Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning, committee members.
I'd like to start by thanking you for the invitation to discuss the Canadian Forces' readiness from my perspective as the national president of the Union of National Defence Employees. I look forward to answering your questions in the short time we will have following my comments.
During the course of these committee hearings, you have heard from many witnesses, including the Chief of Defence Staff, General Natynczyk. They have all agreed with his assessment that readiness is the ability to get the right people with the right skills and the right equipment to the right place at the right time, and to sustain that for as long as is required.
As the president of the Union of National Defence Employees, I am well placed to speak to that ability. We have a membership of over 17,000 employees who work in a wide range of occupations, which includes the skilled trades, mechanics, electricians, firefighters, safety inspectors, technologists, linguists, and intelligence officers. My membership is key to, and indeed proud to be a part of, the Canadian national defence team. In every case, from keeping the lights on to providing critical intelligence, each employee provides an important function that supports the Canadian Forces.
Ultimately it is my duty to consider not only how this period of transition impacts operational readiness, but also how it simultaneously impacts both our workplace and our people, with an eye to the government's current fiscal situation. All of this must be considered concurrently with the unique work of the Department of National Defence. In other words, fiscal interests and the costs must be balanced with sound national security. Recent developments have created a more independent cryptographic agency, CSEC, or Communications Security Establishment Canada, which is responsible for providing the government with foreign signal intelligence and is trusted with the protection of electronic information and communication.
We cannot do either of these tasks that are critical to our national security if contracting out infrastructure destroys our confidence. Across almost every line of work, from the skilled trades to the linguistic services, security is a factor. These unique considerations make an integrated work environment essential to effective operational security. Accountability and transparent practices are essential if we are to get value for our money, and staffing and contracting practices must be more sound today than ever before. Further, wages paid to our employees must be competitive in order to keep them employed in the public sector.
In addition, now that the first wave of the source contract projects for P3, public-private partnerships, are coming of age, evidence is showing that the cost savings originally anticipated are falling well short of initial targets. Why should we let contractors perform real property and contract administration functions at bases, for example, at premium when it is clear that there is expertise available to perform those duties in-house? It amounts to double-billing the Canadian taxpayers.
As Minister MacKay said over the weekend, speaking from the recent NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels:
“All of the buzzwords—streamlining, efficiencies—are very much being heard in the halls of NATO as they're being bantered around in the halls of Ottawa,”.... “Everyone is talking more about partnerships, talking about what has been deemed smart defence. And smart defence means insuring that we're not duplicating efforts, that there aren't redundancies.”
As we move through this period of transition while simultaneously undergoing strategic review, it will be essential to review local practices closely and, where appropriate, to identify areas for review and audit.
This brings me to the systemic issues that the union has seen emerge over the course of the last five years with Defence Construction Canada, DCC. As a result, over the past nine months we have undertaken a review of Defence Construction Canada and the impact it has had on construction engineering work sites at bases across Canada.
Our undertaking has discovered some very harmful evidence pointing to poor quality workmanship allowed by DCC: the duplication of services DCC provides, already being performed by public sector employees; the questionable application of the Financial Administration Act; the amount of wasteful spending of Canadian taxpayer dollars; and how DCC is becoming a shadow public service.
We have provided this committee with our executive summary of these highlighted issues. During these hearings we are prepared to provide what we have collected to support our findings by producing invoices, photographs, and information from our members on what I've just described. In doing this, just to be clear, it is not that we haven't proactively approached the department at the most senior and working levels, on many occasions in official and non-official forums, by addressing the path and the growth of Defence Construction Canada, which is documented.
These issues have not been given the full serious consideration of what would be expected to be true accountability. Most recently, we challenged why one part of the department is allowed to grow, meaning Defence Construction Canada, and the other part of the department is asked to do some belt-tightening, forcing resource cuts, with no business case to support it.
It is at this juncture that we are calling for a complete forensic audit by an outside, independent organization. Ultimately, we clearly understand that how much we invest in the future operational readiness must necessarily take into account how much we've already invested in the people and the specific skills they possess. While efficiencies must be found and difficult decisions made, it should not be at the expense of the hard-earned skill innovation.
To conclude, throughout this phase of hearings, we have heard from stakeholders who have described what readiness looks like overall as we transition from a high operational tempo to a post-Afghanistan context. We can agree that the priorities have and will continue to change significantly over the coming months and years.
Mr. Chair, I have no doubt that we are capable of balancing resource management with the need to deliver sound support to the Canadian Forces, and I thank you very much for this audience.
With me today, I have Tim McGrath, who we've retained as a subject-matter expert in real property work.
We look forward to your questions. Thank you very much.
