The call for Spanish speakers to participate in training exercises at the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre in Wainwright, Alberta, did not grab headlines. But the replacement of an Afghan training scenario with a Latin American one for Exercise Maple Resolve later this fall is part of a lager shift taking place within the Canadian Forces.
In 2006, as part of its wider transformation effort, the CF stood up Canada Command and Canadian Expeditionary Force Command to deliver an operations-focused imperative. Canada Command’s purview was primarily domestic, though it also included the North American continent. This fall, however, the command is working on a military engagement plan as part of new responsibilities for western hemisphere security acquired this summer that will see its area of responsibility for force employment expand beyond North America to include Central America, South America and the Caribbean.
The move is in synch with a larger government strategy. In 2007 Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that Latin America and the Caribbean would become a policy priority. However, much of the focus has been on the economic front – notably negotiated free trade agreements with Peru, Colombia and Panama.
In August, Harper completed a six-day tour of Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica and Honduras, again largely weighted toward trade. But on the final day at a stop in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, he announced increased support to help address regional security challenges. Specifically, he pledge almost $10 million to a range of projects through Foreign Affairs’ Anti-Crime Capacity-Building Program, an effort to strengthen state agencies and regional institutions confronting a complex mix of non-traditional security threats – political insurgents, transnational criminal organizations, drug cartels, small private military organizations, to name but a few. Add to that the challenge of professionalizing militaries and coping with the effects of natural disasters, and it’s not difficult to see how a nation such as Canada could help.
Lieutenant General Walter Semianiw, Commander of Canada Command, spoke with associate editor Chris Thatcher about what the change will mean.
What is the rationale for expanding Canada Command’s area of responsibility?
Traditionally, I think we’ve tended to see Canada as geographically isolated. That thinking is no longer true. If you look at how our national interests are defined, they are often shaped from outside the country. That speaks to continental challenges and problems that need continental solutions. Economically, we have been thinking about this for a long time, but it’s only recently that we’ve started to see this from a security perspective. We’ve got a range of challenges that we need to address together. As I look at the western hemisphere – what is happening vis-à-vis defence diplomacy, defence engagement, information sharing, intelligence sharing, capacity building, working with others across the region – it’s not just about a geographic construct, it’s about the entire swath of military support. We have a lot to gain from all of our partners.
It’s also driven by the fact that this is where the government wants us to go. The government has a western hemispheric strategy. There is an economic dimension to this. I recently celebrated Op Palaci in Revelstoke, our support to Parks Canada of a small group who throw artillery shells into possible avalanches for one reason – to ensure that the rail line stays open and billions of dollars of goods can transit the country. That support ensures from a North American point of view that Canadians can do what they need to do. Am I telling you the military is here for economics? Well, in part it is. In Afghanistan we’ve said security sector reform is the basis on which public and private sector reform are built. So you need a safe and secure Canada to be able to export and import and build and manufacture and move products. Continentally, we are very integrated. We are becoming more integrated from a western hemispheric view. Therefore, safety and security become hemispheric issues.
Does the threat matrix change with this expansion? Are there things that you now have to contend with that you did not before?
I think most of what is going to happen in the western hemisphere will be non-kinetic. What does that mean for Canada Command? Any time we respond outside of Canada, we would form a joint task force under commander of Canada Command and it would be given tasks, roles and responsibilities to execute an operation. We’d get all the parts from the army, navy and air force, put them together and do what we need to do. So, first, we need to more fully understand what is happening in the western hemisphere; and at our morning commander’s briefings, we’re now looking at the western hemisphere, not just Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. Second, we need to understand from an intelligence perspective what is happening in all of those countries – as partners, we need to share information and intelligence about threats amongst ourselves. And third, we’re now putting together what will be called the Canadian Forces Military Engagement Plan for the Western Hemisphere – we’ll sit down with each country and determine the support they’d like, what we can offer, and develop this plan, and then bring it back to the CF and integrate and coordinate what needs to get done. Most important, though, it means establishing high-level relations. I would submit, in Latin America, it is more about building and nurturing relationships. It’s not about closing the deal, which tends to be a Canadian approach; it’s about getting to know people, getting them to trust you. That takes time and you’ve got to be patient.
Are some of those relationships being handed over from CEFCOM?
They are, but in some cases it means starting anew given that we now have a global engagement strategy in the department. There are now priorities for the Caribbean and South America that we didn’t have before. We’re integrating what the army, navy and air force already have on the go with some of these countries. Our military engagement plan will now include everything everybody is doing.
It also means, and this is new for us, establishing a strong relationship with U.S. Southern Command. Our relationship has always been with NORTHCOM; we hold yearly staff talks, establish priorities we want to focus on, conduct training together. We want to take that same approach with SOUTHCOM. They are the face of the U.S. military in Latin America. I’ll be meeting with General Douglas Fraser this month to identify the three or four areas we can work on together. That speaks to a trilateral relationship amongst us, the U.S. and Latin American countries, but in many cases these countries would like to speak to us bilaterally.
Do you then foresee more training operations?
Yes. You first need to establish the high level relationships, and then it cascades down. We’ve identified four areas we need to take a look at that include such things as capacity building in the country, capacity building in Canada, which could be anything from training our members participating in exercises, to sharing lessons learned, conducting port visits, small exercises or unit exchanges. Another line of engagement speaks to such things as ethics, healthcare, personnel management, promotion, posting, training, grievances – the whole HR system and everything outside of the hard military; we’d like to learn from them and they’d like to learn from us. A good example: Canada has already moved to a joint structure. When I spoke recently at the U.S. Naval College, the question was posed, “do you think Mexico should move to a joint structure?” We represent a way of looking at structure – not the right or wrong way but another way.
Is there a whole-of-government approach to this?
If you take Mexico, for example, there are many different departments involved: Canada Border Services Agency, Department of Justice, RCMP, etc. But we all work through the embassy, through the Department of Foreign Affairs. Canada Command has established those high level relationships – I’ve met with representatives of SEDENA (army and air force) and SEMAR (navy) and we’ve held the first ever military-to-military staff talks – and we’ve established what we’d like to achieve over the next year, things such as first aid training and information sharing. Once we have the dance sheet, then we have to bring it to life. So the army may be told that Mexico would like to do urban warfare training. They’ll have to organize the event and Canada Command will provide the resources for it. But it has to happen through the embassy. We have attachés at our embassies and we use the embassy as the facilitator to bring this all together. Countries would like the CF to do this in an integrated way, not with one-offs. Canada Command may be the force driving the military engagement plan for the western hemisphere, but DFAIT’s role is to bring the whole-of-government piece together.
Do you require a southern joint task force to focus your effort?
Within Canada we have six regional joint task forces. They are the jewels in the crown of Canada Command – they do the business. What would we use outside of Canada? The answer is: within the CF we are building 1 Canadian Division into a deployable headquarters. Canada Command is working closely with the commander of 1 Div on our short-term needs. I brought his people with me to Belize recently. I might be moving quicker than the internal process, but if I need to stand up a joint task force, he’s the default mechanism. He’ll then fall under the command of Canada COM and get all the joint enablers that he needs. Since we anticipate that much of this will be non-kinetic, key to this is that he owns the Disaster Assistance Relief Team, which would then fall under Canada Command as well.
As you expand your scope of responsibility, do you need more resources, especially if good trainers are already at a premium?
The guiding principles given to me by the CDS were that it has to be focused, modest and it has to be enduring. So we have to prioritize. The global engagement strategy clearly lays out the priority of support to the different countries. My job is to integrate, coordinate and synchronize. I do need more resources but I don’t need a lot. Canada Command has established a northern section and a western hemisphere section and the western director now has four majors tasked to put this together. And we’re looking at adding two more to have a full up of six by the time our military engagement plan comes into full force, probably in December.
Are there integration concerns, particularly with respect to intelligence sharing?
There will be challenges from a legal point of view about whether you can share intelligence, but to be fair, our relationship with these countries is different than it was 10 years ago. It is better structurally than it was even five years ago. I think as we move through this notion of national security within a domestic context and what it means to us, you’ll see greater integration. For example, could you have a multinational disaster response team from the western hemisphere, perhaps under the UN or a regional organization? The four countries of Mercosur already do that for security and defence. These are some of the issues being raised. But we’ll have to do this one step at a time to ensure we do it right. So the priority is Mexico, Central America, Caribbean and then South America. I want to establish an engagement plan that meets all of our needs, bilaterally and trilaterally. It means we may need more Spanish speakers, which we are slowly starting to bring into Canada Command so that we have that capability.
More from the Vanguard archives
– Dr. Max Manwaring of the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College discusses hemispheric security changes:
https://vanguardcanada.com//HemisphericRiftManwaring
– Stephen Randall of CDFAI writes on emerging threats and challenges in the hemisphere:
https://vanguardcanada.com//UnderstandingTheNeighbourhoodRandall
An interview with LGen Walter Semianiw
