Introduction

In November 2022, the government of Justin Trudeau released its long-awaited Indo-Pacific strategy, promising that Canada would spend $2.3 billion over the next five years to allocimplement the strategy. That announcement came just months after the minister of national defence, Anita Anand, had promised that Canada would spend $4.9 billion on the modernization of North American air defence.

At the same time, the Trudeau government was also committing funds to Canadian foreign policy objectives in Europe. In July 2023, for example, Trudeau committed $2.6 billion to renew and expand Operation REASSURANCE, part of NATO’s defence and deterrence measures in Eastern Europe. It also sought to assist the government of Ukraine to defend against the full-scale Russian invasion that had begun in February 2022; by September 2023, Canada had allocated $9.5 billion in multifaceted assistance to Ukraine.

At the same time that this spending was being announced, however, the Trudeau government was also announcing major spending cutbacks, including in the defence budget. These contradictory positions raise inconvenient questions as to how Canada in its defence policy will achieve the objectives outlined in the Canadian Indo-Pacific strategy while resources are being diminished through cutbacks or being deployed in Ukraine.

Most recently, we have seen North Korea’s provocations increase with testing of hypersonic missiles and the provision of ballistic and other forms of arms to Russia so it can continue its war on Ukraine. We have seen China engage increasingly in gray zone operations and hybrid operations in the South China Sea in the waters near the Philippines. We have seen an announcement by the Chinese government that it will increase the daily presence in and around the East China Sea, in particular the Senkaku Islands, and we have seen challenges across the Taiwan Strait in terms of Chinese rhetoric, discussing and focusing on reunification with Taipei through non-peaceful means.

Critically, our allies increasingly see Canada as “unreliable,” “decadent,” or “detached from the realities of the Indo-Pacific.” The inconvenient truth is that Canada has limited resources, and these resources are being further limited by defence cutbacks and the needs of Ukraine.

Defining the planning challenges

How can we ensure that Canada will have a defence presence in the Indo-Pacific region? What comparative advantages can we bring to the region? What are the best forms of cooperation to engage in sustained meaningful and fruitful cooperation within the region? Any defence engagement within the Indo-Pacific region must be clearly tied to Canadian national interests. What are these interests?

First, Canadian interests in the Indo-Pacific include—but are not exclusive to—open sea lines of communication (SLOCs) through the South China Sea, in and around the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea, and of course to Cana- da. The importance of open SLOCs is self-evident: every year approximately USD$5 trillion in imports, exports, and energy resources move through the SLOCs in the region. A disruption in SLOCs would certainly affect the Canadian economy and security interests in the region.

Second, Canada has a deep interest in stable supply chains, particularly those involving semiconductor supply chains. A number of Canadian industries, including automobile, defence, personal electronics, and many other technologies that Canada relies on are based on semiconductor supply chains largely connected to Taiwan. Canada is also dependent on other supply chains for lower-level electronics but also personal protective equipment.

Third, Canada has a defence interest in ensuring that weapons of mass destruction are not developed by actors such as North Korea. As Pyongyang continues to develop the delivery systems to launch a retaliatory attack against the United States, Canada and its defence policy should be clear-eyed that North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) would need to travel through Canadian space to hit targets in the United States. This makes Canada vulnerable to misguided missiles, missiles that may crash over Canada, or missiles that may be intercepted by US missile defence systems revealing a plethora of direct and indirect vulnerabilities to North Korea missile systems.

Canadian defence policy towards the Indo-Pacific also cannot divorce itself from the defence vulnerabilities of Canada’s friends in the region. Japan, South Korea, and the United States are all on the front lines of North Korean missile systems and an attack or accident stemming from North Korean missile launches on any of these partners of Canada would impact Canada’s security and economy.

Fourth, Canada has a specific interest in preventing illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing throughout the broader region to promote a rules-based approach to governing fisheries and other resources. Unregulated and unreported illegal fishing and other activities can create food and economic insecurity and destabilize the natural equilibrium in nature that can impact the environment and vulnerable communities.

Fifth, Canada has an interest in ensuring that the conflict between India and China on the Himalayan plateau remains as distant a possibility as possible, since this could turn nuclear. Conflict would also cause a huge exodus of migrants, food, and other security issues that would not remain in the region.

Defence tools of engagement: Canada’s comparative advantages

Considering these numerous challenges within the Indo-Pacific region, and Canada’s limited resources, how can we engage within this region?

First, minilateral relationships should be pursued while not eschewing multilateral relationships. Through a greater emphasis on minilateral cooperation, Canada defence initiatives/ policies could engage within the region through an approach that “plugs into” existing minilateral cooperative partnerships or new partnerships that are limited in their scope and function.

The existing Quadrilateral Security Dialogue may be a formula for cooperating on issues such as supply chains resilience, infrastructure and connectivity, disinformation, and monitoring the activities of weapon proliferators like North Korea through a “Quad-plus” arrangement in which Canada plugs into the Quad activities.

Canada is already plugged into the Quad in joint exercises such as the Sea Dragon 2021 anti-submarine warfare exercises that took place around Guam in January 2021 (in which the Royal Canadian Air Force won the coveted Dragon Belt). But Canada could use its defence assets, its capabilities, as well as its long-term relationship with the United States, Australia, and Japan, to expand the number of opportunities it has to insert high quality and highly trained individuals into minilateral cooperation.

Other existing minilateral partnerships area that may be an opportunity for Canada defence policy to cooperate in is the AUKUS partnership between the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. AUKUS has a “second” pillar that focuses on artificial intelligence (AI), quantum computing, hypersonic missile systems, cybersecurity, and other emerging technologies that will be game changers, not only in the Indo-Pacific region but globally as well.

Canada already has pre-existing budgets targeted and secured for AI and quantum computing cooperation with the United States and other actors within the region. By engaging through an AUKUS-plus arrangement with other countries that are interested in engaging in pillar two like New Zealand, Canada de- fence institutions could contribute to the AI, quantum computing, hypersonics, cybersecurity, and disinformation aspects of AUKUS by leveraging Canada’s existing comparative advantages and relationships to bring meaningful cooperation to the region.

This form of cooperation also means that Canada would not be part of the nuclear submarine, nuclear powered submarine aspects of AUKUS; rather, Canada would only plug into pillar two based on the compar- ative advantages that defence policy and initiatives could bring.

In the area of emerging and disruptive technologies, NATO has prioritized nine areas including AI, autonomy, quantum, biotechnologies and human enhancement, hypersonic systems, space, novel materials and manufacturing, energy and propulsion, and next-generation communications networks. Ukraine’s innovative uses of drone technology to defend itself against Russian aggression have also been influential in how NATO views the importance of emerging and disruptive technologies and developing papers that have the ability to cooperate in these spaces.

There are other emerging formulas for minilateral cooperation within the Indo-Pacific that will be important for Canada to consider how it can be a leader in terms of cooperation, or it can be an additional plug-in partner here. By way of example, developing counter-disinformation strategies is an area of concern that defence policy can contribute its skillset to the region by working with South Korea, Taiwan, the United States and Japan.

There is a possibility that these countries and political entities such as Taiwan could create a defence nexus in which disinformation is identified, attributed, and defensive initia- tives put into place to reduce the damage that is associated with disinformation.

Furthermore, Canada can bring naval assets to the region. Its activities under Operation NEON in the Sea of Japan, including maritime domain awareness and sanctions evasions, have been welcomed by stakeholders within the region as a meaningful and sustained initiative.

Canada should continue these kinds of activities. It could also reimagine the areas of focus where it may use some of its existing resources to deal with illegal, unregulated, and undocumented fishing in the Pacific Islands, the South China Sea, or elsewhere. Through minilateral cooperation with like-minded states like Australia, Japan, and perhaps even Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, Canada, could con- tribute to its defence capabilities to preventing illegal, unregulated, and undocumented fishing from expanding.

Search and rescue, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief are also other areas that Canada is well-positioned to work with partners in the region to provide public goods as Canada thinks about its defence policy engagement in the Indo-Pacific.

Establishing a reciprocal access agreement or similar agreement with Japan may enable Canada to station defence resources in the region so they can respond more quickly, effectively, and synergistically with like-minded countries in the region.

Conclusion: Geography, tools, and partners

In short, Canada and its defence policies and institutions need to think about the geographic limits of its engagement, the tools of engagement, and partners of engagement. The geographic range of engagement should be limited: Canada should avoid using its limited resources in the western or even the eastern parts of the Indian Ocean.

Our European and Indian partners are geographically better positioned to deal with issues of shared concern in that geographic area. Canada’s interests are by and large located in the South China Sea and in the East Asian part of the Indo-Pacific. This means Canadian defence planners should locate its resources in the areas where Canada’s interests are most represented.

Second, the tools of this defence engagement should primarily be naval diplomacy, joint exercises, and minilateral engagement, as well as introducing new formulas of cooperation such as the disinformation minilateral cooperation with Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, the United States, and Canada.

Third, the specific activities that Canada should be involved in should revolve around Canada’s need to prioritize where it can inject resources in a sustained and meaningful way. Its experience in dealing with disinformation is a good example of where Canada can use its defence resources efficiently in a way that adds value to the region. Its strong relationship with South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan being that it can leverage those relationships to build a critical mass of countries and political entities that are dealing with the sensitive issue of disinformation.

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