Public Safety committee  My answer to that is simply the lack of confidence and trust in the public. You're certainly going to have small proportions, as Professor Kitchen pointed out, of extremists who can be manipulated, but there's already fertile ground to be manipulated. If you look at the overarching component of the public, who are more involved in this than I am, I think we can trust them.

Public Safety committee  I don't know if there's much the government could have done. Remember, we're living in a world of globalization. This is the downside of globalization. It's not just about Russian resources being provided to the Europeans, but how that international marketplace is structured and works out.

Public Safety committee  I can only comment in terms of the defence side, and keeping closed, highly encrypted and the most advanced encrypted systems in the intelligence and the defence world. Again, it's not necessarily the case that government or Defence are going to let anyone know when they get hacked and these systems are actually penetrated.

Public Safety committee  Definitely it's going to backfire. As I said, I don't agree that disinformation campaigns—and they're not all coming from Russia; there are issues about our information campaigns as well—have that much of a significant impact in terms of exploiting social differences. But if you—

Public Safety committee  I can't respond specifically. I'm like Professor Kitchen in my ability to answer these details. The key agency to provide information and notification is probably the Communications Security Establishment, CSE, but I don't know in detail how much they have moved in this area, because their work has always been dealing with the electronic world.

Public Safety committee  I wouldn't necessary say that we need an agency, but we certainly need a structure with the United States. Remember, the United States is structured differently. All those agencies you're talking about all live in one house, the Department of Homeland Security. They are a bit of a step ahead of us, whereas, if you look at us, the RCMP are dealing with criminal activities, as a lot of ransomware is about crime, as hackers are out to make money.

Public Safety committee  The answer is twofold. We enjoy the strategic advantage of geography, which constrains the military and defence threats to North America to the aerospace realm. It can be maritime, as a function on maritime launch capabilities, but basically we can focus our attention on that. The second big strategic advantage we have as a function of geography is that we sit beside the United States.

Public Safety committee  It's a joint venture and, importantly, NORAD is the driver behind the issue surrounding NORAD modernization, which is North American defence modernization. It is the planning centre right now, which will start to move requirements forward, hopefully, over the near term. In terms of processing information, because that is centralized at NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs, that's by and large American.

Public Safety committee  Certainly. The north warning system has no capacity to be able to detect a hypersonic missile flying over the Arctic region heading towards targets in the south. The American ballistic missile early warning system is optimized to deal with long-range ballistic missiles, not hypersonics, so you have a major gap there.

Public Safety committee  I think that's an important issue. Right now it's more or less ad hoc, depending on the specific issues that emerge, particularly in the Arctic. If you ask who is responsible at the bureaucratic level for the Arctic, the answer is everyone. If everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.

Public Safety committee  Exactly. I would call it a centre for Arctic security, with defence as a component.

Public Safety committee  The first answer is that we're vulnerable. The north warning system is out of date and, in fact, it's too limited to deal with the 360-degree threat environment that North America faces. Government tends to talk about NORAD modernization as equivalent to modernization of the north warning system.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, and thank you for the invitation. I want to begin my brief comments with a concern I have. I think it's very important that the committee and the government do not overreact, if not go into panic, with regard to existing vulnerabilities both in the cyberworld and defence world of Canada from Russian capabilities.

Government Operations committee  It's the internal dynamics in a fiscally constrained or capital budget-constrained environment, if we go back. That hasn't gone away. It still exists, lurking beneath the surface. These services.... This starts from the bottom up in terms of priorities, in my view, and in terms of the Canadian Army.

Government Operations committee  Could you clarify? I'm not sure what you mean by “the same machine”. What machine are you talking about?