You want them. CA Certificates are those used by the certificate vendors to verify other SSL certificates, they're not just used for HTTPS but lots of other SSL transports. Without up to date CA certificates your ability to communicate securely over SSL is as good as non existent.

OK, thanks. I can't remember if they were onboard the original ubuntu server installation, a package dependency, or I deliberately installed them. Maybe they're using stronger encryption, which could explain why they seemed so slow today. Apparently they're not updated very frequently.