National Defence Committee on May 4th, 2010

[Col (Retired) Michel Drapeau]

To be blunt and short, I would certainly look somewhere else, and I would use the current experience in Afghanistan to make the point.

I think after we return home and we look at all the successes we have had—and I use the word “we” in the broadest sense possible. We, as a NATO alliance, have had some difficulties in trying to mobilize everybody to pay their fair share there. Canada certainly has, and has punched above its weight, as the saying goes. But in the final analysis, 100,000 troops total that we have deployed in Afghanistan is far short of the mark to make the counter-insurgency operation not only a success but an indubitable success.

So why would Canada, small forces that we have, want to undertake a risky, perilous activity again? And you have to ask whether or not this is in the national interest and what we are getting out of it when, on the continuum of war-making or war-fighting missions, that's only one of them. I don't think Canada has the armed forces, size-wise, or the appetite on the national basis to engage in another of this type of operation. If we do, I think we will want to make sure we come to battle with not most but all of our allies, so we pay our fair share, but no more than that.

So I'm not a fan of equipping or providing missions to our future forces for counter-insurgency operations. That would be at the bottom, not at the top, of my list of things to do.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you.

I was interested to see--while recognizing, of course, as we all do, that we have suffered enormous losses there--that we've also had successes from a combat point of view, and we're all very pleased to see that. You mentioned that we have battle-experienced troops now, and I was interested in your comments that this is very significant from the NCO point of view, the commanders on the ground who are leaving the forces, platoon commanders, etc.

I contrasted that in my mind with your comments about what you call the officer-heavy or the top-heavy situation that we have. You looked at ratios between Canada and the U.K. and the U.S. I don't know if they're necessarily the best comparisons. They have huge armies, and maybe there are economies of scale; I don't know.

If we're going to go forward with your suggestion about transformation, part of making the force more efficient, I would assume, would be to have perhaps fewer officers and a more directed force, maybe fewer people at NDHQ, or some other way of reconfiguring the forces. What do all these people do that doesn't need to be done, if that's a good way of putting it?

[Col (Retired) Michel Drapeau]

Mr. Harris, I would be hard-pressed to tell you how many studies have been done of that. In the time that I was in the military, I participated in at least three or four missions that tried to see a way to reduce the size of National Defence Headquarters, which used to consume something like 10,000 to 15,000 people, civilian and military, so it's a huge number.

In addition to that, since then we have now created various organizations once deployed in Afghanistan, and these, Canada Command, Canadian auxiliary commands, and some of the others, are drawing on officers and senior non-commissioned officers to staff these additional headquarters again.

My point is we have become very heavily laden at the top with headquarters, and this is drawing from troops that could be in combat units, in squadrons, and so on and so forth. The time has come again to look at that, and I don't think the Canadian Forces, given the stresses they have, the small size they have, the recruiting and retention problems they have, can continue to maintain National Defence at the size it is at the moment, in addition to all the new headquarters that were created four, five or six years ago--I forget. Some of it will have to be brought down to scale, and just in the transformation, it's one area that we ought to take a look at, as opposed to giving it a pass and accepting it as a fait accompli.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

One final question, and perhaps both of you can weigh in on this if you have a comment. Do you see a role for the Canadian military engaging in perhaps a third kind of activity in peace operations?

You've given the gamut from a constabulary role to the other end being heavy combat. Is there a role, in a military command, for a different approach offered by military people in terms of conflict resolution, the peace-building types of things, working actively with civil society, with conflicting groups, to bring people together and assist in some kind of reconciliation efforts in countries with military conflict, where you're there as soldiers, but you're also there to try to bring people together, as opposed to standing between them or fighting them off? Do you see that as a potential military role for our forces?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Briefly.

[Col (Retired) Michel Drapeau]

The short answer is I don't know, because you're straddling the line between diplomacy and military. If there is a way to do it, why not? If anything can prevent the loss of one soldier, it's worth trying, but I don't know how you would incorporate that within the mandate of a fighting armed forces. If you can, be my guest.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Merci beaucoup. Thank you very much.

Now I will give the floor to Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you both for being here.

First of all, I just want to say that the Canadian Forces, at least in the last couple of years, is exceeding its recruiting objectives, which does present a training challenge, and attrition has decreased.

Professor, you talked about the defence of Canada and aid to the civil power operations coming before deployments to do whatever. Is it not fair to say that aid to the civil power situations can come up very rapidly, and you may not be able to give precedence to that if you're already deployed somewhere?

[Dr. Philippe Lagassé]

I believe that's actually part of the problem. I believe that should the Canadian Forces be deployed after 2011 in a major international operation, and simultaneously a major internal crisis erupts, whether it be environmental consequence management or some other situation where a major Canadian Forces commitment was required instantaneously, and the Canadian Forces were not capable of responding to that in a manner that Canadians expected, the government would be very hard-pressed to explain why that is.

If we think of the military ultimately as an insurance policy, we have to recognize that we need a certain degree of force to be able to deal with any type of event that happens within Canada. Their number one priority should be retained in country to be able to deal with that.

I understand that this really may impede upon our international activism, our ability to deploy forces around the world and to engage in these types of operations, but if we take the policy for what it says, and if we take our commitment to the defence of Canada and Canadians and the peace of the country seriously, as our first priority, then we should retain a sufficient number of forces to be able to undertake those types of operations, regardless of where we are in the world.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I would suggest to you that obviously the Afghanistan operation has taken a lot of resources, but at the same time, we deployed 4,500 people to staff the Olympics. We deployed 2,000 people to Haiti. This is where the reserves come in, obviously. There's a large capacity to do that. It's an insurance policy, yes, but on the other side of that, where does the defence of Canada begin? It doesn't necessarily begin in Canada. It can begin, as it has historically, somewhere else in the world. The insurance policy is not just within our borders. The insurance policy is part of our obligation to the international community to be part of alliances, to be part of the group of countries doing the right thing, I would suggest.

[Dr. Philippe Lagassé]

I would agree with you that a contribution for defence is important. On the other hand, again, stressing the point, what kind of answer would a government give to Canadians if a major crisis or a natural disaster...? We can imagine, for instance, just looking at what's happening off the gulf coast currently in the United States, that if the forces were not in a position to assist coastal communities in Canada in a sufficient manner, and the government's response was that we have international obligations elsewhere, that would not ring very well with Canadians. Simply put, one has to have the ability to respond to these crises, regardless of our foreign security commitments.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

What you're suggesting is that we never deploy around the world, because something big might happen at home. I don't think that's a realistic approach.

[Dr. Philippe Lagassé]

No, that's not what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is--

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

It sounds like it.

[Dr. Philippe Lagassé]

--that we realize that a certain level of our forces are required to be kept in Canada for these types of operations. If we take your government's “Canada First” policy seriously, and if that is going to be the real priority of this government, and if we are to take it at its word, then that should be what the policy actually enacts.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

“Canada First” doesn't necessarily mean just within Canada's borders, though.

I'd like to move on to something else. You talked about not going anywhere unless there was some kind of assurance of success. That's pretty tough to guarantee in anything like some of the operations we've been in. Even a place like Bosnia, which started as peacekeeping, with the blue berets, became quite a lot different. It's hard to have a crystal ball that says this is going to be the case.

Given that, there have been musings about our going to the Congo or Sudan. Where would you put a couple of potential deployments to those kinds of places on that “probability of success” ladder?

[Dr. Philippe Lagassé]

It wouldn't be very high. I would be very loath to deploy the forces without a significant commitment from the international community, and in particular from our larger allies, to those types of missions.

Getting back to this point, I think it's fair to say that we may not have had a crystal ball in 2005 when deciding to go to Kandahar. But I believe the historical records will show that this decision was made somewhat off the cuff and perhaps not with the best understanding of what mission success would entail and what it would look like. Simply wanting to contribute to foreign defence, wanting to have a role in the world, can sometimes get you into a great deal of trouble and into commitments you simply are not prepared to undertake over the long term. That is really the point I'm trying to raise. Our enthusiasm for playing a role in the world should not get ahead of our assessment of what we can actually contribute over the long term.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Yes, and that's a fair point. I think it's also fair to say that even during Korea and the Second World War, there were sizable groups of people in Canada who were dead set against those operations. So I don't think, whatever we do, we're going to have 100% of Canada behind us. There are always going to be people, and in significant numbers, who will probably object.

[Dr. Philippe Lagassé]

I think you're skewing a little bit what I'm trying to get at here. To be frank, I'm not saying that we have to have 100% of the country behind a mission. What I'm simply arguing, on the last point, is that when it comes to national unity, we should not engage in missions that divide the country deeply, either along linguistic lines or regional lines. We should be aware of that fact when deploying, simply put.

Going back to the original point, when there's a major existential crisis, and the survival of the Canadian state or the international order is at stake, then of course a full commitment is to be expected. I don't believe one can necessarily make that same claim about the current operation we're engaged in.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

That's a fair point. Operations evolve, because the enemy has a vote in how they evolve. They don't evolve just because 3% of the forces over there, which is us, want them to evolve a certain way.

I'd like to get your comment on national interests. We mix national interests and values and all that kind of stuff in a little bit of a ball. Can you give us your thoughts on what national interests we should be emphasizing when we go to some place, wherever it is? Peace is an obvious one. That's in everybody's interest. Is it economic? Is it security, and where does security start? I suggest that it starts offshore, not in Canada. What's your view on how we define national interests and values?

[Dr. Philippe Lagassé]

I believe the two major national interests of Canada are our way of life both in terms of values and in terms of our economic prosperity. Can we show a direct link between many of the international operations we've engaged in, in the past, and those values and interests? Yes, we can. On the other hand, there are some of these other operations for which a direct link can't be shown.

In the future, certain operations that I believe we can show demonstrably do contribute to those interests would be first and foremost guarding sea lines of communication, which are vital for our trade and vital for our prosperity as a trading nation, and stability of major regions in which we have an interest, such as Europe, be it eastern or western; less so central Asia—I don't believe one can make a demonstrable link at this point between our major way of life and economic prosperity in that region—and the Pacific region in some areas. We can see that major instability in that area, particularly hostility between some of the greater powers in the region, would directly affect us, but we'd have to measure that at the same time against what we could actually contribute to resolving the situation.

A slight tangent to this would be to ask whether we need to also show a certain degree of camaraderie and a certain degree of solidarity with our major trading partner. Yes, we do. In certain cases it is important to show to the United States that we are a good ally and that we take their security seriously as well. That can often be a justification for contributing Canadian Forces; however, one needs to decide just how many of those forces we contribute and at what cost in order to show that we're a good ally. I'm not quite sure we've made that balance as effectively as we could in Afghanistan.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you.

Monsieur Dosanjh.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

I just have one question. It's interesting that Colonel Drapeau talks about national interest, and you go on to actually somewhat define that national interest in your five or six points at the end, in a direct or indirect way.

I want some clarification. Particularly in points 3 and 4, are you suggesting at all that in Afghanistan we didn't look at those questions properly and went in?

[Dr. Philippe Lagassé]

Yes. I am suggesting that this is one lesson we can learn from Kandahar in particular; that we did not take full account of the regional dynamic when initially committing to Kandahar. We did not consider whether our largest partner in that mission was fully committed to the mission in 2005, given that it was also deployed to another major conflict in the region. We did not really analyze, prior to committing to Kandahar, whether our objectives, such as building the Afghan compact and so forth, were realizable, given our commitment. And we did commit to an open, long-term commitment in a sense, maybe not knowingly, but without recognizing or without negotiating with other NATO allies, prior to that deployment, whether there would be some kind of relève, as it were, after a certain period of time. We put ourselves at a great deal of risk and a great deal of cost.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

I have just one more question, and then my colleague will take over.

In terms of national unity, that point is very important. Obviously, we have historical experiences with respect to the national unity question and war, but can you envisage a peace mission or an Afghanistan-like mission in which we might have the same kinds of divisions that we had historically?