Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/103039
M MaritiMe awareness when we do force development work, we need to do it collaboratively so things talk. boarding capability. We'd have three or four departments working together to do that one boarding; in the U.S., the Coast Guard would do the whole thing. Q What lessons have you distilled about interdepartmental information sharing and data fusion? I think the first one is never assume that your partner has the information. That's a big one. When it comes to data fusion and information transfer, we often assume everyone has the same clarity that we have, and that is never the case. Second, the backbone of this organization is trust, and trust takes time and effort. So when you have new folks come in, they need to be inculcated into the culture of what the MSOC is. You don't just say welcome aboard and then walk away. Because everyone who comes into that MSOC initially has their departmental view, until they get exposed to the group and then become more part of the collective response. Third, as I mentioned, we have learned that not every piece of information is required by each partner. As we get more experience, we are getting better at working with each other to understand information sharing requirements as well as limitations. Q How do you incorporate the U.S., and in particular NORAD, into the MSOC picture? The relationship with NORAD and NORTHCOM is through Canadian Joint Operations Command. On the military side, my relationship is through the Joint Fusion Centre Atlantic and also my NATO partners, and those relationships have been around for decades. We have liaison officers embedded in both and it works seamlessly. Recently I've had two commanders of NORADNORTHCOM come to this office. That has never happened before. They came to talk about MSOC. So it is having a huge impact on not only our relationship but also how we share information. Back to my comment on sharing that 85 percent of the pie: I'll take everything you can possibly give me, but when you say I can't have something, that's fine because I guarantee you the only difference between the white source information we have now and segmented, highly sensitive information is the source. I don't need the source; someone else has it. As long as I don't go after source information, we can do what we need to do. Q Is there a requirement for an MSOC in the Arctic? I would think there is a great constabulary role, and therefore greater interdepartmental collaboration. 26 DeCeMBer 2012/JanUarY 2013 www.vanguardcanada.com You hit the nail on the head. The North is a constabulary role, where we would always be the support player except for a small role in defence. But I see that more as a NORAD role than a traditional defence role. I don't think an MSOC is necessary now – but I'm not saying, never. Right now we have a good enough picture because of satellite coverage and simple things such as the Arctic Water Pollution Prevention Act of 1985, which requires ships to request permission to transit and to meet certain requirements like a double hull. As traffic builds over the next decades, we might. Q With the delays in the RADARSAT Constellation Mission, do you have sufficient space-based assets for the Arctic? What you need is the ability to discern between ice and a target. And then, the relative length and size of a target, which requires certain processing capabilities. Just having a blip isn't good enough. However, because the Arctic is still a destination, we are okay with what we have. But it's not going to stay like that. Q Have you considered expanding beyond the five core partners or are you able to bring in expertise as required? Public Safety is the quarterback to make sure the right partners are brought in if expertise is needed from non-traditional partners. We recently participated in Frontier Sentinel 12, a whole of government exercise in which immigration and health issues were involved. Often, different agencies may come into the MSOC if they feel it's of value to them, or they'll get the queuing from us and work within their own cluster to make things work. Q You mentioned the development of smart collaborative tools: what's missing from the technological side? The final pieces are more a software issue on a collaborative sharing tool. Right now it is still pretty darn manual. We need to bridge that manual gap. That's the last piece. Q Does the IMIC3 project (Interdepartmental Maritime