Senate Report

Recommendation 5.6

"A national operations centre complete with a senior level "situation room" be constructed that would permit a permanent secretariat to continuously monitor international and national events that might affect the national security of Canada. This operations centre should be located within easy physical access to the Privy Council Office, with complete and redundant power and national level communications."

"[Canada, An Incomplete Maritime Nation] defines the heart and soul of effective maritime security as knowing exactly what is happening in all waters under Canadian jurisdiction, including the Arctic. To do this, three criteria must be met: know exactly who is using those waters; maintain an unequivocal expression of government authority; be able to respond quickly and effectively to violations of the law or threats to national security.

At the heart of the matter is information. Information needs to be collected and fused into one clear geospatial intelligence picture."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p.2)

"It is our view that the picture should be complied locally on each coast and then provided to a national centre, which will have many additional roles, such as commanding deployed Canadian forces, operations beyond that of pure domestic security."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 3)

The Coordination of all Canadian resources including Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force, Army, Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, police forces and agencies responsible for intelligence and satellite surveillance to improve defence of Canada's coastlines. (Recommendation #2 page 13)

Effective coordination and utilization of the numerous monitoring resources such as: Shipping position reporting system, Canadian Navy assets to include the Maritime Coastal Defence Vessels and Canadian Patrol Frigates, satellite tracking resources, routine Aurora flights, Department of Fisheries and Oceans patrols and intelligence, the Canadian Coast Guard patrols and intelligence and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police patrols and intelligence. (Recommendation #2 page 14)

"Firstly, a maritime security centre or operations centre or whatever we wish to call it must have intelligence, fusion and decision making components, giving it the ability to identify and evaluate threats and implement any appropriate response. These centres would most logically be managed by the navy but must include permanent officers or officials from other government departments, such as DFO, RCMP, CCRA, Environment, Customs, et cetera. These officers would coordinate intelligence efforts and advise the command structure as subject matter experts for their field of expertise."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p.3)

"The key is to have officials from each of the departments working full time in those centres to compile that picture. Once they become part of that, they will bring in the information for their departments. I am absolutely convinced that is the way to make it work."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 13)

"The answer is the model we have proposed, where senior officials or officers of each of those departments are resident full time in those operation centres. Today, when they are not, they make a decision, consciously or otherwise, of what information they pass. If they are resident within them, they are part of the processing of information and will therefore naturally provide the information they have available."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 13)

5.4. This national security structure containing the following be set up within 60 days:

A permanent Cabinet committee chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister The Cabinet Committee would include the following ministers:     

     o Foreign Affairs

     o Defence

     o Solicitor General

     o Health

     o Finance

     o Justice

     o Immigration

     o Others as required

An additional Secretary to the Cabinet as its senior official.

A permanent Secretariat within PCO dedicated to national security issues.

The Secretariat within PCO would include sufficient senior officials who have a good understanding of government capabilities, together with a grasp of issues and interests of importance to Canada.

A restructuring of current procedures to permit this Secretariat to address issues of national security and common US/Canada security issues.

5.5. The permanent secretariat to support the Deputy Prime Minister be formed within two months, and that they set up operations in a temporary government facility until the permanent national operations centres are built.

"I am pleased to have been invited to deliver the Navy League's perspective on the need for a national maritime security policy and the need for increased interoperability between or the integration of the various departments and agencies that share responsibility for maritime security in Canada."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 2)

"To have clarity of mandate and jurisdictional authorities in the area of maritime security clearly spelled out will require the development of a comprehensive maritime security policy. It is very clear that the there is a policy vacuum in the maritime security arena… the need for a maritime security policy is even more urgent, and the task should be undertaken without delay."

 - Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 4)

"We are talking about a broad national security framework and not just a threat-based one. We are looking at environmental and ecological questions, as well as the future law of the sea."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 16)

Recommendation 2.2

Tactical drones (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)) be introduced as surveillance aids off both coasts.

"The Navy League is particularly concerned about our nation's intelligence collection capability. This includes human intelligence, signals intelligence and surveillance, be it aeronautical, surface or subsurface. Each is of concern. Given that Canada has over 240,000 kilometres of coastline and almost 10 million square kilometres of ocean territory, we see an urgent need to add the wide area surveillance capability, such as satellites and long-range, unmanned aerial vehicles such as Global Hawk -- which, incidentally, could fly in the Arctic for over 24 hours at a time -- to the current mix of surveillance assets. Without these tools we will never have a true picture of what is happening in our ocean approaches and coastal territories."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 3)

"The other issue could be the platforms that are suitable and how many you need of which. It is a matter of how much return you get for the investment. Ships are expensive. Ships are not necessarily good platforms for conducting surveillance. They are good platforms for interdiction if they are queued and go to the right spot. The real question is how to make sure they are in the right spot to begin with. If you look at where the gaps are in our surveillance capability, it is probably in the wide-area surveillance, the kind of things you can get from the Global Hawk-type UAVs or from the satellite coverage that you can buy commercially, the kind of surveillance you can get from the high frequency standing wave radars in terms of being able to do large area coverage. You can put those expensive resources on to the areas of interests you have, where they can do perhaps more detailed surveillance when they get there. However, to use them as a first point of contact is perhaps not the best use. If you were to look at the return on the investment and where the gaps are, at this point, based on my experience, it is not just so much in the ships and the ship platforms; it is in the ability to conduct the wide-area surveillance that would allow you to make the best use of those ship resources."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 16)

Recommendation 2.3

The government conduct a study to ascertain whether the use of higher-cost strategic drones should be introduced into Canada's surveillance matrix in the Arctic, as well as the east and west coasts.

"The Arctic is an issue and the surveillance there could be tackled in a variety of ways. One of the ways, about which you have already had testimony, is with unmanned air vehicles… [they] can have the kind of sensors on it that a manned airplane does. That is the kind of thing that could fly around in the Arctic once a week, twice a month or three times a month. It does not cost as much as a manned vehicle."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 15)

"Certainly some of those things need to be considered to provide more information than would otherwise be available by any means that I can imagine of doing surveillance in the Arctic."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 15)

Recommendation 2.7

Significant numbers of Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) personnel be posted to major world ports to gather maritime intelligence.

"The Navy League is particularly concerned about our nation's intelligence collection capability. This includes human intelligence, signals intelligence and surveillance, be it aeronautical, surface or subsurface."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 3)

Recommendation 2.1

At least eight and possibly more High Frequency Surface Wave Radar sites be installed to monitor areas of heavy traffic on Canada's coasts, plus other coastal sites that terrorists might target as alternates to high-traffic ports.

Recommendation 2.4

The Department of Transport require all vessels of more than 15 tonnes to be equipped with transponders of at least Class B [2] capacity by 2008.

"Monitoring capabilities will be enhanced by the use of vessel transponders and could be further enhanced by deploying more high-frequency surface-wave radars than those currently planned for just the choke points."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 3)

" You can never have too much information. I think some of your other witnesses have suggested that for a modest investment in more surface wave radars you could cover more territory in the 98 percentile of coverage."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 14)

" The development of an integrated fleet of government vessels coordinated by maritime security centres would allow Canada to meet the third criterion for maritime security: to be able to respond quickly and effectively to violations of the law or threats to national security."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 4)

"The key is the role of the operations centres or security centres and the authorities that are given to those centres and to the navy that runs them. In other words, they should not just act as collectors of information but they should have decision-making and command authority over all the vessels. The centres would not have to say what the vessels will do but they would ensure that the vessels will act in concert with what everybody else is doing."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 5)

"Furthermore, the intelligence… frequently never gets passed between departments because the precise need for that kernel of information is not seen by people remote from those who are integrating the picture."

- Gary Garnett (Testimony, p. 13)