When Canadian ambassador Michael Wilson appeared before a congressional committee in May, he informed lawmakers that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President George W. Bush would likely use an upcoming meeting in July to develop “a closer working relationship between our security and intelligence forces.”
Surprisingly, Canada and the United States do not have a comprehensive agreement on North American defence and security. Organizations such as the Permanent Joint Board of Defence (PJBD), the Military Cooperation Committee (MCC), and North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) provide a level of bilateral collaboration, but all date back to the aftermath of the Second World War and deal with specific aspects of the defence relationship.
Nowhere in all the agreements, says Captain Richard Bergeron of the Canadian Forces, is there an “overarching vision defining how Canada and the US will do business in the future.”
Since 2002, Bergeron has co-directed the Bi-National Planning Group (BPG), a joint Canadian-American effort to find ways to enhance military and security cooperation. Its final report, delivered in March, may provide the blueprint Harper and Bush seek for a more integrated relationship.
“The National Security Policy and the International Policy Statement provide clear direction for various Canadian government agencies, and for the country,” Bergeron says, “and the US has an international security strategy and a national strategy for homeland security. However, our two countries do not have a combined vision that defines what we want in terms of defence and security. We need to have a comprehensive agreement.”
Cultural shift
The report offers 32 recommendations, ranging from the strategic to the tactical.
Among the most critical, the BPG suggests a formal agreement to establish continental defence and security objectives and responsibilities, as well as an advisory body to define concepts, provide recommendations and ensure the agreement is updated regularly – the PJBD and the MCC are both over 50 years old and have had only periodic revisions to their respective mandates.
It also urges greater information sharing, not only within the defence environment but across agencies such as intelligence and homeland security. This would include ensuring C4 (command, control, communications and computer) architecture is interoperable.
“We need to change the culture from need to know to need to share,” said co-director Captain Pamela McClune of the US Navy. “Generally, we’re good at talking to our counterparts (DOD to DND), but we don’t cross talk. There are national laws and policies that may affect the ability to share information, but there is a lot of information sharing that can be done within those [restrictions].”
“Transport, Customs, Immigration – all have information,” Bergeron adds. “We have to look at this holistically, and so far this information has been used in a very ad hoc way.”
The BPG also recommends:
§ Joint training and exercises to ensure interoperability, not only between militaries but also across other agencies. Providing security for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, for example, will require a joint effort.
§ The annually CANUS Threat Estimate, a military document, be updated more frequently and shared in a network; that it also include intelligence and security information.
§ The process of classifying documents be examined to ensure the appropriate level; too often documents are classified No Foreign out of habit rather than due to secrecy.
The report also proposes four alternatives for a new agreement that delineate responsibilities for the three major commands – Canada Command, US Northern Command and NORAD.
The BPG was established following the stand-up of Northern Command, the first US combatant command in North America (the US maintains regional combatant commands throughout the world but only activated a North American one after 9/11). In February, the Canadian Forces stood up Canada Command, responsible for domestic and continental defence. One of the original tasks of the BPG was to reconcile the relationship between the Canadian Forces and the newly created US NORTHCOM, and its impact on the NORAD agreement.
The alternatives include:
§ Expanding NORAD surveillance capability to all domains, though limiting its response capability to air; a surveillance-focused NORAD would exist in parallel with NORTHCOM and Canada COM.
§ A single North American command, granting NORAD all-domain warning and response capability to “asymmetric threats and attacks.” NORTHCOM and Canada Command would “respond unilaterally to threats against their respective countries.” The proposal would mean US domination of defence and, the report acknowledges, would generate “concerns over sovereignty…from both nations.”
§ Primacy to Canada Command and NORTHCOM, with bi-national capabilities through a Standing Combined Joint Task Force that would provide ‘all-domain’ awareness and warning to each command and, “where appropriate, a combined and co-ordinated response to threats and attacks.” NORAD would be greatly diminished.
§ A continental joint interagency task force involving defence and security ‘stakeholders’ from both nations that would mean a “single organization responsible for all-domain, bi-national warning and execution.”
During its tenure, the BPG coordinated the development of a Combined Defence Plan for military defence operations, and a civil assistance plan to streamline military-to-military assistance in support of a civilian agency, such as after Katrina when DND helped DOD in support of FEMA.
In a cross-country tour this spring, Bergeron and others from the BPG met with politicians, policy advisors and academics to layout the reasoning for the report’s recommendations. However, those recommendations have some concerned that Canadian sovereignty will be eroded if the fourth alternative is adopted.
“We are being subjected to continental integration by stealth,” wrote Michael Byers, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia, in an op-ed piece in the Toronto Star. The BPG “seek[s] nothing less than the complete integration of Canada’s military, security and foreign policy into the decision-making and operating systems of the US.”
Byers suggests the “BPG is, in actuality, advocating co-operation at the level of a single, US-dominated command for all of Canada’s territory and our surrounding seas. Under this plan, the entire Canadian Forces, unless deployed overseas in operations not led by the US, could find themselves under American ‘operational control’ with Americans making all key day-to-day decisions.”
Intertwined systems
The report’s conclusions were based on interviews, documents and the results of nine scenarios – include four tabletop exercises – events the BPG felt were realistic possibilities, ranging from incidents involving the Windsor-Detroit bridge to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. The group assembled a library of over 850 documents related to joint defence and security.
“We are not a military command, so we can have an objective, bird’s eye view of different issues,” McClune says. “We spent a lot of time with Northern Command, NORAD and Canada Command, talking to strategic staff on both sides of the border, as well as foreign affairs.” During its mandate, the BPG was based at NORTHCOM in Colorado Springs.
Geography and trade alone, to say nothing of the changing post-Cold War threat environment, suggest some formal agreement is required, they say.
“Our trade is $1.4 million per day,“ McClune notes. “We have over 37,00 trucks crossing the border each day, and 200,000 million people moving across the border each year. Canada exports 99% of crude oil and natural gas to the US. The systems are intertwined. The electrical grid is essentially a single machine. The blackout in 2003 affected 10 million people in Canada and 40 million people in the US. The economic effect was estimated at $6 billion.”
Bergeron notes that while major changes were made in both countries as a result of 9/11, from the stand up of new commands to the integration of resources in new security and public safety departments, and there remains a great deal of collaboration, “it’s not happening in a cohesive way.” Relying on legacy agreements such as the PJBD, MCC and NORAD “is not sufficient,” he said.
Bergeron admits the timing may not be right with a minority government. But to those who doubt whether a continental agreement should be a priority, he says, “If tomorrow we wake up to a coordinated attack in a subway”…in Montreal, Toronto and New York, “and we don’t have the protocols to deal with this, we will be in a reactive mode. That will serve the purpose of those trying to do us ill.”