Workers to continue strike at Canada's Bombardier, union rejects company's proposal

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  October 4, 2018 | Local, Naval

  Chinese-made equipment in Canada's Arctic ships under scrutiny

  Murray Brewster · CBC News Canadian queries about Chinese content could be response to American anxiety, says intelligence expert Canada's international trade minister quietly sounded out officials at the Department of National Defence last spring about how much of the content in the navy's new Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships could be sourced back to China, newly released documents reveal. The unusual April request from the office of François​-Philippe Champagne, who was international trade minister at the time, was made as Canadian negotiators were struggling to negotiate a revised North American Free Trade Agreement with the Trump administration — which has become increasingly suspicious of the involvement of Chinese companies in the defence and high-tech sectors. An information note, detailing the answers given to Champagne, was prepared for Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and obtained by CBC News under access to information law. "Equipment has been sourced from a variety of manufacturers, many of whom are offshore, with a very limited amount being procured from the People's Republic of China," said the April 4, 2018 briefing prepared by DND's project management office. Chinese steel The briefing made a point of underlining the Canadian content requirements that are part of every major capital project. It noted that 17 per cent of the steel being used to construct the warship — as well as the lifeboats, mooring and towing system components and various pipes and fittings — came from Chinese companies. Champagne was shuffled last summer to the infrastructure portfolio. Officials who worked for him said Wednesday they were not sure what his request was about. Defence and intelligence experts find the inquiry about the warship components curious — and not only because of Washington's growing trade fight with Beijing. The Pentagon has been quietly sounding out allies about who is building their military equipment, both hardware and software. "There's been some concern about this in ... U.S. military circles, about the degree to which there is Chinese ownership of firms working in sensitive areas," said Dave Perry, a procurement expert at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. "At a fairly high level, the U.S. (Department of Defence) was concerned about Canada having involvement of firms in defence supply chain that has Chinese angles, Chinese partial ownership." The documents demonstrate how hard it can be to trace the provenance of military parts. One of the firms supplying anchors for the Arctic ships was Apache International Ltd., which has listed itself as a Canadian company with an office in China. Following Champagne's questions, it was determined the original manufacturer of the equipment was Chinese. Wesley Wark, a University of Ottawa professor and one of the country's leading experts on cybersecurity and intelligence, said the Americans' concern relates mostly to electronics and other "warfighting equipment" — not necessarily the nuts and bolts. The U.S. Defence Department's acquisition chief said last summer the Pentagon was developing a so-called "Do Not Buy" list of software that does not meet national security standards. 'A certain xenophobia' Canadian concerns about Chinese product in the Arctic ships could be influenced by American concerns, said Wark, who noted that Canada has struck an independent tone when it comes to trade relations with China and has resisted U.S. and Australian pressure to ban Chinese telecom giant Huawei. "Canada has been under intense pressure by the Trump administration to follow the general lead on waging a trade war with China," he said. "There is White House pressure on the Pentagon. The Pentagon has legitimate concerns, like any Western military, about allowing certain elements of Chinese manufactured stuff into its infrastructure." Complicating matters is an almost-forgotten case of alleged espionage that is still grinding its way through the legal system. Chinese-born Qing Quentin Huang, who worked for Lloyd's Register, was charged in 2013 with "attempting to communicate with a foreign entity." He was accused of trying to pass design information about Canada's Arctic ships to the Chinese. Aside from its understandable military and economic policy concerns, Wark said the White House position on China is being driven in part by "a certain xenophobia" that is troubling. "You have to be careful not to find ourselves falling into that American model," he said. "We can make our own distinctions about what might be sensitive or dangerous." https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/chinese-made-equipment-in-canada-s-arctic-ships-under-scrutiny-1.4849562

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  October 7, 2020 | Local, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence

  How the U.S. election outcome could affect Canada's environment and energy future

  Alexander Panetta Biden, Trump have deep differences — and each could significantly impact Canada This story is part of a five-part series looking at how the policies of the two U.S. presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, differ when it comes to the major issues of interest to Canada, including energy, defence, trade and immigration. The old truism that elections have consequences is doubly apt for the United States, a country whose politics reach beyond its borders. It's certainly so for Canada. Specific policy issues in a U.S. election hold particular stakes for Canada, including energy and the environment, national defence, the border and migration and U.S. relations with China. In advance of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 3, CBC will run stories on these five issues, and how they might play out if the winner is current President Donald Trump or his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden. Our first instalment examines one of the most striking differences between them: energy and the environment. If Biden wins Biden drew attention in Canada for promising to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta, then doubling down on it. Rory Johnston, an energy analyst at Price Street in Toronto, said a president clearly has the legal power to revoke a permit. What's not clear to him is whether Biden would, in precarious economic times, actually cancel a big project, which would cost jobs and anger construction unions. The Democratic nominee has a sweeping environmental platform that goes far beyond that one pipeline pledge. For starters, he said he'd re-join the Paris climate accord on Day 1 of his presidency. Then he would convene, shame and potentially punish other countries that slack on their carbon emissions commitments. Within 100 days, Biden said he'd hold a global climate summit to push countries to join the U.S. in toughening their climate objectives. He said he would also demand a worldwide ban on government subsidies for fossil fuels. INTERACTIVE Will Biden or Trump be the U.S. president? These states will decide Biden also intends to grade countries on their performance. He promises a global climate change report, similar to the State Department's annual report on human rights and human trafficking. It would rank countries' performance in meeting their Paris commitments. If that doesn't work, he's threatening to wield the stick of trade tariffs. Biden said he wants to impose what he calls "carbon-adjustment fees," or perhaps quotas, on carbon-intensive products from countries that fail to meet climate and environmental obligations. It's not clear how many countries Biden would target. "We can no longer separate trade policy from our climate objectives," says Biden's platform. Canada is projecting a lowering of emissions but not nearly by enough to meet its Paris commitment. Implementing such a tariff could be tricky. To become embedded in U.S. law, it would have to get through Congress — and receiving the 51 to 60 per cent of votes required in the Senate would be a tall order. Some trade analysts believe such a tactic would also be illegal protectionism under international trade law unless the U.S. imposed a similar carbon tax domestically — also a tall order. However, other analysts say there's one tool Biden could use, which has become famous in the Trump era: declare carbon emissions a national security matter and apply the same trade weapon the current president used against foreign steel and aluminum. Any regulatory moves could face another hurdle in a more hostile Supreme Court. Speaking of the environment and trade, Biden is proposing a massive, $2 trillion green-infrastructure plan aimed at new transit, vehicles and a carbon-free power grid by 2035. Biden says the construction would be done by U.S. firms under Buy American rules. He would also re-establish policies from the Obama era that Canada has signed onto, from methane and auto regulations to an Arctic drilling ban. Gerald Butts, who was a former senior aide to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and worked on some of those agreements with the U.S, said Biden's climate policies go far beyond Obama's and reflect a growing recognition of the environmental threat. "Biden's plan would have been unthinkable for a presidential nominee for a major party even one cycle ago," said Butts, now vice-chair of the political risk consultancy Eurasia Group. Bob Deans, a spokesman for the political action committee of the Washington-based Natural Resources Defence Council, called climate change a defining issue for this election. "The American people are facing a stark choice in this election. Two completely different energy futures," Deans said. "We need to be reducing our reliance on oil and gas, not locking future generations into this climate nightmare." If Trump wins In his 2016 platform, Trump promised more oil drilling, more pipelines — and less regulation. He delivered that on several fronts. Just last month he announced a border permit for a multi-purpose rail project that, if built, could eventually ship Canadian oil through Alaska. Trump ditched a number of Obama's climate rules, and left the Paris Accord. (His pullout from the Paris agreement officially goes into effect the day after this year's election.) Trump hasn't published a platform for the next four years. His campaign website simply lists things he's done to slash regulations and promote fossil-fuel development. He's promising no major policy changes. "We would continue what we're doing," Trump told The New York Times, when asked about his overall second-term plans. As far as Canada is concerned, that means a continued commitment to the still-unbuilt Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry nearly one-fifth of the oil Canada exports to the U.S. each day. Johnston said that pipeline isn't, on its own, a make-or-break issue for the Canadian oilpatch, but it would help, he said. He said the oilsands likely need two pipelines completed over the next few years out of the three major projects underway — Trans Mountain to the Pacific Coast, the Line 3 expansion to the Great Lakes and Keystone XL to the Gulf of Mexico — to avoid the type of transportation bottlenecks that have previously devastated Canadian oil prices. "It's never ideal to be just at the limit of your [transportation] capacity," Johnston said. Even with the current president's support, Keystone XL faces challenges. The ground has been cleared for only 100 kilometres of pipe to be laid inside Canada. A border-crossing segment has been built, and 17 pump stations out of an eventual 36 along the route are under construction. That leaves the project about two years, many hundreds of kilometres and some legal and regulatory fights shy of completion. A Supreme Court decision this summer allowed a Montana ruling to stand, which forced the pipeline company to get permits for crossing waterways. Permit hearings were scheduled for late September in Montana and North Dakota. It's an uncertain moment for oil — and the financial stakes for Canada are considerable. It's Canada's top export to the U.S., in dollar figures; Canadian oil accounts for about half of U.S. oil imports, following years of growth. But energy giant BP projects that global oil demand has peaked. The U.S. Energy Information Administration projects U.S. imports will flatten out and even decline a bit. That's happening as several automakers say they will keep building vehicles to the stricter emissions standards set in California — standards that are backed by Ottawa. California, the largest U.S. vehicle market, recently announced it planned to ban sales of gasoline-powered cars by 2035. Some of these changes in energy markets will proceed regardless of who's president. Johnston's own projection? Barring a sudden change in the market, Canadian oil production will grow a bit for two to five years, then plateau at similar levels for decades. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/us-issues-canada-environment-1.5746288

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  February 6, 2020 | Local, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security

  Canada Unprepared for Military Aggression Via Arctic, Say Defence Experts

  BY RAHUL VAIDYANATH Modernizing outdated North Warning System not funded as part of defence budget No sooner had a gathering to discuss modernizing the defence of North America taken place than two Russian strategic bombers approached Canadian airspace from the Arctic. The menace underscores the message to the Canadian government and public that the country is at greater risk than it has been in decades. North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) reported the Russian activity on Jan. 31, just two days after the Canadian Global Affairs Institute (CGAI) hosted a major defence conference in Ottawa. “They [the Russians and Chinese] have the weapons systems and we are increasingly seeing the intent, so we haven't caught up to that yet,” University of Calgary political science professor and conference panelist Rob Huebert said in an interview following the incident. The Russian aircraft stayed in international airspace and didn't enter U.S. or Canadian sovereign airspace, but it nevertheless highlighted the threat. Huebert says what's been holding Canada back is a decades-long multi-faceted problem of attitudes. Canada is accustomed to playing the “away game” instead of the “home game,” meaning it prefers to face its threats as far away from its borders as possible. Thus the protection of the North American continent requires a change of mindset given the advanced capabilities of the Russians and Chinese. It's also naive on Canada's part to think it can simply talk to Russia and China and get them to play nice. “We have to be a lot more honest with Canadians,” Huebert said. A government can favour certain initiatives, and the current one has shown it can generate broad public buy-in for its environmental initiatives. But even if the public isn't clamouring for better military capabilities—as seen in the lack of interest the topic garnered during the election run-up—experts say the government can no longer ignore the military threat from Russia and China. “What this government has shown no willingness to deal with is a much more comprehensive understanding of security that encapsulates both environmental security and military security,” Huebert said. For example, the Liberals didn't put forth their Arctic policy until a day before the election was called. ‘People have to recognize there is a real threat' Canadian governments have put a lower priority on defence spending for decades, and that has left a consistent drop in capability compared to potential rivals. A case in point is that Canada opted in 2005 to not be a part of the U.S. ballistic missile defence program. Contrast that attitude with the Russians or the Chinese and their imperialist goals. Russia wants to destroy us and China wants to own us, said John Sanford of the U.S.'s National Maritime Intelligence Integration Office, at the CGAI forum. A power play is shaping up between the United States, China, and Russia, and the Arctic is the epicentre of the military conflict. That makes it Canada's business, according to defence experts. “People have to recognize there is a real threat,” said conference opening speaker Commodore Jamie Clarke, Norad's deputy director of strategy. “We are defending our entire way of life.” At risk is Canada's economy and infrastructure, not to mention that of the United States. At the heart of the matter is an outdated detection and deterrence system with no comprehensive replacement in the works. https://www.theepochtimes.com/canada-unprepared-for-military-aggression-via-arctic-say-defence-experts_3228565.html