Hon. Roméo Antonius Dallaire:

Honourable senators, I would like to say a few words about this excellent interim report from the Standing Committee on National Security and Defence, whose recommendations can be reasonably applied.

I wish to raise one dimension of it to clarify the background and to prepare the way for the continued study of the Arctic sovereignty and security.

We have Minister Cannon's report, and he says:

The first and most critical pillar of the Northern Strategy is exercising Canadian Arctic sovereignty.

In 1987, during the Mulroney years and the Cold War era, we produced a white paper that articulated the essentiality under the Cold War context of building a major base in the North and of deploying up to a thousand troops permanently in the northern area, being rotated every three months. The paper articulated that we would have the air force in permanent deployment and the navy would acquire nuclear powered submarines.

That was very much a security dimension during the Cold War, and although it was in the 1987 white paper that was approved on June 5, 1987, by June of 1989, that white paper was nearly destroyed and those projects disappeared.

Mr. Wilson had influenced the Prime Minister to say that the white paper was unaffordable resulting in massive cuts. Ultimately, all the investments, including acquiring vehicles like the BV206s, which we invented in the 1950s, sold to the Norwegians and the Swedes and they are selling them back to us. All the equipment for the North was cancelled and those projects were for naught.

Honourable senators, here we are 20-odd years later, and we are back there. I think we are back there under the context of not a Cold War, but on the context of Canada and its priorities and what it sees as its role within the Arctic region, in the circumpolar scenario.

I would like to raise the question of whether we have sovereignty and security.

I want to quote from Alan Kessel, who is a legal adviser to the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. He took issue with those who say Canada claims sovereignty. Mr. Kessel said, "This is a misnomer; you do not claim something that you own."

That is a fundamental argument in this report, namely, that we own it. It is not a matter of whether we should exercise our sovereignty and prove it. We own it. It is a given. Someone has to prove to us that it is not ours.

In that context, Mr. Kessel then highlighted the difference between sovereignty and security, and the danger of confusing the two. One may have it sovereign, but it may not be secure. I will read this short excerpt:

If you have a house and someone runs through your backyard in the middle of the night, you do not lose sovereignty of your house. You still own it. You may question the security of your backyard, and you may want to look into that, but you do not lose ownership of something just because you question whether it is secure enough. That is key in understanding this particular issue because once you start falling into the realm of "If it is not secure, it is not mine," I think you have lost much of your argument. It is always yours.

Canada, therefore, as the report says, does not claim sovereignty of the Arctic region; it owns it.

With that, the chair of the committee read out the recommendations, and I will spend a few moments amplifying recommendation number 2, which states the following:

The Government keep the Canadian Rangers modernization program on track, with consideration given to expanding the Rangers' role in the marine environment. The program should be completed sooner than later.

We have in the North an incredible capability that has never been used or developed in exercising our security and fully engaging the people of the North in that responsibility. I will read from a study I was involved with regarding the Canadian rangers and putting them on the water. Right now, their role is land-based. The extension of the Canadian rangers on the waters, in my opinion, is a significant advancement towards maximizing the security of the people of the North and rendering the security far more effective. I speak of security in the generic sense, that is, security from oil spills, rogue ships or whatever other potential threats there are. If I may read from the study:

To secure our North, and to consequently support our position that the waters of the Northwest Passage are internal, Canada needs to mobilize local assets effectively — as quickly as possible. One well-established asset for local surveillance is the Ranger Program, which operates across Canada but is of particular importance in the Arctic. These lightly-armed, land-based custodians are part-time and trained by the Canadian Forces. Not only would the Canadian Ranger Patrol Groups of the Arctic, who are largely Inuit, bring an unquestionable credibility to the Canadian claim of Arctic waters, but an expansion of their role can be done quickly and at relatively low cost. Administered properly, enhanced employment and training can also raise the quality of life for Northern communities, which face unique challenges.

I am arguing for acquiring the small vessels, providing training and expanding the Ranger capability from a 17- to 19-day-a-year operation to a semi-part-time operation, particularly when the waters are open, which is at least four months of the year, and might be more. Rangers would be deployed on the waters and conduct the surveillance.

I will make two arguments, one on efficiency and the other one on credibility. Regarding the efficiency of using the Aboriginal people of the North in this role, the advantages of employing local Aboriginal people to patrol Northern waters rather than southern people runs far deeper than savings on relocation and training costs, which are in themselves substantial. Local Aboriginal peoples can offer rich, contextual knowledge and years of experience, which cannot be matched by even the best-trained southern personnel. Furthermore, those with a personal connection to the area are likely to stay in the Ranger Program and with their particular detachments for much longer periods. That stability is particularly important, given the steep learning curve and the costliness of errors made in the Arctic.

As for the credibility of using the Aboriginal peoples, and the advantages that accrue from this approach, the international community would find it more difficult to criticize the Aboriginals for protecting their traditional harvesting grounds. There is a little nuance here about their way of life and how they sustain it. Aboriginals worldwide have an inherent credibility when it comes to their traditional interests. This credibility would further strengthen their position on the matter of the internal waters and sovereignty. The Aboriginal inhabitants of the Canadian Arctic provide the most compelling arguments to support Canada's position that the waters of the Arctic archipelago are internal waters.

Work has been done on expanding that role to the waters where the Rangers would be on the waters for up to five months of clear waters, up to 25 days a month, patrolling in these smaller vessels and providing an asset that no one from the south could imitate nor do it as effectively.

The estimate to build that capacity — the small boats, the training and even salaries — is an initial cost of about $4 million, and then an annual cost of about $1 million to $1.5 million. It is peanuts compared to what we invested with the border services when we armed them and it cost us $1 billion for them to carry pistols. They are dangerous, just looking at them and the training levels that I have seen so far. We invested $1 billion to arm our southern border people, and in the North, we are questioning whether we can expand the role of the people who live there to a better one, which would cost us peanuts in comparison.

In the future study, I hope that we significantly and aggressively pursue maximizing the roles of the Northern people in the security of the North and the footprint for us there, not only at an effective cost but also to give the people of the North a sense of belonging and partnership, and a sense that this nation is engaged with all people for its security and its future.

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