ivan Grose

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Bill Blaikie

1000

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Bill Blaikie

Prof. David Bercuson

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Bill Blaikie

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Prof. David Bercuson

1005

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Ivan Grose

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Ivan Grose

Prof. David Bercuson

1010

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne)

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

1015

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

The Chair (Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.))

Mr. Claude Bachand

Prof. David Bercuson

1020

The Chair

Mr. Claude Bachand

The Chair

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

The Chair

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

Prof. David Bercuson

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

1025

Prof. David Bercuson

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

The Chair

Prof. David Bercuson

The Chair

Prof. David Bercuson

The Chair

Mr. Leon Benoit

1030

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

1035

The Chair

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

1040

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Leon Benoit

Prof. David Bercuson

The Chair

Mr. Ivan Grose

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Ivan Grose

Prof. David Bercuson

Mr. Ivan Grose

Prof. David Bercuson

1045

Mr. Ivan Grose

The Chair

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

The Chair

Prof. David Bercuson

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

Prof. David Bercuson

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

Prof. David Bercuson

1050

Mrs. Elsie Wayne

The Chair

Prof. David Bercuson

The Chair

1055

Prof. David Bercuson

The Chair

Prof. David Bercuson

The Chair

Prof. David Bercuson

The Chair

CANADA

Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs

NUMBER 022

2nd SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Thursday, April 10, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿ (0900)

[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne (Saint John, PC)): I want to welcome you this morning, Mr. Bercuson. I'm the vice-chair. David Pratt, our chair, couldn't be with us this morning. We're not going to wait for others to arrive. As you know, we will be rising tomorrow for two weeks, and some have headed back home already. I apologize for that.

I've watched you on TV, and I know my colleagues have as well. We're very impressed and very honoured to have you in our presence.

I'll turn it over to you, and then I'll open it up to questions and answers after.

Prof. David Bercuson (Professor, Director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, University of Calgary): Thank you very much for that very nice introduction.

I prepared a couple of pages just in the last couple of days, so I did not have time to submit them for official translation. If anyone would like to have them in the single language, which I speak most of the time, I have a few extra copies. I've given the translator a copy.

I've chosen to address just one of the items you're looking at in this session, which is interoperability. If Canada entertains the desire to maintain an expeditionary military capability in the future, the Canadian Forces must be trained and equipped to operate integrally with the military forces of the United States on land, at sea, and in the air. This is true because it is virtually inconceivable today that Canada's military will ever function without some dependence on the U.S. military, whether that dependence be logistical or operational.

The U.S. military so dominates the world of military technologies and the deployment of strategic sea and airlift today that, at a minimum, Canada's military forces will need U.S. aid just in getting there. Realistically, however, the development of network-centric warfare will mean that the eyes and ears of Canada's deployed forces will, in large part, be American.

To give but one example, Canadian ships operating in conflict areas such as the Persian Gulf rely almost exclusively on U.S. information systems to know what the big picture is at any given moment. Without digital data link access to the command, control, and communications systems, which we call C3, that protect U.S. task forces at sea, particularly carrier battle groups, Canadian ships can only know what they can determine from their own sensor devices and from those that can be operated from their ship-based helicopters. Essentially, they are limited to the horizon that can be swept by their radars and their undersea listening devices.

In days long ago, when threats to ships and innocent passage came from slow-moving aircraft or diesel-electric submarines firing conventional steam or electric-driven torpedos, that may have constituted acceptable risk. When a ship today may have only a few moments of warning that an inbound missile threat is developing, time and distance are the crucial factors that will allow a ship to live or die.

It is not enough any longer to know what is happening as far as the visible horizon, or even just over it. Modern threats can be countered only by information systems that link ships to satellites, airborne-warning aircraft, and submarines. Our ships will either continue to be a part of that network-centric warfare, as they are now, or they will be terribly vulnerable.

It is the same with our aircraft. When the current CF-18 upgrade program is completed in four years or so, our modernized fighters will fit into the same sort of airborne C3 systems that our navy currently shares with the Americans. The decision to proceed with that upgrade was a wise one, and will enable Canadian fighters to operate in the same combat environment as U.S. fighters into the next decade.

The U.S. Army is developing the same sort of network-centric C3 systems that the U.S. Navy and Air Force already use. The U.S. 4th Infantry Division is the first U.S. heavy division to be so equipped. If the Canadian army of the future is to function in the same battlefield environment as the Americans, it too must be capable of plugging into the U.S.-based C3 network.

The decision to achieve and maintain interoperability with the Americans rests with Canada's political leadership. The decision must be a deliberate policy choice because it will have far-ranging implications for force structure, training, doctrine, and of course, acquisitions.

I urge the committee to recognize the reality that the lingua franca of defence technology in the 21st century is American.

Thank you.

¿ (0905)

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Thank you very much, Professor.

I am going to open it up now to questions and answers.

Leon Benoit is our first questioner. He has seven minutes.

Mr. Leon Benoit (Lakeland, Canadian Alliance): Thank you for being here, Professor Bercuson. It's always good to see you. You've had a lot to say for some time on Canada-U.S. relationships, including military relationships. I've appreciated your comments.

I'd like you to start, if you could, by commenting on how the Canada-U.S. military relationship may be affected by recent anti-American comments made by members of the Canadian Parliament, and the understanding on the part of the Americans that the Canadians maybe aren't very supportive, due to the fact we didn't support the coalition in the war, but maybe as important, the anti-American slurs and comments that have come since.

I'm just wondering, not from a trade point of view but from a military relationship point of view, if there will be any impact from that at all, or if there has been any already, in terms of information flow and that type of thing.

Prof. David Bercuson: I'm not really in a position to say what the American military is thinking about Canadian political leadership at the moment. I haven't had much of an opportunity to talk to them recently, except at a conference in Wheaton, Illinois, before the outbreak of the war. But I don't imagine the U.S. military--and I say this with respect--pays a lot of attention to those sorts of statements. I think the Americans are far more interested, as our military is at that level, in the question of mechanics, tactics, doctrine, acquisitions, operations, and whatnot.

I think, for example, it was very important for the navy to remain where it was in the Persian Gulf. We can debate all day what task it was performing. But the two ships there are not an inconsiderable part of the total number of vessels operating under the command of the U.S. Admiral and Task Force 51. For those ships to have left would have deprived that admiral of considerable and important resources, especially because our navy is so interoperable with the Americans. We do, in effect, share the AEGIS class system, or a system very much like it, for detecting aircraft. The fact that the navy remained was very important, at least as far as U.S. Navy is concerned.

I don't know what the case would be, as far as the army and air force. Had the navy left it might have been catastrophic, but it did not leave so it's open to debate.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I guess my question wasn't limited to what people in the military might think but the political leadership that directs the military and the impact of that too. I think you said you really have no way of knowing whether there's been any--

Prof. David Bercuson: I read the newspapers.

¿ (0910)

Mr. Leon Benoit: In terms of the operation in the gulf, you talked a bit about the Canadian reliance on U.S. information sources. If you could elaborate a little bit more on that I'd certainly--

Prof. David Bercuson: The sources are U.S. only because the U.S. fundamentally owns most of the important equipment that contributes to the network. Think of it as an intelligence network that exists out there in the ether that is created by data picked up by satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles, reconnaissance aircraft, submarines, other ships. It all comes together and is put together by these very fast computers that are used today.

The data network is usually centred on board a cruiser that is basically the command cruiser for the protection of a carrier battle group. On that cruiser will be the combat information centre that will be gathering and distributing, at the same time, all of this information from all of these different sources. The gathering and the distributing is done by digital data link, not by voice link.

Any vessel or aircraft that is part of that network is contributing to that system and drawing on that system at any given moment. That system gives the ship or the aircraft--in our case let's say it's our Canadian frigate, which may still be in port in Bahrain--the ability to literally turn on the screen in its own combat information centre--and I don't know which screen they use--and have the whole picture of everything that's going on up and down the gulf at any given moment in real time.

Mr. Leon Benoit: So are you saying they rely on the raw information coming from satellites and so on, or do Canadians in fact rely to some extent on--analysis isn't the right word--the way that information has been packaged? Do they get the raw information, or do they get some of the packaged information?

Prof. David Bercuson: It's the latter case.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Mr. Benoit, you have another minute.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Okay. I thought you were cutting me off there, Elsie.

In terms of C3, could you explain a bit what you're talking about and how important that is?

Prof. David Bercuson: It's the most vital element, away from the actual fighting edge, and means command, control, and communications. Command is the ability to command the assets; control is the ability to continuously control them over time; and communications is the necessary ability to communicate with them in order to control them and command them. So it's spoken of as C3.

The military uses a number of other acronyms, such as C4 and so on. I'm not familiar with all of them. It's pretty hard to keep up with military acronyms, quite frankly. But C3 is a very well-known one, and that's the one I was referring to. Network-centric warfare is a form of C3.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): You have about 30 seconds.

Mr. Leon Benoit: How long will it be before our naval vessels require substantial updates in the equipment on board, so they can continue to operate with the Americans?

Prof. David Bercuson: They have the equipment now and they are operating with the Americans now, so the answer to that question is largely going to be driven by the extent to which you get upgrades in the U.S. systems over the next decade. You just need to be an avid reader of Defense News, for example, or Defense Weekly. I think one of them is a Gannett publication.

They're constantly seeking improvements. There are new contracts being let for research and development, for actual work, all the time. They are moving into the next generation of destroyers and aircraft. Tenders are being let for development and design, and so on. So they are about at the cutting edge right now.

Some of the carriers they're using today are from 30 to almost 40 years old. In fact, in some cases they're over 40 years old. I think a conscious decision has been made to move into a new generation of carriers, cruisers, and destroyers. But I'm not really an expert on that; I'm just following what I can see in the U.S.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Thank you very much.

Mr. Grose is next for seven minutes.

Mr. Ivan Grose (Oshawa, Lib.): Quite frankly, I don't require seven minutes. I think the professor has stated the obvious, and I agree with him.

I think an interesting question came up just a moment ago about upgrading our equipment, and that will depend on what the Americans do. I think you stated that we're tied to the Americans and we should be, or if we're not we're playing in the wrong league; we're going to be all by ourselves.

If they decide to upgrade.... As a matter of fact, as soon as one of the carriers they have in the Middle East right now returns home, it will be decommissioned. It was supposed to be decommissioned by now, but it's still here. I think they're very close to launching the new one. So their equipment is evolving and ours, of course, has to evolve along with it.

I think in the case of the F-18s, we got behind. Quite frankly, those aircraft are virtually useless in a war theatre unless they're all by themselves. It's a shame, but that's something Mr. Benoit pointed out. I think it is most important that we make up our minds. We either stay with them or get out of the game.

Prof. David Bercuson: On the aircraft we're flying now, as you know, there's a four-year upgrade program. I think it's a shame it's a four-year upgrade program. I think it's the right program; I wish it had been done before. When it is finished I think it will give the aircraft possibly another 10 years of useful interoperational life. But right now, you're absolutely right those aircraft cannot go anywhere unless they're going by themselves.

¿ (0915)

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Mr. Bachand.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand (Saint-Jean, BQ): First off, I want to thank you for being here with us this morning. I will ask you some questions on interoperability, questions I put to the minister yesterday when he appeared before the committee.

I am a member of the Bloc Québécois and so you know something of the mission of my party, which is a sovereignist party; this does not mean, however, that we are not interested in the issue of Canadian sovereignty. Yesterday, I asked the minister whether he thought that by pushing interoperability so far, especially with the Americans, we were giving up a part of Canadian sovereignty.

Let me explain what I mean. We have for some time been questioning the minister in the House on the participation of Canadian soldiers in the war in Irak, and his answer has been that the soldiers are taking part in exchange programs which have existed for a long time. In combat units and support units, the interoperability is so tightly knit that it is almost impossible to withdraw Canadian soldiers in those units when they are in theatres of operations. Thus, are you not under the impression that we can no longer do what we like with our soldiers when interoperability with the American forces is carried too far?

I would also like you to answer the question on materiel, which is now being talked about to some extent. I think that we have a tendency to purchase American materiel when we want to be interoperable with the Americans, and this is not necessarily positive for the Canadian military industry. Moreover I believe that Canada does not really have a Canadian content policy, while the Americans have an American content policy. If we want to sell them things we produce here, I believe they demand that there be an American content.

So I would like to hear your comments, first on Canadian sovereignty, and secondly on the almost total obligation we are under to purchase American military materiel if we really want interoperability with them.

[English]

Prof. David Bercuson: I can certainly see where that argument comes from. Let me try to address it directly.

Basically, when you have a small military force such as ours that has three main elements--we've really evolved back to having an army, a navy, and an air force, and whether that's a good thing or not is another story--I think a political choice has to be made as to how that military is going to be sent abroad, if and when it is sent abroad--its expeditionary capability.

Sure, a decision can be made that it will be sent abroad as an independent Canadian force only at the behest of the Canadian government, which is politically true in any case, but it would only operate by itself and in the national interests of Canada.

It's too small a force to do anything really effectively, the way it is now. I think you would have to insist, as the political leaders, that the force achieve a much higher degree of jointness among its various elements than it has now. For example, it could almost be modelled on the United States Marine Corps, where the infantry element, the armoured element, the artillery element, the air element, and even the shipping element are all together as part of the same force and under one command. That would be very expensive and it would be a different mission, although it's certainly possible to do, and I know it was considered at certain times in the early 1960s.

So that's one answer to your question. If you feel that a force made to be interoperable vertically with the United States would be dominated politically by the United States, you either decide that it needs to be vertically interoperable or it needs to be horizontally...or maybe it's the other way around--horizontally or vertically integrated within itself, or what we call “joint”.

The fact is that right now many nations in the world are sort of slowly seeing parts of their sovereignty erode because of integration. Our dollar is nominally an independent currency, but we all know it is very highly impacted by what happens to the American currency. So to a certain degree we have sovereign control over our own dollar, but to a certain degree it's very much impacted by what happens in the United States.

In the world of technology, the reality is we could say that so many of our business transactions that are made every day, let's say on the Toronto Stock Exchange, are carried by satellite, and since some are inevitably American-owned, this impacts our sovereignty.

Right now--members probably know this--if a Canadian frigate is part of a U.S. task group in the Persian Gulf and the combat information centre on a cruiser detects an inbound aircraft and decides that it is hostile, the decision can be made from that cruiser to fire a missile from the Canadian frigate at that aircraft, without any intervening chain of command decision on the part of the Canadian commander. That's part of the reality of accepting inter-operationability with the Americans.

Now you can say that's a loss of sovereignty, and I suppose it is, but I don't know how you can design a system that is going to be inter-operational and, at the same time, completely preserve a Canadian chain of command right up to the top.

So what does it mean? You either have a highly modern military force that borrows technologies and shares technologies--by the way, a lot of these companies that are involved in the development of these technologies are Canadian. I'm not an expert in this area, but in my own area of the world out in Calgary we have General Dynamics Canada, Raytheon, and a number of companies that contribute significantly to the development of network-centric warfare--or you say our ships are going to be out there with the ability to see what's going on out on the horizon. Our aircraft will be out there with the same sort of radar that was available in the late sixties, early seventies, or early eighties, which is what they have now, essentially, where they can track a single aircraft at a single time, as if they're looking at it through a straw but can't really see the bigger picture, and that's good enough.

Today's threat environments are such that if we're going to send people out there, we have to equip them as well as we can against any possible threat. So we have to give them the best equipment, and that means we're going to be operating inter-operationally with the Americans.

¿ (0920)

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Thank you very much.

Mr. McGuire.

Mr. Joe McGuire (Egmont, Lib.): Thank you, Madam Chair.

Given the budgets the Americans have and the budgets we have for developing new technologies, it looks like it's going to be impossible. If you're spending $1 billion a day on your military, that would wipe out our total budget in two weeks. How can we ever expect to keep up technologically with the new innovations, new equipment, and new systems, whether they're missiles or whatever--ground forces, navy? How can we ever expect to be really interoperable with the Americans?

Prof. David Bercuson: I think there are two ways we can continue to be interoperable with the Americans, but they both flow from making a political choice to do so.

It's interesting you say that because I just happened to be reading on the plane coming down last night the latest issue of Aerospace Power Journal, spring 2003, which is the doctrinal publication of the United States Air Force. It comes out of Maxwell Air Force Base.

I plug it because its former editor was a PhD graduate of the University of Calgary. He came to Calgary from the U.S. Air Force to take his PhD. So we know we're contributing something to the development of the American military doctrine.

In it there's an article by Richard B. Myers, who's the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He talks about transformation--that's the key word, the buzz word. It started with the army in the United States and now it applies to all of this.

Transformation is a process and a mind-set--not a product. ...Transformation is about creating joint competencies from the separate service capabilities. ...The most important breakthroughs will take place between the ears of war fighters and planners.

So transformation, to begin with, is a frame of mind. It has to do with education; it has to do with teaching our military certain ways of doing things, as opposed to certain other ways of doing things.

I think we're beginning to do that. We're making some great strides in the area of improving education for military members. So in that area we've laid the groundwork.

In the area of operations, you have to pick and choose what your capabilities are going to be. You can't be interoperable with the Americans at all levels, in anything, and all the time. But interoperable is something that begins sometimes at very low and relatively primitive levels. For example, is your vehicle capable of fitting into a U.S. aircraft? If you are operating jointly with Americans and you're operating helicopters in a certain area, is your helicopter purchased off-the-shelf, or is it, like theirs, a modification of a civilian version? Or is it a military version? In other words, are the parts going to be available? That is another area. It goes from there to whether or not your network systems are going to be interoperational with their network systems.

The changes that are being made to our fighter aircraft, in part, will allow the pilot up there at 30,000 feet to plug into a data network that will include the AWACS aircraft, the joint surveillance and targeting aircraft, and the other fighters around him. So he will have a picture on his screen of what's going on the sky around him at the moment. Right now he does not have that. He has the eyes and ears of himself and his wingman--mostly the eyes. He has a radar with fairly limited capabilities, and if he takes that radar and uses it to target an aircraft, he is blind all the way around.

That will be the difference in putting our fighter pilots up, let's say, the next time there's a Yugoslavia. We're going to send them in fully aware of the air around them and fully aware of the dangers that might develop, instead of sending them in with significant disadvantage.

If we're going to deploy these aircraft, I think we would all agree we want them to have the best chance of survival in carrying out and completing the mission, which means you have to be inter-operational. That network-centric system in the aircraft is largely contributed to and largely exists as a result of U.S. technology and U.S. inputs.

¿ (0925)

Mr. Joe McGuire: On a new continental defence, the Americans are talking about Fortress America, which I guess is going to include Mexico and Canada. Where do you think we should be concentrating our expertise? What role will Mexico play? It never seems to be included in any discussions on North American defence of any sort.

Prof. David Bercuson: Quite frankly, I don't see Mexico playing very much of a role at this stage. Its military forces are not equipped to do so, its level of training is not on par with ours and the Americans, nor are the requirements for its officer corps, technical staff, support systems, and whatnot. Mexico being part of NORAD is a political concept to be considered, but in practical terms I don't see it happening any time soon.

The role we contribute is very much an extension of the role we are already contributing, which is to make sure we have aircraft that are capable of doing the job that needs to be done, naval vessels, littoral vessels, the Maritime coastal defence vessels, and the submarines, when they become operational, to continue to watch the waters off the North Pacific and North Atlantic. The North Atlantic is a vital sea lane corridor to North America and will remain so, as we all know.

Assets include the use of Canadian bases for surveillance, as we have now.

I think we have it all now; it's just a matter of upgrading it and making sure it stays at the right level and the capabilities evolve along with American capabilities.

¿ (0930)

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Mr. Blaikie is next for seven minutes.

Mr. Bill Blaikie (Winnipeg—Transcona, NDP): Thank you, Madam Chair.

I arrived just a few minutes after the meeting began. I take it that Professor Bercuson didn't make a lengthy statement because people were already asking him questions.

Prof. David Bercuson: I began when I was ordered to.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I guess it will come as no surprise to you that as a New Democrat I have anxiety, shall we say, about interoperability in Canada and the United States defence cooperation, vis à vis Canadian sovereignty and the ability of Canada to have an independent foreign policy, if we're integrated to the extent that we are or to the extent we might even further become.

From your point of view, objectively, what dangers do you see? Obviously, we can't begin with the premise that whatever the United States decides to do we will be for. There must be things that if they decide to do them we may be against. To what extent does further integration, particularly in terms of interoperability, hinder our ability to make those kinds of decisions, should the United States pursue a course we don't agree with?

I ask this question theoretically. I'm not trying to relate it to anything that's going on now, because we all have different opinions about that. I am asking the question academically, if you like.

Is there a level of interoperability that begins to constrain the ability of Canada to have an independent foreign policy?

Prof. David Bercuson: I think there is, and we've always had to live with that. I take you on your word that we're not referring to any recent political crises, or whatever. I'm not here to debate this any more than you are.

I'll give you an example out of history, and it's the one from the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. At that point, interoperability was really far more a matter of Frank, from the Canadian Air Force, knowing Joe and Bill from the U.S. Air Force. We had a joint radar system for about eight years, and everybody got together at NORAD in Cheyenne Mountain to watch little dots of light. Nobody was quite sure what they were, yet the President of the United States decided there was sufficient evidence to go to the United Nations to say that the Soviets were putting missiles into Cuba.

The Prime Minister of Canada didn't agree with it. The Americans put the country on one of those very high levels of preparedness, in anticipation of a possible Soviet nuclear attack, in response to the interception of Russian vessels on the high seas. I don't know what Defcon it was at, but it was a very high one. The Prime Minister refused to put the Canadian Forces on that Defcon level, and the Canadian military went ahead and did it anyway.

I have views on civil military relations and what is required and what isn't. We can discuss that. But the fact of the matter is that the Canadian military made a judgment that the defences of North America were going into high gear whether we liked it or not, and we'd better get along with it. That may have been the wrong decision, but that was the decision they took. That was at a time when interoperability was at a far less sophisticated level than it is now. It was essentially at the command level and did not go right down to the operational level of ship-to-ship communication.

I think it's inevitable and one of the prices that every sovereign nation pays, to a certain extent, to play a full role in the world today, whether it's in the economic system or military systems, or in diplomatic systems that bind you in various ways to treaties, for example, that tell you to reduce emissions, and so on. It's not a debate about Kyoto; it's just one of the facts of life of what we do.

In the late 1940s, after World War II, we started to recognize as a country that we were going to have to begin doing some things about defending North America that we probably wouldn't do if the Americans didn't want us to do them; they felt the threat very much more than we did. So the policy we followed at the time was to do as much as we could but also build in the political symbols and control mechanisms that, as much as possible, preserved our own freedom of action. That's really all you can do.

¿ (0935)

Mr. Bill Blaikie: I take your point about nations having to give up a certain level of sovereignty whenever they join in bilateral or multilateral organizations. Of course, the debate can continue whether it's the WTO, NAFTA, or whatever appropriate level it is...or what's given up and what shouldn't be given up.

But it seems to me our problem, from a Canadian perspective, is that even though that's true there's a sort of asymmetrical sacrifice. You can say that's true--and it is true--for Canada, but is it really true for the United States? Do they give up sovereignty when they enter into a relationship with Canada, or is this a sort of asymmetrical sacrifice that's really symmetrical in theory but asymmetrical in practice? In the end, even in the historical example you gave, when there was a much less intense level of interoperability, the Canadian military, because of the close relationship, actually transcended the political.

Prof. David Bercuson: Another reality we need to face is that the strong will always have fewer constraints on them, whether they are international or bilateral, than those who are not so strong. They will give up less of their sovereignty, or allow less of their sovereignty to be impinged upon by multilateral or bilateral agreements, than those who are weaker. That's what sets up the whole dynamic about nations and multilateralism, what it's for, and whose purposes it serves. That's another question I don't suppose you necessarily want to go into.

I'm trying to say it's another one of those realities we have to accept if we're going to have a functioning military. The military we deploy today is under our own national command authority. Ultimately, the government does tell the military what to do, and ultimately the government can take decisions that may put that interoperability at risk. But if it feels it is so much in the Canadian interest that it is worth putting it at risk, it will make that decision.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Thank you very much, Professor.

Now we're going to the five-minute round.

Mr. Benoit, please.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to follow up a little bit on Mr. Blaikie's comments and his last question about the asymmetrical loss of sovereignty. I would argue that the asymmetrical loss of sovereignty is offset by an asymmetrical benefit obtained by Canada, in terms of security. In other words, for no cost other than that loss of sovereignty we are getting a lot of protection that we simply couldn't afford on our own. So there is a benefit from that as well, and that's why we as a country are willing to get into arrangements like that.

You made a comment in your brief statement that there would always be some level of dependence on the United States for any operation that Canada was involved in--either a logistical or an operational dependence. Yet Canada is now involved in a mission in Afghanistan where there's no advertised, let's say, involvement with the United States whatsoever, which seems like an odd mission from that point of view.

I'd just like you to comment on that. There may well be some dependence logistically on the United States. There may even be operational dependence, even though we're not operating with them in Afghanistan.

Prof. David Bercuson: As you know, to start off with, we're not there yet.

¿ (0940)

Mr. Leon Benoit: How are we going to get there? I asked the head of the army and he didn't know either.

Prof. David Bercuson: I don't know how we're going to get there. I think this has emerged in the last two weeks. I think the government is having some second thoughts about that mission because certain capabilities are required that we do not have.

Strategic lift is certainly one requirement we would have. There are other ways of getting places. There are private contractors. The Europeans themselves do not have strategic airlift capability. The Brits have it because they've leased the C-17s from Boeing. The Europeans are working on an aircraft that is in trouble politically--the A400M, which has been delayed, as I'm sure you all know. So lift is one capability, but again it's more a matter of information networks and intelligence.

As you're probably aware, we are trying to get NATO to take over the mission because the United Nations command itself does not have those intelligence-gathering capabilities that come from network-centric capabilities. NATO does, to a certain extent. Saying that we would like NATO to get into Afghanistan to the ISAP mission it's like saying, “We're not going with the Americans this time, but we do need the C3 capabilities that the Americans can help lend to the mission through NATO”.

I'm trying to say here that there isn't very much you can do anywhere now, unless you want to try to pick a mission in the middle of the Congo and say it's a UN mission and it won't have anything to do with the Americans. They won't fly you there, they won't provide communications for you, they won't provide logistics and support. But that doesn't happen very often any longer because very few nations have the capabilities to do any of these things any more.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I think that makes the case very clearly. Your statement is correct and we really have no choice other than to rely....

You raised another issue I was going to get to later, which is the issue of strategic airlift. When the military is buying equipment, obviously they have to know what they're buying it for; they have to make choices and make sure the package is going to be as good as you can get.

But it seems to me there are certain pieces of equipment the Canadian military should be purchasing--there are a lot of reasons to believe we should be purchasing. One is strategic airlift. There really seems to be only one choice, and that's the C-27, although originally it sounded like the A400M was what they were looking at. Yet the government has said, “We're not going to do that unless we do it along with our NATO allies, and we might have one or two stationed in Canada.” which really wouldn't even do the job for our domestic needs, in the case of a major natural disaster or some act of civil unrest.

There are others--tactical lift, helicopters, replacements for the Hercs maybe.

Is my time up? Okay. It goes so quickly

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Yes, it does.

Could you give a short answer to that, Mr. Bercuson?

Prof. David Bercuson: The short answer is if you want anything to get anywhere quickly you have to fly it, so whether it's strategic or tactical you have to look at upgrading the Herc fleet, which we're sort of doing, or expanding it.

I agree with the need to look at strategic lift, but before anything is done you need to have a white paper, decide what the force structure is going to be, what the defence policy is going to be, and what you're going to use your forces for. Then you pick the strategic or tactical lift that is most suitable for your military.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Thank you very much.

Mr. Grose, five minutes.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I seem to pick up on throw-away lines, but Mr. Benoit mentioned trading sovereignty for security. It may be inevitable, but it's something that should be seriously considered before you do it so you know exactly where you're going, because sovereignty is one of those intangibles that really is beyond worth.

There's another line I picked up. You made mention of the North Atlantic still being important to the United States and Canada. It's interesting that we're coming up on the 60th anniversary of the celebration of winning the Battle of the Atlantic. As a matter of fact, I'm going to Liverpool as part of the Canadian delegation. We don't have a ship to send, yet half of the North Atlantic was our responsibility during the Second World War. The irony of the situation is the Germans might be sending a ship. Mind you, they nearly won that battle, but they did eventually lose it.

The other thing was on tying ourselves to the United States with the technology, and so on, and then having to buy their equipment. Actually, I think we do rather well selling them equipment, like our LAV vehicles. We seem to have found niches in some of their high-tech equipment, where we do part of it. I don't think we really have to worry much about that trade, buying their big items, maybe airplanes and so on, when we're selling them a lot of small pieces. It probably will balance out not too badly.

What's your opinion on that?

¿ (0945)

Prof. David Bercuson: We are selling. Again, I'm not an expert on how much cross-border trade goes on in defence commodities, but you talked about the LAV vehicle. The vehicle the marines are driving in Iraq today was manufactured in London, Ontario, and was designed and built by GM Defence, which was Canada-based. It has now been purchased by General Dynamics.

We especially provide the Americans with a lot of software, computer equipment, communications equipment, and electronics. These production sharing agreements and production testing agreements have been in place for some time, so I don't think this is a one-way street by any means.

I also have to say you go two ways on this. The Griffon, for example, is fundamentally bought off the shelf. It's a Bell helicopter with a paint job and it's bought off the shelf. So the opportunities for industrial offsets and for adding your own Canadian design and built equipment on it for your own Canadian requirements is practically nil. We have a third-level commitment to the Joint Strike Fighter. If our commitment to the Joint Strike Fighter were at a higher level, we would have inputs into the design and development of the JSF.

The Norwegians, for example, also have a level-three commitment, but they're dealing with the Americans right now on the basis of possibly including a special Norwegian designed anti-ship missile in their variant to the Joint Strike Fighter. I don't know where that's going to go, but they're probably going to have to buy in at a higher level in order to do that.

It also partly depends on what you're prepared to spend. Just buying a piece of American equipment off the shelf and painting it doesn't give you the industrial inputs into it and the design capabilities you might have had, so it cuts two ways.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Thank you very much.

Mr. Bachand, five minutes.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand: Thank you, Madam Chair.

At the end of your next-to-last intervention you raised the issue of the national defence policy review. I am happy to hear you raise that point because the Bloc Québécois is the only party to have stated, in the last report of the committee which studied the state of readiness of the Canadian armed forces, that before proceeding to any change or the purchase of any new materiel, it would be important to update our national defence policy, which dates back to 1994.

I must admit that in light of the limited financial resources available, several generals have often said to me, anonymously of course, that we may need fewer vessels and airplanes, and that we should perhaps limit ourselves to traditional Canadian peacekeeping missions.

I would now like to broach the debate on specialization with you. Up till now, I believe I noticed that the generals who came before the committee were not entirely in agreement on some degree of specialization. Of course, if we say that we are specializing in peacekeeping missions, the chiefs of maritime staff and of air staff may not like that very much, because this would mean that there would be more soldiers, or a specialization in land forces, and that the air force and the navy would consequently have fewer resources devoted to them.

I know that this debate is taking place as we speak, even within NATO. NATO has just welcomed some new countries. Obviously, we cannot expect Lithuania's navy, army and air force to be of the same scope as that of the Americans. Thus, there are many countries that tend to want to specialize, and I would like to hear your opinion on specialization. For instance, could we say that we will henceforth favour peacekeeping missions and no longer take part in more aggressive missions such as the one in Afghanistan or elsewhere, and that we want to limit ourselves to peacekeeping missions? Let the Americans police the world, and we can then be the enforcers and play a peacekeeping role in those countries. I would like to know what you think of the matter of specialization.

¿ (0950)

[English]

Prof. David Bercuson: That's a very complex question. Let me try to tackle it this way. What you need to decide is not whether your military is going to be a peacekeeping military, a peace enforcement military, or a war fighting military; I think you have to decide whether it's going to be a combat-capable military. What does that mean?

Combat capable means you're going to pick certain capabilities, because we can't have a military that does everything. You're going to decide, for example, that your infantry will be trained to fight as infantry soldiers fight, and they will receive all of the required basic training. They will use the new training facility that's going to be put in at Wainwright. They will learn how to deal with enemy fire. They will learn how to use armoured vehicles of some kind to help them defend themselves under enemy fire. They will learn how to use light and heavy machine guns, mortars, rockets, etc.

Why? Because we had a peacekeeping operation in a place called Yugoslavia, and in a battle at Medak pocket the fact they had combat training meant they suffered a couple of casualties, but the other guys had 35 killed. We were trying to do something very humanitarian then. We were trying to prevent a lot of Serb people from being burned to a crisp.

So what does it mean when say we're going to send them out to be peacekeepers? I think you need to talk about whether we're going to sent them to be soldiers or to be paramilitary, like the Italian carabiniere, where they do not have heavy military training and they're essentially trained in crowd control and that sort of thing, or do we send them to be RCMP? It's a political decision; the government has to make it.

In my view, if you're going to send somebody off the shore of this country in a uniform that says Canadian Forces you have to equip that person, train that person, and give that person the frame of reference and the frame of mind so that person can defend himself or herself and carry out the responsibilities the Government of Canada gives to him or her. To me that means combat capable.

Traditional chapter-6 type Lester Pearson peacekeeping, in my opinion, is as dead as a doornail. I think it died in Yugoslavia, and further nails were driven into the coffin in places like Rwanda and East Timor. During the Cold War, peacekeeping forces could be put in the field and commanded through UN authority in New York. That worked very well because the peace was fundamentally being kept by the great powers that decided it was convenient to have the UN there in that little area of the world, and they were going to keep the bad guys away.

But the Cold War is not there anymore. The peacekeeping missions we had in those days will not function now.

The military is worried about ISAF. I don't know if they tell you that when they come to this committee, but I can tell you that the men and women who are going to go to Afghanistan are worried about ISAF because they don't want to be stuck in the middle of Afghanistan under UN command without the heavy military capabilities they could deploy as part of NATO, if Afghanistan goes into the toilet. There's no guarantee it won't.

They don't trust the UN to provide them with the logistical support or the combat support they will need to get out of a tough situation if they're stuck in the middle of Afghanistan, because they've had that experience before and the UN was no help to them.

So I think you need combat capability. You can't have it everywhere. You can't have every weapon system. It's a small country and it needs to do what it needs to do. But in those areas where you decide you're going to maintain military forces, for those jobs you're going to do you need to have combat capability. I don't think you should worry about whether the mission is so-called peacekeeping, peace enforcement, or war fighting, because it all really gets down to the same thing.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Thank you very much.

Mr. Grose, five minutes.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Professor, I'm afraid you're stuck with me. I'm the only one left on this side.

Let's talk about the difference between Canada and the United States. The United States went into the war in Iraq, and it might cost a few extra dollars, but the other day they put a bill through both Houses to pay for that war. It started out at $75 billion and they threw in an extra $5 billion, just to round it out to $80 billion. It passed almost unanimously through both Houses. If any government in Canada, using the 10:1 ratio, tried to put through a bill for $8 billion extra taxation to fight a war in a far-away land, if there weren't an insurrection, that government certainly wouldn't be re-elected.

So there's a difference in mindset between the American people and the Canadian people, yet here we are talking about how to match them, possibly using the 10:1 ratio. There's no way on God's green earth we're ever going to come close to it. We talk a good game, but it's virtually impossible to do. So operating within that framework, what in the world do we do? Give the whole thing up?

Incidentally, at one point when the argument got rather frantic I said, “Look, either do this thing right or forget it. Save the $10 billion. Spend it somewhere else. We won't have any armed forces at all.”

Now that's a ridiculous thing to say, but somehow I was trying to make the point that we talk two different fights here. The Canadian people want us to do national defence, buy new equipment, do this, that, and the other thing, but they don't want to pay what the American people are willing to pay.

¿ (0955)

Prof. David Bercuson: I really can't discuss what sorts of bills would pass the House of Commons and what wouldn't. We have a different sort of a system here, and there's a different threat perception in this country than in the United States. Are they being too sensitive? Are we living in a fool's paradise, or is the truth somewhere in the middle? I don't know. To me that's not the issue.

I was brought here as somebody who purportedly knows something about the current defence picture. To me, the issue is that decisions need to be made by the government in cooperation--of course, when I say government I'm talking about the whole governing process--as we did back in 1993-94, on what the defence policy of this country is going to be in the reality of this world today.

We have a policy that was put together in 1993, and it reflected the world as it was in 1993. I don't think there are many Canadians out there who are driving 1993 vehicles. But the basic plan we use for recruitment, training, doctrine, acquisition, and interoperability is the 1994 white paper.

I have my views on where I think Canadian Forces should go, and I'm sure Mr. Blaikie has his views on where they should go, and they're probably very different. But the time has come to put them all out on the table to deal with the realities of today's world and put a new white paper in place.

That new white paper should look at virtually everything the last one did, and a lot more; decide what the defence policy of this country is going to be over the next decade; and make provision for the money to pay for it. Whatever the Canadian people decide through their government they want to do, make the commitment and keep it.

The thing I've heard most on trips I've made to Washington, the defence department, the Pentagon, and whatnot is if you're going to make a promise, keep it. Decide what promise you're going to make, but by God keep the promise. So I think that's what people are really waiting for us to do, and we haven't decided.

That's a bit of a political speech, but it's the only way I can answer this question because we need to have a new white paper policy process. I think that's something everybody can agree on. Then let's thrash it out.

Mr. Ivan Grose: I don't think what you're saying is political at all; it's practical and common sense. It's our political problem, and if the Canadian people are not willing to pay for it, fine, cut the suit to fit what they're willing to pay. But I agree with you we need a plan of some kind so we know where we're going. I couldn't agree with you more. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Thank you very much.

Mr. Blaikie, five minutes.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: Just so Professor Bercuson doesn't think we disagree about everything, in fact, we had a very civilized discussion.

À (1000)

Prof. David Bercuson: I wasn't picking on you.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: The NDP agrees we need a white paper and the very kind of political debate you're talking about, because ultimately so many of these things require that kind of political decision.

I don't know what it says about me, but I know lots of people who are driving 1993 cars.

Just pursuant to some of the discussion that's gone on, I agree with you that traditional peacekeeping has evolved tragically, in some respects, into peacemaking; and peacemaking requires a level of combat capability that soldiers are going to need if they're going to be put into these kinds of difficult situations. I think that's a reality that needs to be taken into account in any description of how the Canadian peacekeeping tradition should be carried forward.

I want to follow up with you on something I raised with the defence minister yesterday in committee and you referred to. That is what appears to be the Canadian request that NATO take over--I'm not sure what the appropriate verb is here--the ISAF; what Canada has committed itself to in Afghanistan. It appears now they want NATO to become involved in some way that they are not now involved. You said one of the reasons was that NATO has this technological capability, in terms of communications, etc., that the United Nations doesn't have.

I was saying to the defence minister yesterday--and I think this is an ongoing problem--that I've been at a lot of North Atlantic Assembly meetings, the parliamentary wing of NATO, and often you hear that NATO has to do this and NATO has to do that because the UN can't. Sometimes these arguments are made by representatives of countries--or a country--that haven't exactly been paying their dues to the United Nations. I sometimes feel they don't really want the United Nations to be what they lament it is not. In fact, they see that there's competition, if you like, between NATO and the UN, and some people see NATO taking over that kind of global police role that other people feel the UN either did or should do more than it does.

So the question I put to the Minister of Defence was: “Isn't Canada, by asking for NATO to become involved in Afghanistan, really kind of contradicting itself, in a sense? On the one hand it's saying we're not going to participate in the war in Iraq because the UN isn't involved, which seems to be an argument for a strong UN presence in all these kinds of things. Yet on the other hand, in the very same region, it's saying: “We want NATO to take over”--I don't know if take over is the right word--“a UN operation because we don't feel that the UN is sufficient to the task.”

I said to him: “Aren't you really sort of undermining your own position here by wanting NATO to do something that perhaps you should be arguing the UN should have a better capability of doing? Why not argue that the UN should have these kinds of capabilities, rather than saying that NATO should become involved out of the area?” That's a whole other debate, and really out of the area. That's not the Balkans.

Prof. David Bercuson: Do I get to answer that a little?

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): You can answer that. You have about a minute, or you could do it in the next round.

Mr. Bill Blaikie: There are hardly any of us left, Madam Chair. Surely it's not too strict.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): That's right. Go ahead.

Prof. David Bercuson: Avoiding the political implications of that, I think the decision to try to get NATO involved is probably based at least as much--and I'm just making a guess here--on the technical or logistical requirements of the mission and the command and control requirements of the mission. Getting NATO involved effectively means getting USCENTCOM involved--that's really what it's about--because in Afghanistan it would be Tommy Franks and his crew from Tampa.

I think they're realizing that the capabilities they think they need, now that they've actually looked at the situation, are somewhat greater than they thought were there at the time. I know they're also looking for a senior partner, if that's still ongoing. So getting away from the political level, they're seeing that they've in effect taken on a mission that they may not have the capability of doing themselves.

I also believe it's fair to say that the government supported the Brahimi Report when it came out about two years ago, to strengthen the UN's ability to deal with these kinds of situations. But the Brahimi Report seems to be a dead letter at this point.

À (1005)

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Thank you very much, professor.

Mr. Grose.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Madam Chair.

I have a simple, straightforward question, which is unusual for me, on the role of the tank in any future war. I think Iraq is a poor example because they had no opposition at all. They just roamed around wherever they wanted to. There were no anti-tank weapons, and the only other tanks were outdated.

So what do you feel is the role of the tank in future wars, inasmuch as a man with a relatively cheap rocket launcher on his shoulder can take out most tanks now?

Prof. David Bercuson: There's always going to be debate on that question. I'm not sure what lessons are going to be learned from Iraq, quite honestly, because I can see two things coming out of Iraq.

One side in the U.S. that's in the transformation debate--by the way, that's the side that's against Donald Rumsfeld--will say, “The Legacy Force won the battle of Iraq. We won it with the Abrams tanks; we won it with the Bradley fighting vehicles; we won it with the Legacy Air Force.” etc. So the next step will be to revive the $8 billion, or whatever, Crusader Howitzer system. The other side will say, “We won it with light lethal forces striking quickly with lots of air power.” You know what the debate will be, and it's going to be a while before we're really sure what the truth is.

I do know that if you're going to put infantry in the field they have to have direct-fire vehicles, or you don't put them in the field. A direct-fire vehicle can be a wheeled vehicle or a tracked vehicle. The armour guys will tell that tracked vehicles are much better because they go more places, and it's true. But wheeled technology is very good today. It gets you to about 80% of the places that a tracked vehicle will.

Did the LAV hold up under fire? We don't know. Did it hold up as well as the Bradley? We don't know that either. I suspect that a lot of our people will be somewhere working with the marines in the next 12 months finding out exactly what the LAV's capabilities really were under fire.

So the short answer to the question is if we're going to have infantry we must have the means of supporting them, and that includes a direct-fire vehicle--absolutely. Whether it's a tank or a LAV with 105mm gun mounted on it, like the American Striker that will fit in a Herc--except it doesn't yet fit in a Herc--I don't know.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you. I don't know either.

Quite frankly, I come from a city where the reserve regiment is a tank regiment. They don't have any tanks, but they're interested in which way they're going to go. As with most other things, we have no policy at all. We have all our tanks lined up at Suffield, and there they sit.

It possibly goes beyond whether the tank has a role or not and whether we will pay for the next generation of tanks, which are going to be fabulously expensive.

Thank you.

Prof. David Bercuson: We don't even know if there's going to be a next generation of tanks, at least not any time in the near future. The Americans have no plans to develop a new one. There are certainly plans to upgrade the current ones, but they're even cutting back on those upgrades. That may change as a result of the Iraq war.

We're not getting into a budget debate here, but I think the last budget clearly brought the Canadian Forces to the point of survivability and put off the question on major acquisition systems to the future. That question will have to be addressed some time.

I brought something along that was developed by one of the military forces. You can see how many major systems are reaching the end of their operational life. Some of these decisions can't be put off for more than a year to two. They'll have to be addressed in the next budget and the budget after that. The decision has to be make whether to keep tanks or just end direct-fire vehicles.

We're going to get a new wheeled LAV--no, we have the LAVs here, but here are some of the old ones. Sea Kings--I don't want to get into that. On the M113, are we going to continue to have this capability or are we going to drop it? Are we going to upgrade it or buy a new one? These decisions are starting to press in.

À (1010)

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Elsie Wayne): Thank you very much.

Mr. Benoit, five minutes, please.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Thank you, Madam Chair.

Professor Bercuson, the more I think about this Afghanistan mission, and even just from your comments today, I wonder how in the heck Canada ever committed to that. Why would our military leadership say we could do that job if we can't?

Prof. David Bercuson: I don't have a clue what happened in the selection of the mission, and I really don't want to speculate.

Mr. Leon Benoit: From the appearance of General Jeffries last week and just everything put together, it defies the logic that Canada committed to that, and yet we did. How can the military leadership be so out of touch with what the military can deliver? What other possible explanation is there for it?

It's an extremely frustrating thing for me, watching this develop from the start. I had a lot of questions, I have more all the time, and I'm getting no answers. Do you have any?

Prof. David Bercuson: My views on that issue have been in a number of newspaper columns, and I really don't want to bring them in here. You brought me in here to talk about interoperability and these other more technical subjects.

Mr. Leon Benoit: I have seen some of your articles. Could you send copies of them to the chair of the committee for distribution to us?

Prof. David Bercuson: Sure.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Okay. I'd appreciate that.

In terms of the defence white paper, for four years we've been calling for a new white paper. It became evident, with the changing strategic environment, that it was necessary, yet I have no information on whether there's going to be one for sure in the foreseeable future. Maybe you do.

First of all, have you heard whether we're going to have a new defence white paper in the next year, or start the process in the next six months or anything?

Prof. David Bercuson: I've been hearing it in various ways now for two years, and I'm not trying to be comical about this. I've heard it from members of the Department of Foreign Affairs; I've heard it from within DND; I've heard it from various political figures, and so on. I haven't had any indication that it's going to happen. It sort of seems kind of logical that after 10 years, with all the changed conditions--

Mr. Leon Benoit: What reason could there be for resistance to a foreign affairs white paper and a defence white paper? Is it resistance or what? Is there no leadership there pushing for it, or what's the problem here?

Prof. David Bercuson: Again, I'm not here to make partisan--

Mr. Leon Benoit: I'm not going to put political comments on it. It is frustrating. Things have changed enough that there should be a new foreign affairs white paper and a new defence white paper. It's been long enough.

Prof. David Bercuson: I agree. I was in front of this committee in the fall of 2001, after a group I'm associated with had issued a paper called “To Secure a Nation”, which I know this committee has read. We made some 20-odd recommendations in what ought to be looked at in a new white paper. I think the tone was very judicious. We didn't take very many sides. We said, “Here are things that haven't been studied for 20 years and we need to study them”. That stands on the record and I still think it's valid.

Mr. Leon Benoit: There are some people who argue that because the Cold War threat is gone the world is a more stable place and there is less need to focus on the military, so there's really no need to increase military spending. In fact, maybe it could even be reduced.

How do you respond to that comment? There are people who are saying that.

Prof. David Bercuson: The world is demonstrably not a safer place. We do not have the threat of thermal nuclear annihilation hanging over our heads, but I don't even want to count the number of people who have been killed in so-called small wars since 1990. It's absolutely appalling, and the toll goes on. I just read the other day about a mass grave of 1,000 who were slaughtered in the Congo. They're not even sure which side slaughtered whom.

So if you're the one living under the knife.... As Canadians we may feel we're so incomparably safer than we were 10 or 12 years ago. I'm not sure you'd say that if you lived in central Africa, Asia, or somewhere in the Middle East. I think you'd be saying quite the opposite.

À (1015)

Mr. Leon Benoit: That being the case, there are those--Mr. Grose or Mr. McGuire, I believe, brought this up--who argue that Canadians just aren't willing to accept spending more tax dollars on the military. I frankly really question that. In fact, in some of the polling done more recently we've seen indications to the contrary.

In 1950, Prime Minister Saint-Laurent--I believe I heard this at a recent conference--quadrupled our military budget in a very short period of time. Quite frankly, I think it was a great investment in Canada.

If we were to spend the same as the United States, on a per capita basis or as a percentage of GDP, we'd be spending about $55 billion a year on our military, although I'm not suggesting we do that.

You think about this and hear from people. Would there be more willingness on the part of the public if there were strong leadership saying it was necessary to spend more money on the military?

Prof. David Bercuson: I think the public's prepared to spend more money on the military. The public needs a bit more justification for why that money needs to be spent, but I don't think the Canadian public are derelict in their international responsibilities. There are majorities out there that forum and then shift another majority's forum on many international questions. I don't see any indication that Canadians, as a whole, like the idea of being referred to as international freeloaders.

I think they're prepared to spend more money on defence. They want to know what it's for; they want to know that it's going to be effective; they want to know it's going to serve the national interest. That goes back to the whole idea of re-examining the defence policy and looking at a white paper.

The Chair (Mr. David Pratt (Nepean—Carleton, Lib.)): Mr. Benoit, your time is up.

We'll go to Mr. Bachand.

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

A few weeks ago we had the pleasure of welcoming Mr. Granatstein, whom you must certainly know, whose philosophy is indeed somewhat the opposite of mine. He feels that we must necessarily have the biggest cannon or the biggest brigade. Indeed, he feels that when the international community cannot equal the fire-power of a superpower, it invents systems to control it through multilateralism, etc.

I see here that he gave a presentation to you in October of 2002; that was not so long ago. The title of his presentation was Canada's Army: Is it Still Relevant? I am going to try and obtain his speaking notes, but I do not know what his conclusion was. That is the question I would like to put to you before I conclude, because I have to go somewhere else. According to you, is Canada's army still relevant?

[English]

Prof. David Bercuson: Is Canada's army still relevant? Yes, of course it's relevant; it's just it's not as relevant as it used to be. It can still participate in important international operations, but the participation needs to be limited because of its size, primarily. The army is, in fact, getting better equipped all the time. It's much better equipped than it was even five, six, or seven years ago, in ways large and small. But it is too small to sustain operational missions, other than very small ones, for significant lengths of time. We saw that in Afghanistan, where we could not renew our presence there.

The government just made a commitment the other day, which I completely welcome, to increase the size of the reserve forces to 18,500. That will have an impact on the army's ability to operate. It will make the army more relevant, no question about it. It will take a couple of years. You can't just pour 3,000 people into the reserves and expect them to be trained, equipped, and whatnot. So these things wrap up slowly.

On trying to maintain the current size of a regular force of 60,000, will you recognize that a rough rule of thumb in today's modern military is that it takes five people carrying supplies, storing supplies, doing the paperwork, and all the rest of that stuff to sustain one rifle person at the front? So you really need a larger base than that to work with.

I think the optimal size of the army for the missions it has been taking on in the last several years is of a magnitude somewhat larger than the current one. Then it will be even more relevant than it is.

À (1020)

The Chair: Do you have anything further, Monsieur Bachand?

[Translation]

Mr. Claude Bachand: No, thank you.

[English]

The Chair: Mrs. Wayne.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Thank you very much. Since our chair has arrived--

The Chair: Now you can ask questions.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Yes.

I had the distinct honour last night of being at a dinner where Ambassador Cellucci was the guest speaker. He did an excellent job, he truly did. He talked about the need for Canada and the U.S. to be partners and friends, and so on.

In the very last part of his speech, he did refer to the fact that we need to put more money into our military. He came out and called for more money for the military. He also spoke about what has happened in just the past few weeks with regard to our relationship, and the need for us to more or less rebuild a little bit our relationship with some people in the U.S.

I've been very worried about that. I have two brothers who are businessmen in the U.S. They've been in touch with me. I know some people say they don't pay much attention to this, and I'd say the men and women in uniform who are in Iraq don't pay much attention to it. But I'm wondering just how you feel we should proceed to try to rebuild and strengthen our relationship with the U.S.A., Professor.

Prof. David Bercuson: The problem with the question is I really don't want to give my political views on what has happened in the last x number of months. From the point of view of the defence relationship--let me just refer to that--we need to be perceived as doing as much as we reasonably can, for a country of our size and resources, to help defend the continent and the international system we prosper from.

If that is the case, it will certainly help rebuild that relationship, to a very great extent, in Washington. I think there are some folks there who perceive us to be international freeloaders. Let's look at what happened here. I don't think there were many people watching TV last night who didn't feel good about seeing a dictator toppled. We're going to benefit from that, and we invested little into it. I think the view down there is that's not really fair.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: When I was mayor of Saint John, I used to go down and light the Christmas tree in the Boston Common. In fact, we were building our relationship between the U.S.A. and Canada in Bangor, Portland, and Boston. They gave me an honorary degree for working that hard down there.

I think it is very important. I don't want us to have to rely on the U.S.A. Our men and women in uniform cannot come up on the Hill to protest and speak out. They rely on people like yourself, our chair, and the rest of us around this table to fight for them.

Ambassador Cellucci came out and stated, “You need to put more money into it”. I sit on one of the committees that travelled to St. Petersburg, Russia, and we were told that then as well, so people knew.

At one time, I believe we were in the top four countries when it came to military, and now we're down at the end of the scale. What happened? What made us do all this? I don't know. I don't know why we have not paid attention to the needs of our military. It should be a number-one priority.

À (1025)

Prof. David Bercuson: It should be a very important priority. I certainly agree with that.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Thank you, Mrs. Wayne.

Professor, I'd like to get a question on the record, if I could. I'm sorry I wasn't here for your opening comments. I had an announcement in my area that I pretty much had to be at, so I didn't have the benefit of hearing the earlier discussion. I gather that the committee has talked about the issue of Canada-U.S. relations recently.

As a very well-respected historian in this country, you have a broader sweep than most people on the relationship between Canada and the U.S., especially the military relationship over the years. In relation to what we've witnessed over the last month or two, in terms of Canada's decision not to participate in this conflict, in the big sweep of historical events, how would you characterize that in terms of Canada-U.S. relations?

For instance, is this a little pothole that we've hit, or is this more of a bone-jarring, teeth-rattling crevice in the road that may affect the relationship in the future?

Prof. David Bercuson: It could have been worse. Had we seen a withdrawal of our naval forces from the gulf, it would have been catastrophic. I say that because a lot of time and money has been invested by both countries in achieving the present level of interoperability of the Canadian Navy and the U.S. Navy. It's a niche interoperability, but it's a very important niche, as I know you're aware of.

I know this is talking about what didn't happen, but I feared most that the ships would be withdrawn and the trust would be broken. I don't know how long it would have taken to re-establish that trust between the two navies alone, even though I think on the part of the United States Armed Forces the view is a fairly sympathetic one toward the Canadian military, in the sense of, “We know that you'd like to be with us”.

That's the feeling I've had from people in armouries at air bases. I was at Bagotville when the war broke out. I know how they were feeling there at 425 Tactical Fighter Squadron and 433 Tactical Fighter Squadron. They were very clear on what their views were, and so on.

I think the military knows it is in the right place, in wanting to participate in some sense or another, and knows we need to work with the Americans. I've heard a lot of expressions of dismay from our military members recently--reservists, regular force, air force, navy--about what they view as the display of anti-American opinion in certain circles. They believe it does not help the interoperable relationship between the two militaries.

So when I say it could have been worse, I literally mean that. I think from the army perspective, not much was lost operationally. From the air force perspective, I know that certain lines of intelligence they were getting.... I was told at the base that when the Prime Minister made his statement, that was it for information. They were getting their information from the same CNN sources as I was. It ought not to be that way, but that's the way it was.

I don't know if that answers your question or not.

The Chair: I think that's a fairly comprehensive answer.

Prof. David Bercuson: I'm trying not to be too political here.

The Chair: I thank you for that.

Mr. Benoit.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Thank you very much.

You've stressed several times at this committee the importance of keeping our naval presence in the gulf. One concern I've certainly had, and many Canadians have had, is having Sea Kings on board the frigates or not, as the case may be.

The military leadership, under questioning at various committees here, seemed to indicate it's not that important; it's not really a serious problem. Some have said otherwise, but some have given that indication, which is a surprise.

Do you feel that having the Sea Kings rather than, say, a new Cormorant--had the original deal the Conservatives put in place gone through as scheduled--is a big issue?

À (1030)

Prof. David Bercuson: It is and it isn't. From the perspective of trying to be an analyst, and not getting into a political debate, I need to point out a number of things.

First, as you may be aware, the Royal Navy flies Sea Kings. There are four-year-old airframes out there doing a lot of different work in a lot of different areas, and a lot of different aircraft. The Americans are flying B-52s and are putting $280 million right now into refurbishing the B-52s to give them another 10 years of operational life.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Yes, but it's not just the airframe; it's what's on board.

Prof. David Bercuson: Exactly. On whether they should have been replaced, the government of the day made a decision to replace them, and we all know what happened.

Mr. Leon Benoit: But that wasn't my question. What impact does that have on our capabilities in the gulf now?

Prof. David Bercuson: It has an impact on our capabilities because the helicopter adds to the information network and extends the ship's own capabilities. The helicopter gives the ship a greater range of its own radars, of its own sound detection equipment, than it would normally have if the helicopter were not there--besides doing a lot of other things.

For example, the helicopters are invaluable in the Persian Gulf in checking on smuggling operations. They're invaluable in helping the ships bring possible embargo breakers to a halt at sea. They've been used in all kinds of ways. They've been used to land naval personnel aboard ships that refused to stop.

These are things that just cannot be done by a ship alone. It's a ship and a helicopter. In the last 50 years, largely as a result of pioneering work we did, our navy has pioneered large ship-borne helicopters. All the early technologies were designed by the Royal Canadian Navy.

The first significant naval units to be converted to helicopter carriers were our destroyers. I'm not talking about small one-man thingies that hung from the back of battle ships; I'm talking about real operational helicopters. We developed them, and everyone in the world has followed. Why? It wasn't because they liked maple syrup; they followed because a helicopter on a ship extends the capability of that ship in many different ways. It's not just a thing for submarines in the Cold War.

So will better helicopters better extend the capability of the ship? Darn right. Absolutely. No question about it. To me, that's really the question.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Okay. You spoke in your opening remarks about interoperability, but mostly looking at it from an expeditionary point of view. What about in terms of here in North America, and interoperability against terrorist threats on this continent?

Prof. David Bercuson: Yes, it applies to that as well. If you think about land force operations in the future, look at the U.S. 4th Infantry Division. It is the standard to which all other land forces will have to build up to in the future, if they're going to work alongside the United States Army. Whether they're going to be working alongside the United States Army in Afghanistan or somewhere in North America, that's the standard.

The 4th Infantry Division has completed its conversion to this network-centric warfare. That was the one that was supposed to deploy through Turkey and didn't get the chance to do so. I haven't visited the 4th ID. I've read about it, heard about it, and studied it a little bit. But you want to visit the 4th ID, and there you're going to see the future of the Canadian army. Whether it's a future of the Canadian army that has a tank or not, or this, that, or the other thing, it's going to be network-centric warfare.

À (1035)

The Chair: For greater clarification, Professor, is this the division that's based in Fort Hood, Texas?

Prof. David Bercuson: Yes.

Mr. Leon Benoit: You've taken a lot of time to come here to this committee, and I really appreciate that. We're studying the Canada-U.S. military relationship.

If you could give the government three pieces of advice on how they could focus on improving Canada-U.S. military relations, what would they be?

Prof. David Bercuson: Pick the niches where you're going to be inter-operational.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Could you just expand a little there? I would appreciate it.

Prof. David Bercuson: Okay. The navy has picked anti-aircraft protection as the main contribution it wants to make. So our destroyers and our frigates out there are equipped basically to replace an American AEGIS-class destroyer, an Arleigh Burke. We can do the same work as an Arleigh Burke and plug into the system. I don't know who made it, but that was the choice they made. That is what we are going to specialize in.

What are we going to specialize in with regard to the air force? What are we going to specialize in with regard to the army? What are we going to specialize in with regard to joint staff? Whatever it is, pick your niche.

Two, make sure part of the arrangements you make with the Americans fills our requirements as well as theirs. I don't see the point, quite honestly, of spending a zillion dollars buying an off-the-shelf piece of equipment that does not exactly suit our needs. If we're going to spend the money, spend whatever is required to make sure our operational requirements are met in the interoperability. In other words, we're not just plugging into their system; we're making a contribution to the development of the system, so we will get something out of it both operationally and in terms of technological development. We want to learn ourselves. We want to be part of the technology transfer process. That's the second thing.

Third is to make it a long-term commitment, in terms of the capital expenditure, and don't eat into it. Set the money aside and put a fence around. That's it.

Mr. Leon Benoit: Yes. The per cent we're spending on capital equipment replacement now is down to something like 12% or 13% of the total military budget, the last time I saw it, which is extremely low.

How can you set it up to be sure that long-term commitment to capital replacement is going to be there?

Prof. David Bercuson: I'm not an expert in governance, but I know in many jurisdictions in this country in parliamentary systems long-term investments of that sort have been made and the funds have been hedged off. It takes a special act of the legislature, or in this case of Parliament, to come back and dip into those funds, almost like a trust fund.

I don't know. I'm not an expert in that area, but we can't look at network-centric warfare as something that exists now, because I can tell you it is evolving as we speak. It will look different a year from now and two years from now. It will develop different capabilities; certain parts of it will become obsolete; and certain new things we can't even think of today will be added to it.

You're either part of that process or you don't go into it. As soon as you've decided you're not going to buy into this part of it, which makes it obsolete, why have you made the investment in the first place?

So know what you're getting into. That's the second part of what I've said. Don't just put your money on the table and buy it; know what you're getting into.

Mr. Leon Benoit: In terms of how we--Parliament, the government, the military, or all three--can determine what we should be involved in, I guess that's part of the white paper process, to some extent. Do you have any suggestions for how we can improve that process?

À (1040)

Prof. David Bercuson: Do you mean the process of being involved?

Mr. Leon Benoit: No, I mean making wise decisions when it comes to what we are going to be involved in.

Prof. David Bercuson: I think we have part of the process in place, in the sense of the normal means of developing budgets. The military goes to the deputy minister, who works with the Department of Finance, and all of that stuff, to basically try to put together the department's budgetary appropriation, or what the request will be. If that's what you're getting at, that process is already there.

We run into potential difficulties--and I have to be very blunt about this--because we are really evolving or devolving back to an army, a navy, and an air force, and they are really beginning to fight with each other about budgetary priorities. The exact reason why we created a CF in the first place was so everyone came together on what they wanted, and the government knew that the budget number was not inflated because of inter-service rivalries. But we are tending to go back to that situation.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Benoit.

We're going to go to Mr. Grose and then Mrs. Wayne.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you, Mr. Chair.

What are the Europeans doing? I know about the Joint Strike Fighter, but that's as much as I know. What are they doing to integrate their forces? Are they doing a better job than we're doing with the United States? Do they have the same budget problems we have? Just how is it going in Europe and where are they heading?

Prof. David Bercuson: I can only give you a very general picture. I'm not an expert on it but I keep up with the literature, which is available to pretty well anyone in these specialized newspapers.

A large number of intra-European projects are on the drawing boards, and some of them are actually beginning to reach fruition, like the Eurofighter. However, the Eurofighter has been under development for a long time, and in no way can it be called the next generation fighter. It's basically a bit of an advance on existing technologies.

In fact, what the Americans call Block 60 or Block 70 F-16s are going to be about as advanced as the Eurofighter. I know that people from the Eurofighter consortium will probably curse me for saying it, but I think it's fairly obvious that's the case.

They're working on projects like the A400M, which is in great difficulty now because of decisions that are being made by the German government about how many they're going to buy, and so on.

Some countries are working together on armoured fighting vehicles of various types--fire control systems of various types. There's a lot of cooperation going on within Europe, but the level of defence spending in Europe has dropped a lot in the last decade, especially in Germany, and certainly the research and development has suffered.

Are they completely interoperable, or are they aspiring to interoperability with the Americans? I think part of the answer is some of them are and some of them aren't. I don't think there's any real unity in Europe on that issue.

Mr. Ivan Grose: Isn't it ironic, though, that German military spending is dropping--which is exactly what we wanted and what we fought two wars for--but now we find it not a commendable thing? It's an indication of how things change.

In Europe they do a lot of talking, especially France and Germany, about being a counterbalance against the United States, not necessarily from a military point of view, but if they're not getting together they'll never be able to match the United States in any way.

Prof. David Bercuson: Again, I'm not an expert on European politics, but I think recent events show they're quite disunited in what their objectives are with regard to the United States. They're disunited as to the future of NATO. If you followed the disagreements over how to handle Iraq from the late 1990s, and read Wesley Clark's book on the air campaign in Kosovo, you could see those cracks developing before now. I think those cracks are going to continue to develop, and that will have implications for us because we'll have choices to make down the road if NATO continues to deteriorate as a military alliance.

Mr. Ivan Grose: It limits their choice to--guess what--the United States.

Prof. David Bercuson: We don't live in the world of 1945 any longer. The Lester Pearson style of multilateralism worked very well for its day, but that day is over. The Security Council does not represent the world balance of power; there is no world balance of power any longer. We can either try to shoehorn multilateral institutions into the realities of the world balance of power as it actually is, or we can say they do not represent the realities of today, and live with that. I think that's our choice.

À (1045)

Mr. Ivan Grose: Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Grose.

Mrs. Wayne.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: You have said several times today in your presentation, Professor, that you don't want to be political. As the chair knows, I have always said we must not be political around this committee table. We must take the politics out of it when it's defence. I would say probably 98% of us do that. There might be a couple who don't.

I really feel very strongly that we got the $800 million in the budget this time because of this committee, the people who came before us to speak out, all the retired colonels, and so on. I think the people themselves, our Canadians from coast to coast, started to take a look at the armed forces and our military and said, “This is not the way it should be”. We've fought for quality of life and we've been able to upgrade that. Certainly there was a great need for it.

If we continue in that direction, perhaps in the future we will see more money put into the military--hopefully, we will--because it has to be a top priority.

On what has happened in Iraq, I don't think President Bush and the Americans are going to go home just saying, “Well, we've done this and that's it”. They're looking at other areas right now as well, and they're speaking out. I think we'll find that we have to play a bigger role in the future to keep peace around the world. We have to make sure our security is very strong here for our people in Canada.

The only way we can do that is to have more men and women in the army, navy, and air force, and give them the tools to do the job. As I said earlier, they can't speak out. We have to do it. And that's what we'll continue to do.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

The Chair: Do you have any comments on that, Professor?

Prof. David Bercuson: I have two comments.

First, I think your committee has been very effective. We know what impact it has had on quality of life in the military. There is no question at all about the direct link between your report and the budget increases last year. I think the committee's work has been very important in the increase, which is not just $800 million; it is an increase incrementally over the next several years, and a very important one because it will stabilize the military.

But I think the real battle, in a sense, will come within the next 12 to 24 months. Is there going to be a full review?

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: That's right.

Prof. David Bercuson: Will the budget be further modified to take into consideration the requirement for new capital expenditures?

I think your committee is going to have to play a very important role in that too.

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: I want to thank you very much for coming all the way from Calgary. My son is coming all the way from Calgary tomorrow for Easter.

Prof. David Bercuson: The weather's nice out there.

À (1050)

Mrs. Elsie Wayne: Well, you brought it with you because the sun is shining.

I thank you very much, Professor.

The Chair: Professor, I'd like to put another question to you arising out of some of your responses to Mr. Benoit.

You talked about niche interoperability areas where Canada might be involved. You spoke about the long-range protection that's provided by our Iroquois-class destroyers, the 280s. Given the extent to which we have worked with the Americans in the past, I'm just wondering how effective it will be to try to concentrate on niches rather than working--and this may be a little too optimistic perhaps--on a wider area of coordination, cooperation, and interoperability.

Obviously, the frigates are able to work with U.S. battle groups. When we get our submarines up and running and fully operational, it's obvious they're going to be working with submariners in the United States and the U.K. Should we be a little bit more ambitious in terms of these interoperability areas?

I think you mentioned the 4th U.S. Infantry Division as setting the standard on where infantry is going in the future in network-centric warfare. But presumably there are other areas--and I'm thinking here of the area of special forces--where they will become more important as time goes on.

I'm thinking of whether or not we really have to be more ambitious in our levels of cooperation, not just with the Americans, although I think cooperation with the Americans is critical, but working with the British as well. If we try to look to the future and where things are going, in terms of this coalition we saw the Australians, the British, and the Americans--the old North Atlantic triangle plus the Ozzies.

Do you have any response on that?

Prof. David Bercuson: It's really more of a budget issue than anything else, because the extent to which you can be ambitious is going to be hedged round by the extent to which the funding is available.

It's interesting you mention special forces, because special forces today are really becoming part of network-centric warfare. In many cases, the effectiveness of precision-guided munitions depends on special forces on the ground. It's a prime example of the way interoperability works--well not interoperability, but I should say combined arms, as they used to say in the old days.

There are some fundamental questions we need to answer in this country about what our forces ought to look like, in other words, force structure. I think the force structure should determine the question of interoperability. Are we going to go for more jointness in our forces, or are we going to recognize that fundamentally our navy, our air force, and our army are never really going to work together as one military, but will always be working with other militaries. I think that's the question we need to answer before we can answer how interoperable they should be.

On the Brits and the Australians, it almost goes without saying it's not just the Americans. I made a point in the presentation at the very end that fundamentally American is the lingua franca of defence technology today. So whether it's the Brits, the Australians, or whomever, they will be fundamentally as dependent on and as much joining a system the Americans are developing, with their help, than will otherwise be the case.

We trade with Mexico, but the reason we joined NAFTA was because we didn't want the Americans to arbitrate or broker trade between the two countries; we wanted it to be a trilateral relationship. The relationship we make with Britain and Australia--and Australia is such an obvious ally that we should be making more effort to interoperate with them in the South Pacific--would be trilateral, with us, the Americans, and the Australians. Indeed, the navies do operate that way, as I'm sure you're aware. They used to have annual exercises, the MARCOT exercises, and I believe they work together quite a bit out in the Pacific.

So network-centric, primarily American developed, primarily American maintained input from other countries is part of what we need to be joining.

The Chair: I have a final question. There has always been this comment out there--and politicians are inclined to make it--that generals are always fighting the last war.

My impression, based on what we've seen in Iraq, of what militaries have to learn is that looking at the civilian casualties and the fairly low number of coalition casualties, and even fairly low Iraqi casualties, which may be a result of the political circumstances of the regime and the extent to which they really had command and control in the last couple of weeks.... Would you say it's a reflection of what we've seen that the Americans are not fighting the last war; they're probably two wars ahead of the rest of the world, in terms of how they've dealt with this?

À (1055)

Prof. David Bercuson: I think they're fighting a war and have fought a war that suits the times. I don't know about how far ahead. We can speculate, and I do understand what you're saying, but I think there's a combination of things happening here.

First of all, it's far more militarily efficient to not kill a lot of people you don't need to kill. Second, it provides a much better political environment for after the war is over. Third, it provides a much better political environment within the democracies while the war is progressing.

Americans as a people may be patriotic and back their armed forces when they go to war, but they don't like to see innocent Iraqis being killed any more than anybody else does. If they see that in large numbers, that's going to erode support for the war, and the American administration is aware of that. I think they've learned lessons very well.

I was reading out a piece here from the current chairman of the joint chiefs before you arrived. He was talking about transformation. This is the current issue of Aerospace Power Journal. “Transformation” started off as an army term, but it's now used everywhere for this. He says:

The most important breakthroughs will take place between the ears of war fighters and planners.

So the real transformation taking place down there is in the way they're looking at what they're doing.

I think our military is beginning to do that. There are higher levels of education, and more money is being spent on educating the people who are already in the military. They are being more careful about who is brought into the military and far stricter about making sure we have people who think--who have matter between the ears--in our military. I think we've seen a tremendous increase in the quality of it over the last 10 years.

But it's at the higher level, at the political level, or in that interface between the military and the political level here, where I'm not quite sure there's been any transformation at all between the ears, in looking at the reality of the world today and how it ought to affect defence policy, future development of military technology, and so on and so forth, as they relate to Canada.

The Chair: On that very important insight, I think we're going to have to end our discussion here today. Professor, on behalf of all the committee members, thank you very much for being here.

You came on the second-last day before a long break. Parliament will have a two-week break, so I think that partially explains why we have the number of members today. But there are other committees operating today, some of which are dealing with legislation, which is a priority.

Prof. David Bercuson: It goes into the record, so I appreciate the chance.

The Chair: I'm sure some of our members are going to want to have a look at your comments in printed form, to get the benefit of some of the ideas you've put forward here today.

So again, on behalf of everyone here, thanks very much for being here. We look forward to your next visit.

Prof. David Bercuson: Thank you. Thanks for inviting me.

The Chair: The committee is adjourned.