| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Would like to thank all of the educators, parents, and students who participated this year. | |
| Congratulations to all our winners. | ||
| Watch each of the 150 award-winning Student Cam documentaries anytime at studentcam.org. | ||
| And don't miss the top 21 winning entries airing this April on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN, bringing you democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Celebrate C-SPAN's 46th anniversary during our Founder's Day sale. | ||
| Going on right now at cspanshop.org, our online store. | ||
| Save up to 25% on apparel, accessories, drinkwear, and more. | ||
| There's something for every C-SPAN fan. | ||
| And every purchase helps support our nonprofit operations. | ||
| Scan the code or visit c-spanshop.org during our Founders Day sale. | ||
| Canadian Army Commander Lieutenant General M.C. Wright discussed Canada's defense strategy, including military modernization, military recruitment and retention challenges, and working with the U.S. military. | ||
| He also spoke on lessons learned from the war in Ukraine and the challenges posed by China in the Arctic and Indo-Pacific regions. | ||
| This is hosted by the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. People are well behaved. | ||
| They come to attention before, ladies and gentlemen, a very warm welcome to all of you. | ||
| My name is Brian Finley. | ||
| I'm the President and CEO here at the Stimson Center. | ||
| Welcome to those of you that are joining us here at Stimson World Headquarters, and I know the many more that are joining us online. | ||
| As you are aware, those of you that are familiar with Stimson, but perhaps for those that have not been as familiar with our organization, first, where have you been? | ||
| How do you not know the Stimson Center? | ||
| This is an organization that's been around for 35 some-odd years, really focused on issues of international security and stability through very much applied research. | ||
| We'd love for you to get to know Stimson a little bit better and find ways to collaborate with us on that mission space in the pursuit of our goal. | ||
| It's our very great pleasure today to host Lieutenant General Wright. | ||
| He is, of course, the commander of the Canadian Army for this, I think, extremely timely conversation on security, on sovereignty, across the world's second largest country. | ||
| General. | ||
| Warm welcome. | ||
| Thank you very much, Brian. | ||
| It's great to be here. | ||
| Great to have you here, sir. | ||
| If you have the patience for this, I do want to run just really briefly. | ||
| I'm going to truncate it significantly and maybe do an insufficient tour of your many experiences, General. | ||
| General Wright joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1990. | ||
| That dates you a little bit. | ||
| That dates you a little bit, General. | ||
| He has served in all three Canadian mechanized brigade groups and deployed on operations with all three regular force infantry regiments. | ||
| I didn't even know that that was possible. | ||
| That's an impressive accomplishment in and of itself. | ||
| He's also spent 11 years commanding at the platoon company as well as at the battalion level, excuse me. | ||
| Operationally, he's deployed in Bosnia, in Afghanistan, the Middle East, as well as serving on numerous domestic, in numerous domestic operations. | ||
| He was commander of Canadian Forces Intelligence Command and Chief of Defense Intelligence before he took this appointment last year as commander of the Canadian Army. | ||
| General, we're very grateful to your service. | ||
| I was reminded while doing research in preparation for this conversation, and I will remind our audience in the room and online that your service represents a very long lineage of Canadian military service that has benefited the security of the United States of America. | ||
| I think back to Viny Ridge, Dieppe, Juneau Beach, and of course through to the war in Afghanistan where Canada rallied in support of America's response to 9-11, leaving 158 members of the armed forces on the battlefield. | ||
| General, the American people are deeply grateful to the brave women and men who fought along the United States. | ||
| So thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you very much for that. | ||
| So the order of battle today here over the course of the next 40 minutes or so as we explore Canada's ground defense, we're going to do it in three acts. | ||
| I want to talk to you a little bit, General, about modernization, future conflict. | ||
| I'd like to talk to you a little bit about more broadly kind of Canada's defense interests, both at home and abroad. | ||
| And then I want to press you a little bit on Canada's ongoing commitment to collective defense as well. | ||
| We'll leave about the last 10, 15 minutes or so of this conversation to collect questions from the audience here in the room. | ||
| For those of you that are online, you can, as always, go to stimson.org slash questions and submit your questions online. | ||
| I will collect them here and we will get to as many of those as possible. | ||
| For those of you that are in the room, you can either use the QR code that I think was on your chair or we will have a roving mic when we get to that point. | ||
| I would just remind you that the general does not need to know where you went to high school. | ||
| Your quick affiliation and a quick question rather than a statement would be most appreciated. | ||
| So do have your questions ready for the general. | ||
| With that, sir, why don't we dive in? | ||
| Sounds good. | ||
| I want to give you a little bit of a softball just to warm you up a little bit and maybe have you riff for a minute, General, on the Canadian Army's really kind of biggest defense and security priorities. | ||
| Now, I recognize you do not write policy, you execute policy. | ||
| So obviously we're speaking in that context and perhaps, you know, building your response around, you released a defense strategy last year, really sort of, you know, maybe framing in the context of that strategy. | ||
| But I'm curious to know what keeps you up at night. | ||
| What keeps me up at night? | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Brian, first of all, thanks very much for the kind introduction. | ||
| Thanks as well for the kind photo. | ||
| That was about four years ago coming back from a year in the Middle East where I was a little bit more tanned, not coming out of a long Canadian winter. | ||
| What keeps me up the most at night right now is actually the challenges that we need to overcome to modernize the Canadian Army, to make it the modern, interoperable, relevant Army that it needs to be in that I believe it can be. | ||
| So maybe if I could just, you know, as I was saying to you earlier, I don't want to take for granted that people know a lot about the Canadian Army. | ||
| I would do the same within a Canadian audience. | ||
| So maybe I'll start by talking a little bit about the Canadian Army. | ||
| 46,000 soldiers within the Canadian Army. | ||
| Just about half, so 21,000 soldiers are members of the full-time regular force. | ||
| They're spread across all our provinces and territories, primarily serving in four brigades. | ||
| We have 19,000 soldiers in our part-time reserve forces. | ||
| That's very important because they serve in 130 different communities across Canada. | ||
| Our regular and our reserve force work together all the time, both in Canada but also around the world. | ||
| We also have our Canadian Rangers. | ||
| Now, our Canadian Rangers are really our, first of all, only permanent presence from the Canadian Armed Forces in the Arctic. | ||
| They are experts on the skills that it takes to survive and to operate in our northern and Arctic approaches. | ||
| So, of the 5,000 Canadian Rangers, they're in 220 isolated and coastal communities across Canada. | ||
| About 1,800 of them are actually north of the Arctic Circle, so actually serving in the Arctic. | ||
| Now, complementing that, we have 4,000 civilians that form part of what I like to call the One Army team between the Reserve Force, the Regular Force, the Rangers, and our Defense Team civilians. | ||
| We are, and I know we'll likely talk about this later, we are below strength right now in the Canadian Army, as we are across the Canadian Armed Forces. | ||
| Numbers, I hesitate to put a number on it because things are frankly changing on a week-by-week basis, but about 5,000 short across the Canadian Army being a combination of regular force and reserve force. | ||
| What are we involved in? | ||
| Well, first of all, domestically, at any one time, we have 1,600 soldiers from across the Army who are on high readiness to respond to domestic emergencies. | ||
| Great examples are over the last few years, we've seen an increase in the number of weather-related emergencies, and certainly the Canadian Army, as part of the Canadian Armed Forces, has been called upon to assist provinces or territories with anything from floods to fires. | ||
| And the number of those deployments has increased significantly over the past 15 years, and even more so within the past five years. | ||
| From an international perspective, by far our largest mission for which we force generate, because I'm a force generator, and whenever I generate forces, they are force-employed by our equivalent of a combatant command, so our Canadian Joint Operations Command. | ||
| By far, our largest deployment and our largest commitment to NATO is the Forward Land Forces in Latvia, where we have at any time of the year between 2,000 to 3,000 Canadian soldiers serving and leading a multinational brigade. | ||
| Aside from that, internationally, we have about 400 soldiers who are involved in training the Ukrainian Armed Forces. | ||
| Canada was actually involved from 2015 right up until the week of the 24th of February 2022 in training Ukrainians in Ukraine. | ||
| Since that time, we've continued to train them in a number of locations in Europe, including Latvia, including Poland and in the United Kingdom as well. | ||
| We do still have a small footprint in the Middle East, and then we have a number of soldiers that are on high readiness, just as we do for domestic operations, for international operations, so to assist with non-combatant evacuation operations or to assist with humanitarian assistance and disaster response. | ||
| So, I guess getting back to the question about what keeps me up at night, it is trying to ensure that we're putting the plans into place for the modernization of the Canadian Army. | ||
| The way I often describe it is we have been able to field a very capable multinational brigade, Canadian-led brigade in Latvia, where we have the people we need, we have a lot of the equipment we need with more arriving. | ||
| But right now, we have neither the people nor the equipment for the rest of the Canadian Army. | ||
| So that's why I am very focused on, first of all, making the case for that and then bringing those capabilities in so that ultimately I said I was going to talk about my vision. | ||
| It's to become that modern, interoperable, digitally transformed army that's capable of offering the government of Canada agile and scalable options for employment in Canada or anywhere around the world, be that in competition, in crisis or in conflict. | ||
| General, say another word. | ||
| As I mentioned, last year the government dropped a new defense strategy. | ||
| Can you say, that was a year ago, the world has changed a little bit since then in many ways. | ||
| So I want you to speak specifically to the defence strategy. | ||
| Is it a strategy that is durable? | ||
| Is it sufficiently flexible given the changes that we are witnessing in 2025 and presumably beyond? | ||
| Yeah, so it would be, I think you could say, I think I could have said at various times during my career, but 35 years in, the only constant is change. | ||
| But I do believe the strength of the defense policy update that came out just about a year ago, known as Our North Strong and Free, is that the government very clearly said the focus is on Canada. | ||
| Specifically within Canada, the focus is on the Arctic, then looking out to North America. | ||
| But then outside of that primary focus within Canada, it identified two supporting areas, the Euro-Atlantic, which is the primary area of force generation for the Canadian Army, and the Indo-Pacific. | ||
| So Canada released an Indo-Pacific strategy in late 2022. | ||
| And the Army is not very involved in the Indo-Pacific right now, but certainly if the commander of our Navy was here or the commander of our Special Operations Forces was here, they would be able to talk to you about what they are doing to help implement the Indo-Pacific strategy. | ||
| It is one of the challenges of Canada because we are an Atlantic nation, an Arctic nation and a Pacific nation. | ||
| So maybe just back to what was the importance to us of R North Strong and Free. | ||
| I spent the last three years as the Chief Defence Intelligence and Commander of our Intelligence Command within Canada. | ||
| So what I was particularly proud about with that strategy, with R North Strong and Free, is that it gave a very clear description of the threats that Canada is under. | ||
| Not that Canada will be under, but that Canada finds itself under now. | ||
| So maybe I could just summarize those. | ||
| First of all, it talks about the Arctic. | ||
| The Arctic, we are seeing increased activity there. | ||
| We're seeing increased activity there because the climate is changing. | ||
| The conditions are changing. | ||
| So what does that mean? | ||
| That means, first of all, from a Canadian Army perspective, we have to ensure that we are getting the equipment for our soldiers, the vehicles that we need to be able to operate in an environment that's changing. | ||
| Even for things like infrastructure, as permafrost melts, that will change the type of infrastructure we need in the Arctic. | ||
| It also means there's increased activity. | ||
| First of all, not only shipping, which not for the Canadian Army, but it does have an impact on the elements of the Canadian Armed Forces who are responsible for search and rescue, along with our Canadian Coast Guard. | ||
| But we are certainly seeing increased activity by Russia and China in the Arctic and frankly, plans for trying to invest in various aspects of the Arctic. | ||
| That leads me to the second part of the threat, which is the increasing coordination we see between authoritarian revisionist regimes like Russia and China. | ||
| And frankly, as we're seeing currently in Ukraine with cooperation with countries like North Korea and certainly with supply of arms by Iran as well. | ||
| There's the effects of emerging and disruptive technology. | ||
| That is, if we go back to what keeps me up at night, it's just looking at the rapid evolution of technology that we're seeing and how can we ensure that we are keeping up not only with our allies, but also looking what adversaries are doing and knowing that those adversaries will not feel the same constraints in terms of ethical use or lawful use that Canada and its allies will. | ||
| And then finally, the effects of misinformation and disinformation. | ||
| And this is something that affects all of our, I know there's a lot of different countries represented in the room here. | ||
| It affects all of our countries. | ||
| It affects the Canadian Armed Forces. | ||
| It affects the Canadian Army. | ||
| So this is one of the reasons, as I was mentioning to you earlier when I came in, I really wanted to make sure that, first of all, we were improving with the Army in terms of our internal communications to try to quell some of that misinformation and disinformation, but also to be better at communicating across externally across the government to Canadians. | ||
| And that's why this is such a great opportunity here to have this audience to speak to. | ||
| General, let's turn to modernization because you mentioned it here. | ||
| The Defense Strategy outlines the, and I'm going to quote from it, that new and disruptive technologies are rapidly redefining conflict and what it takes to be safe and secure. | ||
| Tell me what that means to you and how the Canadian Army is thinking about modernization. | ||
| And I wonder if you could tie it specifically to what we are witnessing and have witnessed for the past three years in Ukraine and how the war in Ukraine is potentially changing and altering that calculus for you. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So interesting question. | ||
| And I'll start, I think, with what are we seeing from the war in Ukraine. | ||
| We could spend the next hour just talking about the evolutions and revolutions in technology we've seen there. | ||
| But I think if I was to put it into three statements, here are the three key takeaways for me. | ||
| Number one is land power matters and land power is absolutely a requirement, which certainly allows me as I make the, as I have the discussions in Ottawa, about what we need to do to grow the Army and to be that relevant interoperable force, why we need to make the investments. | ||
| Because we've seen that ultimately, although the Ukrainian Armed Forces have done incredible things, ultimately, I would say neither side has had the adequate concentration of forces that have allowed for a decisive decision on either side. | ||
| The second one is the rapid evolutions in technology and using drones, using artificial intelligence, just the number of different iterations we've seen in technologies like that over the course of the last three plus years and trying to ensure that not only are we paying attention to what's happening there, | ||
| but then figuring out what we can do in concert with our allies to ensure that we are taking the best parts of that technology and determining how that we can employ them within our armies. | ||
| Last week I was out in Fort Irwin, California for Project Convergence Capstone 5, so the fifth iteration of a large-scale innovation exercise run by the U.S. Army with allies invited. | ||
| It was great to be able to see that, to see that we are not sitting idly while we are watching evolutions in the battlefield in Ukraine. | ||
| We're actively determining what does it mean for the way that our armies need to be postured for the future. | ||
| But as much as we talk about precision, you know, drone technology, the fact that it is very difficult, if not impossible, to mask yourself from electronic warfare, from overhead imagery, precision is absolutely important, but it is not a binary equation between precision and mass. | ||
| We need both precision and mass, which I think will keep going back to what keeps me up at night because how do we ensure that we're learning the right lessons but then also not making assumptions that will send us down the wrong path. | ||
| I'll also say in terms of the lessons learned from Ukraine, we have to understand that the Russian army that ran into defeat or is certainly being put on their back heels by the Ukrainian armed forces in the early months of the conflict, that Russian army from February of 2022, February, March 2022, is not the Russian army of today. | ||
| Just as we've been paying attention to lessons learned and just as we've seen Ukrainians adapting their tactics, techniques, procedures, the Russians have been doing the same thing, which is absolutely something with our large contingent in Latvia, we think a lot about, but speaking to the nations that we're involved with in Latvia and with the allies in the Five Eyes, we spend a lot of time thinking about that. | ||
| General, your Chief of the Defense Staff has been vocal about the challenges around something you mentioned earlier, recruitment, retention, training. | ||
| Since 2016, rather, the Canadian Defense budget has gone up, not down, yet spending is still just projected to be shy of the 2% goal by 2030, by some estimates. | ||
| So I wonder if you could talk about some of the operational choices that that forces on the Canadian Army and whether you, obviously you do not determine the levels of defense spending. | ||
| The numbers would be different perhaps if you were in charge of that. | ||
| But there, like here, it's the civilian leadership that determines those numbers. | ||
| So is it driving particular operational choices by the Canadian military? | ||
| And what does that mean in the coming five, ten years? | ||
| Yeah, so I think I'll handle that in two parts. | ||
| The first one is what does it mean for our international commitments? | ||
| And then the second, what does it mean from what we need to rebuild the strength of the Canadian Army as part of the Canadian Armed Forces? | ||
| So right now, I think I mentioned that in Latvia, we've been able to put full platoons, full companies, a very healthy complement of great soldiers over there and putting our equipment over there as well. | ||
| But that's had an impact on the strength of our units back in Canada, and it's had an impact on the amount of vehicles that we have available for training back in Canada. | ||
| So we do do the majority of our training now. | ||
| There's training that occurs at the unit level, sometimes up to formation or brigade level. | ||
| But the majority of our training, collective training, now takes place over in Latvia. | ||
| And I should have introduced right near the beginning my Army Sergeant Major, Chief Warren Officer Chris Robin, is here with me and he and I have been over to Latvia twice in the past few months to view some of the great training that's happening on a multi-national basis there. | ||
| On the what does it mean in Canada's side? | ||
| Our Chief of the Defense Staff, when she came into her position in July, very clearly made as her number one priority fixing our recruiting system and so making sure that we were putting the measures in place to eliminate barriers to people to get into the Canadian Armed Forces in a more timely manner because of the shortages we have in people. | ||
| What that means for the Canadian Army is as they get from the recruiting center to our basic training, which for the regular force is done all together in St. Jean-Quebec, to the Reserve Force training that is done by Canadian Army Reserve units across the country, to when they eventually arrive, or to when they do their trades training, so to become an infantry soldier, a signals operator, until they get to their units. | ||
| We have to make sure that there is a pipeline that connects all of those so we don't have people waiting around for training months or even years. | ||
| So that means for the Canadian Army from an in-Canada perspective, our focus is very much going to be, it is now and it will be for the next few years on individual training, on providing that augmentation to the basic military training, but then really putting the focus on the training of our Army soldiers so that we can rebuild our units. | ||
| And it's incredibly important. | ||
| You know, what one of the biggest challenges is is not only bringing those numbers through, but then keeping them in uniform because we're missing, we like to call it the missing middle. | ||
| So we're talking sergeants, we're talking warrant officers, senior captains, majors. | ||
| And it's good that we're seeing increased numbers both coming to the recruiting center and coming into our basic training institution. | ||
| But you can't create a sergeant or a major overnight. | ||
| So it's ensuring that we're rebuilding the strength so that we're not only able to refill our ranks, but then to be able to offer those choices that I was mentioning to the government for other employment options for the Canadian Army. | ||
| So I want to turn the page a little bit. | ||
| For the past 30, 40 years, obviously the Canadian Army has really been expeditionary, right? | ||
| It's focused on peace support operating. | ||
| This did date back to Lester Pearson and obviously more recently on counterinsurgency operations. | ||
| And I want to, again, a little bit going back to your defense strategy, ask what the cultural change has been necessary as you focus, as you stated, on defending Canadian territory as that becomes a greater emphasis. | ||
| And I wonder if you could sort of speak to that broadly, General, but specifically what that means for the Arctic. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Yeah, so it is not certainly new for the Canadian Armed Forces writ large because we have long been part of a very unique bi-national command relationship, NORAD, for the security of the aerospace and maritime approaches to North America. | ||
| That has largely, from the Canadian Armed Forces perspective, traditionally involved our Air Force and the Royal Canadian Navy. | ||
| For the Army, it means being able to augment what we're already doing with our Canadian Rangers. | ||
| I was mentioning our reserve forces. | ||
| So each of our divisions has an Arctic response company group. | ||
| So a company group of reservists who are able to, on notice, get up to the Arctic to provide assistance to other government departments or, you know, if required, a show of sovereignty. | ||
| What we're able to do there is maintain their qualifications right now through annual training exercises. | ||
| But we need to make sure that we're able to maintain that tempo and eventually increase that tempo of training. | ||
| Some of the capabilities, you know, we spoke a little bit about modernization, but I didn't really get into the capabilities we're trying to bring in to the Canadian Army. | ||
| We have 47 major capital projects right now in the Canadian Army. | ||
| It is our largest modernization of equipment since the early 2000s. | ||
| I obviously can't go around and say I have priorities one through 47. | ||
| So what I've done is I've said I have four priorities plus one that is a backbone. | ||
| Of those four priorities, three have very much a role in the Arctic. | ||
| So I'll just maybe describe the priorities and then how they fit into the Arctic. | ||
| So the first one is long-range precision strike. | ||
| This is a capability that Canada has never had. | ||
| Not only will it be exceptionally useful in a theater like Latvia, in anywhere else we may work with our international allies, it absolutely has a role or could have a role in defense of Canada. | ||
| The second one is ground-based air defense. | ||
| Ground-based air defense is actually a capability that Canada had but started to get away from in the first decade of this century. | ||
| And so not only are we acquiring ground-based air defense that we've already fielded in Latvia for the protection of the brigade there, but we are actively seeking to ensure that we have ground-based air defense for the entire Canadian Army. | ||
| And ground-based air defense could be used as part of an overall integrated air and missile defense, which is something that our Royal Canadian Air Force is leading right now. | ||
| The third one is domestic and Arctic mobility enhancement. | ||
| So looking around the room, there's probably a few people who have previously been in a BV206. | ||
| The domestic and Arctic mobility enhancement is basically replacing the BV206. | ||
| What's really interesting is as we talk to both our American Army colleagues with their divisions who operate in the Arctic, but also with our Nordic partners, we're all at the same point where we've identified that we need to determine what's the right vehicle for mobility and survivability in the Arctic. | ||
| The fourth priority, indirect fire modernization, doesn't necessarily have a direct continental or Canadian nexus, but it's incredibly important for us, not only with the mission in Latvia, but to modernize the artillery that we've really had since the earlier part of this century. | ||
| I mentioned the backbone. | ||
| The backbone is making sure, and this is where Project Convergence last week in Fort Irwin was fantastic, and the discussions that I have regularly within the Five Eyes and within NATO are extremely important to make sure that we're putting into place the digitized command, control, and communication systems. | ||
| Because without that, all of those capabilities I mentioned, let alone the other 43, if we can't integrate them within the Canadian Army across the Canadian Armed Forces and with our allies, then we won't be able to use them to their full effect. | ||
| General, I'm going to stretch your remit here and ask you to get out of your comfort zone, which I suspect is a comfort zone. | ||
| Recognizing you, again, you don't execute policy, you execute policy rather than making policy. | ||
| And I'm not sure how comfortable you are, but you did serve recently as commander of Canadian Forces Intelligence Command. | ||
| So I want to push you on that a little bit and maybe take you a walk down memory lane here. | ||
| Obviously, intelligence sharing among the Allies, something that's certainly been in the news as of late and has been seen clearly as critical to defense and deterrence for decades. | ||
| I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the criticality of Canada's role in the defense, or rather in the intelligence community, specifically with the Five Eyes, but also maybe related to NATO. | ||
| There's been some loose talk. | ||
| Let's just confront it about Canada's role in the Five Eyes. | ||
| And I wonder if you could talk as well about what we stand to lose When critical intelligence capabilities are compromised or under threat. | ||
| In other words, why should Americans care if Canada is in the Five Eyes or not? | ||
| Right. | ||
| So, first of all, I'll give the caveat that I am no longer the Chief of Defense Intelligence. | ||
| And in fact, our current Chief Defense Intelligence Major General David Boot is over at the Defense Intelligence Agency right now meeting Lieutenant General Jeff Cruz, which is really indicative of the deep relationship between the defense intelligence community in Canada, in the United States, and across the Five Eyes. | ||
| So, what I can talk about is the depth of not only the relationship but also the trust that exists within the Five Eyes. | ||
| I spent a lot of my time in that position working in Five Eyes for us. | ||
| Certainly, anytime I was down in Washington, I would meet with the Defense Intelligence Agency, with the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and with the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security. | ||
| You asked about NATO twice a year. | ||
| I would see a number of those same people at a NATO military intelligence committee. | ||
| That is the strength of the Five Eyes and of a larger enterprise like NATO. | ||
| Canada, yes, is a net importer of intelligence, but one of the examples that I would always use to show the value of the five eyes is take the Arctic and the Antarctic. | ||
| I don't want Australia and New Zealand to have to worry about putting any resources towards the Arctic. | ||
| And certainly, when I was the Chief of Defense Intelligence, I wasn't putting any resources towards looking at what is happening in the Antarctic. | ||
| There's a lot of similarities because we see China operating in both. | ||
| But to me, that's just a small example of the power of the Five Eyes. | ||
| And this is where I won't go any further because I'm not in the position right now. | ||
| But I would say that if you had any of the heads of our national security agencies from Canada up here, they would tell you about the absolute necessity of that five eyes relationship in keeping our individual countries safe, but from a North American perspective, keeping the North American continent safe. | ||
| I want to turn. | ||
| Thank you for that. | ||
| I want to turn for a moment to we've talked a bit about the European theater, we've talked about the Arctic. | ||
| We haven't talked a lot about the Indo-Pacific. | ||
| And so I want to push you on that a bit. | ||
| You mentioned that there's a new Indo-Pacific, sorry, relatively new Indo-Pacific strategy coming out of Ottawa, but you also mentioned the Indo-Pacific as one of the three geographic regions that you are thinking about in terms of readiness. | ||
| I wonder, you know, from your perspective, what are the greatest challenges that you are seeing and really tracking in the Indo-Pacific? | ||
| Maybe we start with that. | ||
| And I want to dig in a little bit further on the region with you. | ||
| So I think we can likely all agree that the biggest challenge in the Indo-Pacific is China and the Chinese Communist Party, People's Republic of China, and their authoritarian revisionist aims. | ||
| And frankly, much like we can with Vladimir Putin, you can just see what President Xi has said publicly and see what his plans are. | ||
| He absolutely wants to see Taiwan reunify with mainland China. | ||
| That could happen through other means or it could happen. | ||
| And he's certainly given direction to the People's Liberation Army to ensure that they have the capabilities. | ||
| You can see in open source about what some of the timelines are, but China and the threat that they pose in that area, certainly if we had some of our Australian colleagues here, they would talk about how that has taken up a lot of their time and effort and is frankly driving the modernization that the Australian Army is going through. | ||
| Why does that matter for Canada? | ||
| Well, Canada has benefited from that rules-based international order that has existed since the Second World War, and we see China actively trying to reshape that international order to suit their own means. | ||
| It's also incredibly important. | ||
| You know, I'm an infantry officer, so I won't get into world economy, but if you just look at the amount of trade that goes through the South China Sea and to not have free access to those routes would have an impact on the global economy. | ||
| What's the role of the Canadian Army? | ||
| The role of the Canadian Army right now is very limited in the Indo-Pacific because our focus from a force generation perspective is very much, first of all, on the mission in Latvia, on making sure we're doing what we can to reconstitute, to bring the capabilities, to have that role in being ready to deter and, if necessary, defend Canada. | ||
| But what I'm actively looking at is, first of all, maintaining relationships, but then also are there opportunities we have to further develop relationships through exercises, through exchanges. | ||
| You know, a great example is the annual RIMPAC exercise where we did have Canadian Army soldiers operating last year. | ||
| When I was a battalion commander about a decade and a half ago, one of the best training opportunities that was presented to my battalion was the ability to send a company down to the RIMPAC exercise. | ||
| And that just speaks to the great value that we get out of multinational exercises and making sure that we're maintaining that interoperability with our closest allies. | ||
| So what, you know, beyond obviously troop deployment, can you give me just even a little bit maybe more color on this, just in terms of kind of what are the other capabilities or wider cooperation does Canadian Defense bring to the Indo-Pacific? | ||
| Let's stretch beyond now your remit as head of the Canadian Army. | ||
| Give us a little bit more color as to what that might look like in terms of the Defense Department's support of Canada's Indo-Pacific strategy. | ||
| Yeah, so what you know, the most concrete example I can use is the Royal Canadian Navy sends three frigates per year through the Indo-Pacific region. | ||
| So just as my priority area for force generation is the Euro-Atlantic, if the Royal Commander of the Royal Canadian Navy was here, he would tell you about how it has affected the force generation that he needs to do. | ||
| Our Special Operations Forces has been very active in terms of getting involved in the area and making sure that they're developing the relationships in that area. | ||
| And I think that because we're starting to get well outside of my let's go back to Latvia again and can you walk us through a little bit about what current operations are and how you are drawing lessons from again maybe Ukraine vis-a-vis obviously Canada's mission in Latvia. | ||
| So the current operations are we are part of a deterrence and collective defense on NATO's eastern flank with ourselves in Latvia, ourselves and I should say 13 other nations in Latvia, with a UK-led brigade in Estonia and with a German-led brigade in Lithuania. | ||
| What does it mean in terms of what we're doing in Latvia? | ||
| We are now particularly with the command of the brigade. | ||
| So up until last fall, the Canadian-led multinational battle group had worked under a Latvian brigade. | ||
| Now that the multinational battle group is working for a multinational brigade who works side by side with the Latvian Mechanized Infantry Brigade, there's actually even deeper connections that are being made between the brigade and all elements of the Latvian forces to include the National Guard. | ||
| So Latvia, as they look at their national defense plans, as NATO reviews its plans, you know, that's something that is just continuing to deepen. | ||
| From what does it mean in terms of a day-to-day for the soldiers of the Canadian Army and of the Canadian Armed Forces who deploy over there, I always say that it is an absolutely important mission because it is providing that deterrence and collective defense. | ||
| But it's also a great mission because although we are challenged in terms of numbers of people and equipment right now in Canada, when you go over to Latvia, you will have full platoons, you will have full companies, you will have excellent equipment, and you will get two years' worth of training over a six-month tour because it is pretty much training from the day you arrive in Adaji until the day your tour is done. | ||
| We're also using it as a battle lab. | ||
| So, and this is, I feel comfortable, although it's a mission that's commanded by our commander of our Joint Operations Command, he and I are absolutely in lockstep. | ||
| We are using it as a battle lab. | ||
| We are using it for anything to look at what do we need to do for the dispersal of our command posts to ensure that they're survivable. | ||
| What are we doing for some of the capabilities that we're bringing in, such as that we will be bringing in, such as loitering munitions, counter-UAS? | ||
| What lessons can we glean from that in addition to the lessons we're learning from the battlefield in Ukraine to determine the best paths for modernization for the Canadian Army? | ||
| General, a question that you may or may not be comfortable answering, but I'm going to ask it anyhow. | ||
| It's an online questioner ask. | ||
| But notes that Poland and the Baltic states have recently announced that they plan to withdraw from the Ottawa Treaty to ban landmines. | ||
| Obviously, Canada's large presence in Latvia, which you just walked us through, is that going to change operation, the way the Canadian Army operates? | ||
| Is it going to create additional complications at the operational level for you? | ||
| Yeah, so I read the same article that whoever asked that question did this morning. | ||
| I will say I don't have the depth of knowledge what it means. | ||
| You know, that would be a question that certainly our policy folks would be able to answer. | ||
| It's something that I know was known that this was a possibility. | ||
| So I know that there'll be a lot of discussions as to what that means for the future. | ||
| I want to talk about NATO for a second. | ||
| Obviously, we're hearing from Europe much more significant investments in the defense industrial base. | ||
| Is this providing new opportunities Canada vis-a-vis its European allies? | ||
| It's providing new opportunities with European allies. | ||
| It's providing new opportunities or continuing opportunities with the United States. | ||
| It's providing continuing opportunities with Australia and New Zealand. | ||
| And it's providing new opportunities within the Indo-Pacific as well. | ||
| As I look at those 47 major capital projects, obviously we have defense industry within Canada, but we will always look at, First of all, what are our mandatory requirements for the capabilities we're bringing in and what are the ways, what are the best options for that, and also what can be delivered in a timely manner. | ||
| Also, really important, though, is not only interoperability, but interchangeability. | ||
| So, this was something I had never really spoken about or heard a lot about before last summer, but the more I look at our mission in Latvia, the more I understand the importance of interchangeability. | ||
| So, interchangeability, meaning if we're all using similar platforms and we cannot assume that we would have uncontested supply chains to resupply our mission in Latvia or anywhere else, the ability for countries who are working together to, you know, whether it's spare parts, whether it's change, the ability to switch crews, I think it's an incredibly important aspect that we're taking into consideration for a number of our projects. | ||
| We're going to turn relatively soon to the audience here. | ||
| So please do make yourself known and we will get a microphone, a microphone to you in due course as well. | ||
| General, Ukraine, the last question maybe vis-a-vis Europe, but can you talk a little bit more about, you talked a little bit about some of the thinking that you have gleaned from modernization efforts within Canada observing the war in Ukraine. | ||
| As we project beyond now the end of the war in Ukraine, I wonder what kind of macro level lessons you have taken from that conflict that are going to color the way the Canadian Army thinks about the future battle space. | ||
| So I don't think it's the Canadian Army. | ||
| I think it's all of our collective armies and allies who are thinking about those lessons that I mentioned about the, if you just look at drones alone, the numerous iterations of that technology, what it means for how we shoot, move, | ||
| and communicate on the battlefield, I think I am buoyed by the Army Sergeant Major and I in February visited a number of our European allies and this is something that is absolutely capturing the attention and the future planning efforts of our allies so we can determine what we need to do and as I said also what lessons we need to glean from how Russia has adapted. | ||
| We'll turn I think if I can capture a couple of questions. | ||
| Eric, we're going to go to Eric here and then Dave Smith here at the front Joaquin. | ||
| Actually General, Director Schmidt, the New York Times. | ||
| Two questions. | ||
| The first is obviously there's been a lot of controversy over what the American Commander-in-Chief has said about Canada possibly being a 51st state and all and the passions that that has stirred in Canada. | ||
| To what extent has that resonated at all within the Canadian Army, whether it's in recruiting, how you view the Americans, training exercise, anything else that might be affected by that discussion? | ||
| And then second, kind of putting on your previous hat, can you talk a little bit more about what you see as a threat, particularly in the high north, not just from Russia, but the combination of Russia and China working together? | ||
| What kind of new threats working, those two threats working together, do you see both for not just Canada, but for Canada and the United States? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| General, maybe you could just hold that. | ||
| We're going to go. | ||
| Joaquin could, yeah, sorry. | ||
| I'm going to make him give you your steps here, Joaquin. | ||
| Dave, if you could just identify yourself as well, sir. | ||
| General, I'm Dave Smith. | ||
| I'm with the Stimson Center. | ||
| There was a year ago, there was a provocative article about the Canadian military in War in the Rocks magazine, and it quoted your Minister of National Defense as saying that the Canadian military was in a death spiral and that the things that you laid out in your defense strategy will not come to fruition for this decade and that you will not be able to make the 2% goal for all NATO forces, even by 2030. | ||
| Can you address that? | ||
| And can you also address the ability of the Canadian military to reinforce any contingency that occurs in Europe? | ||
| You've already talked about your mechanical, mechanized infantry brigade and the three frigates. | ||
| This article also said, in addition to those two forces, the only other thing that could be expected from Canada is two squadrons of Air Force fighters. | ||
| Is that really the extent? | ||
| And why is it so difficult to get to 2% in the ninth largest economy in the world? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You want to take a stab? | ||
| I think I will. | ||
| So, Eric, I think I'll start with yours. | ||
| What I can tell you is the military-to-military relationship remains incredibly strong. | ||
| I spent time with Commander of U.S. Army Europe in Wiesbaden at the last month of February. | ||
| As I said, I was out in Fort Irwin, California last week. | ||
| Tomorrow I'm going to be spending time with the U.S. Army leadership, including General Randy George. | ||
| The relationship remains strong, and I have confidence in that relationship. | ||
| You talked about the threat in the high north. | ||
| The threat is definitely increased activity. | ||
| It's also as we see China increasingly being involved there. | ||
| What are they using the information that they are gathering up in the Arctic? | ||
| What are the purposes they have for using that? | ||
| Is it purely for shipping? | ||
| Is it to have alternate sources for natural resources? | ||
| Dave, yes, the Minister of National Defense absolutely did, and probably right about a year ago, because at the beginning of March every year, we have a conference, long-running conference called the Ottawa Conference, where you are absolutely right. | ||
| He did use the term death spiral. | ||
| He has also said he used that deliberately to, frankly, shock the Canadian Armed Forces into action. | ||
| So, as I mentioned, when General Jenny Carignon became our Chief of the Defense Staff in July, that's why she made her number one priority to, okay, this is a crisis. | ||
| We absolutely need to fix that pipeline to make sure that if we have interested Canadians who are showing up at the recruiting center, that we're getting them all the checks done into uniform, into our training centers, and through in order to be able to rebuild the Army. | ||
| Sorry, rebuild the Canadian Armed Forces. | ||
| So, I'm not going to put words in Minister Blair's mouth, but I know that, first of all, all of the service commanders and the commander of our military personnel command, who's responsible for both recruiting and basic training, regularly meet with on a monthly basis with the chief of the defense staff to give her and our deputy minister, so our senior public servant, updates on what's happening, and those updates are provided to the minister. | ||
| And we are seeing an uptick in the number of people, first of all, that we're able to process and the numbers that are coming into the Canadian Armed Forces. | ||
| The problem didn't arrive overnight, and the problem won't be solved overnight. | ||
| Reinforcing contingency. | ||
| So I spoke about there being between 2,000 to 3,000 Canadians in Latvia. | ||
| The reason for the fluctuation of that number is because we have some forces who we refer to as surge forces. | ||
| So they are on 10 days' notice to move. | ||
| If we could obviously walk that notice to move down based on indicators and warnings, but we also regularly exercise them. | ||
| So I've done a couple engagements today, so I'm trying to remember if it was here or a previous engagement that I mentioned Exercise Resolute Warrior, but Exercise Resolute Warrior was not only one of the largest NATO exercises, it was the largest Canadian-led NATO exercise since the Cold War. | ||
| And Exercise Resolute Warrior, which was just after the full stand-up of the multinational brigade in Latvia last fall, included us exercising, sending those surge forces over to be part of the exercise. | ||
| General, just picking up on Eric's question, are you seeing or can you say anything more about prospective collaboration between, specifically between China and Russia in the Arctic? | ||
| Are you seeing evidence of being careful here because I often say that when I left CFINCOM, I don't know how many people have seen Men in Black, but at the end of my three years, they clicked the pen. | ||
| But I can say that Russia has put themselves in the position where they are increasingly reliant on China. | ||
| And I think if this was four years ago, Russia would have been very hesitant to involve China to the extent they have in the Arctic. | ||
| Very good. | ||
| Joaquin will take. | ||
| Excellent. | ||
| very good thank you oh there you go Thank you. | ||
| My name is Nyan. | ||
| I'm from the Asia-Pacific Foundation of Canada. | ||
| I have a question, what you said about the Indo-Pacific. | ||
| I may be wrong that what I interpreted from your statement, that you're not maybe looking for an active role for the Canadian Army in the Indo-Pacific, especially maybe in a contingency in Taiwan Strait. | ||
| I just want to clarify, need a clarification on that front. | ||
| Do you think that given, at least from the U.S. intelligence community, has said that by 2027, Xi Jinping wants PLA to be ready to invade or do something aggressive against Taiwan? | ||
| Do you still feel that, as Army Chief, that Canada does not see an active role, the Canadian Army, in a Taiwan contingency? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, so thanks for, oh, sorry. | ||
| Hold that thought. | ||
| I'm going to do one more. | ||
| Can I just move on? | ||
| I'm going to test your patience. | ||
| Where do you want to go? | ||
| Here? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Sir. | ||
| General, first of all, I'd like to extend my gratitude and appreciation for your involvement, for your government involvement in transatlantic relations. | ||
| You deploy troops to Poland and Latvia. | ||
| It cannot be overestimated. | ||
| And my question leads to industrial defense. | ||
| The way we envision security investments in Europe is to create some logistic and strategic autonomy in Europe. | ||
| That is why we're investing heavily in our industrial base. | ||
| It's part of our modernization. | ||
| You talk a lot about modernization. | ||
| Is the kind of ensuring appropriate flow of spare parts, ammunition, and other materials envisioned in your modernization concept? | ||
| Do you want to create that strategic autonomy similar to the one that we build in Europe now? | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Sir, just for the good of the order, could you just identify yourself for the general as well? | ||
| Major General Mulbert. | ||
| I'm Defence Attaché representing the Minister of Defence of Poland here in DC. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right, General. | ||
| Maybe I'll start with, first of all, a thank you, but also my admiration for what the Polish Armed Forces has done. | ||
| In this job, the Army Sergeant Major and I visited Poland last fall. | ||
| In my previous job, I visited Poland numerous times, and what Poland has done for the growth of their military, of their capabilities, and for frankly, the leadership on the Eastern Flank is absolutely incredible. | ||
| And I think all NATO countries owe Poland a thanks and a debt of gratitude. | ||
| Defense industrial strategy. | ||
| Sorry, you asked about industrial defense. | ||
| I'm actually talking about defense industrial strategy because this is an ongoing discussion in Canada where I am a person around the table, but I'm not the one who's leading it. | ||
| What I am interested in is what can provide the effect that's required for the Canadian Army. | ||
| We have great people not only within the Department of National Defense from our policy perspective, from our Assistant Deputy Minister of Materiel, but working across the government with our Public Service and Procurement Canada, with our industry, science and economic development, who are determining as we look at ammunition, as we look at spare parts, what is the right solution for Canada. | ||
| So we're at the level of detail there that we're not quite at yet. | ||
| Maybe I'll respond to your question. | ||
| I'll just say we have the Senior Public Affairs Officer of the Canadian Armed Forces here. | ||
| So I know the first thing she would tell me is not to speculate, so I'm not going to speculate on 2027 or timelines. | ||
| But if I gave you the, so I am being absolutely forthright that currently the capabilities of the Canadian Army with being involved in the mission in Latvia, with our domestic responsibilities, we... | ||
| I would not see a role. | ||
| However, if you look at any of the crises that have happened over the course of my career, we have seen that one of the great things about our militaries, our collective militaries, is the ability to plan and to rapidly reallocate. | ||
| So we would have to see based on what the priorities are, what the capabilities are. | ||
| But also, if something was to happen in Taiwan, I would suggest that the people of Latvia and NATO would not want that mission to be completely abandoned. | ||
| So General, you do have a full-time job, and we have to let you go. | ||
| Don't leave yet. | ||
| First, I have to say this to the audience. | ||
| This event, as all our events here at Stimson are available online, you can visit them and you'll be on TV, General. | ||
| We'll be online, available at Stimson.org/slash events. | ||
| While you're there, you can go to Stimpson.org/slash support. | ||
| And you, Andrew Hyde, can make a contribution to the Stimson Center so that we can continue to do great programming like this. | ||
| General, really so grateful to you for making the time to join us here today. | ||
| And I'm going to invite the audience to thank you. | ||
| When we finish our applause, I would ask a favor of everyone in the room. | ||
| This guy's going to be late for this next meeting, and his team is not going to be happy with me. | ||
| So if you could just keep your seats for 30 seconds while we let the general run to the elevator so you don't miss your taxi cab. | ||
| But as I say, General, one, grateful to you for being here and doing this today. | ||
| We're very grateful as an American public for the support that the Canadian military has provided to this country over many, many years. | ||
| So I'm really deeply grateful for that as well. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking and having your own turn. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy. | ||
| From Washington and across the country. | ||
| Coming up Monday morning, notice politics reporter Rhys Gorman previews the week ahead in Congress. | ||
| Then Shelby Talcott, semaphore White House correspondent, discusses White House News of the Day. | ||
| And Nina Olson with the Center for Taxpayer Rights on the impact of Doge on the functions of the IRS and the privacy of taxpayer data. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, join in the conversation live at 7 Eastern Monday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
| This week, on the C-SPAN networks, the House and Senate are in session. | ||
| The House will consider legislation to tighten foreign gift reporting requirements for colleges and universities. | ||
| The Senate will continue voting on President Trump's nominations, including Dr. Jay Batticheria to be director of the NIH and Dr. Martin McCary to head the FDA. | ||
| On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court hears consolidated oral argument in the case of Louisiana versus Calais and Robinson v. Calais on whether Louisiana's congressional maps are an illegal racial gerrymander. | ||
| The directors of five intelligence agencies will also appear before two committee hearings for the annual worldwide threat assessment. | ||
| First, on Tuesday before the Senate Intelligence Committee and then on Wednesday before the House Intelligence Committee. | ||
| Also Wednesday, Catherine Marr, CEO and President of National Public Radio, and Paula Kerger, CEO and President of the Public Broadcasting Service, testify before the Doge Subcommittee on concerns about alleged bias in news coverage by their federally funded organizations. | ||
| And on Thursday, a Senate Aviation Subcommittee will go over the National Transportation Safety Board's preliminary report on the mid-air collision between an American Airlines jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Reagan National Airport in late January. | ||
| Live this week on the C-SPAN networks and on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app. | ||
| Also, head over to C-SPAN.org for scheduling information or to watch live or on demand anytime. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. |