National Defence Committee on March 6th, 2012

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Time has expired.

Moving on, Mr. Kellway, you have the floor.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses today.

I'd like to try to take advantage of the fact that we have a historian here with us today and ask a couple of questions.

Admiral Murray, you gave us what I guess one would call a “doctrinally sound” presentation on the issue of readiness, and you talked about the issue of balance. It seems to me that when you go through the six missions set out in the Canada First defence policy, the issue of balance really comes up when you look at numbers five and six. In terms of this discussion of readiness, they seem to be the flies in the ointment here. How do we deal with those missions in terms of readiness?

Your discussion of balance seems to assume, and my own perception is that we keep coming up against this in the discussions, that our history is going to repeat itself, that we've been in Afghanistan for ten-plus years, training. So in terms of readiness, our balance has to anticipate that we will have another Afghanistan and have to be able to fight another mission of that nature.

My question to you, to start, Professor Windsor, is how do we use history to inform what we can anticipate in the future? Is there, in your view, any inevitability to having to be ready for another Afghanistan or another major international operation requiring boots on the ground and a very significant army, for example? Or are there lessons we can learn from that history that may inform a different perspective on the issue of balance of forces, for example?

[Dr. Lee Windsor]

That's a difficult question.

I would suggest to you that we would not be well served—this is the kind of question that military historians tackle regularly—by preparing for a last mission. That's not really what this discipline is about.

But we can find examples of...and let's take the case study of Afghanistan as an example.

There is nothing in the Canadian mission in Kandahar that had not been experienced in some form by the Canadian Forces at some time in the past, and therefore new institutions and capabilities and ideas had to be created when in fact they previously existed.

I'll just give you the quick example, from a project we're working on right now, of the Allied invasion of Sicily. The armed forces are trying to effect or influence a diplomatic negotiation against an opposing force, the Italian government, and therefore military operations must be waged with an eye to influencing a diplomatic process. The landscape must be reconstructed in order to pacify the population and bring them onside to the Allied cause, and therefore reconstruction forces are part of the fighting forces and integrated fully into them...as well as fighting a high-intensity war against an army that was attempting to use improvised explosive devices to stop you from moving in the mountains that looked strangely like Afghanistan.

You can find whatever you need in history to serve as a training tool, but you should not use the example of Afghanistan to suggest that whatever happens next will look exactly like that. If there's a lesson from both—the Second World War experience in Sicily and Afghanistan—it's that there's a common set of principles you can train for that by and large the Canadian Forces are in agreement with alongside our NATO partners.

If you train for the worst-case scenario, you are capable of fulfilling any mission required of you lesser than war.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you.

Admiral Murray, if you accept Dr. Windsor's premise here that the principles may remain the same and almost, I guess, unchangeable, at least in recent history, but that the conflict won't actually look the same, does that impact your perspective on the balance issue you talked about?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I would ask that you keep your response very short, please.

[VAdm Larry Murray]

We're in Afghanistan and we find ourselves, thankfully, having C-17s and ships and sending them to Haiti within a couple of days. We're in Afghanistan, where we find ourselves not just involved in a NATO operation in Libya but commanding it, which means a significantly enhanced profile to a very challenging mission. In both those cases, I would say we had enhanced—for reasons that I suggested in my comments, or hadn't shortchanged it, to put it differently—the army combat arms, the air force helicopter, and other things we needed in Afghanistan. But we had the wisdom as a country not to reduce the readiness in the navy and the air force to a level that would have precluded the Government of Canada from being able to respond to those other missions.

I would say it's an art, not a science. I would also say that the whole special forces side of the piece is new and evolving, from a Canadian context anyway, on the joint side. I would fundamentally argue for balance.

I don't think this is what the professor is saying, but I also would not sign up to train for World War III and say you'll be ready for Afghanistan. I'm not sure that's what he's saying. I think to some extent we scrambled coming out of the Cold War end and we found ourselves in the Gulf War and then in a whole bunch of things. We were really scrambling, and the rules of engagement hadn't been evolved. The UN was in mission creep, and all that kind of stuff. To some extent, part of the challenge we faced is that we had a navy, army, and air force that had training for World War III, if I can put it that way, in terms of the Cold War, trying to adjust to all these evolving things.

So you have to be combat capable, but to me that's not the same as saying we're going to train for a World War III scenario because a counter-insurgency operation like Afghanistan is quite different. You need to be able to fight, but you also need to bring those other attributes to the table, and you've got to understand the culture of the place and a whole bunch of other things.

I'll stop there. It was a really good question, actually.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thanks. That's not what I had in mind when I said short response, but....

Mr. Strahl, you have the floor.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Following on the issue of training and what we should be training for, the committee had the opportunity to travel to CMTC and to CFB Vegreville to see and actually participate to some extent in some training manoeuvres there. One of the things they were training for...they were doing some counter-insurgency work. They were also training for a near-peer combat and more conventional warfare.

I have a two-part question. To determine readiness, we are also trying to determine what the threats are that Canada may face. So using history as a guide or experience, what do you see as the threats facing Canada and our interests in the next five or ten years? In terms of the training, do we need to try to be predictive in determining what sort of training we need, or do we need to train people to make good decisions no matter what they're faced with? Do we need to focus on specific scenarios or on specific types of training that will allow Canadian Forces personnel to be flexible to face whatever comes their way?

[VAdm Larry Murray]

I'll start with the third question.

Absolutely, we have to have professional navy, army, air force training, joint training and all of that. But at the end of the day, what's most important is that you have people who are comfortable, capable, well educated, and able to take those decisions on their feet that they have to take. This is why professional development and education and creating an atmosphere and leadership approach within the organization....

I think my observation would be that it currently exists big time right now. Leaders are comfortable that if they take the decision at a roadblock, and it's a reasonable decision but it doesn't work out exactly the way the CBC evening news might show it, they will be supported by the chain of command, and at the end of the day they'll be supported by Canadians who have confidence in the Canadian Forces.

So you've got to have that ability to think on your feet. But they've got to have the confidence that if they make the right, credible, moral, professional, and ethical decision and that decision goes south, they're going to be supported by the chain of command.

[Dr. Lee Windsor]

I think what you're suggesting already exists in both elements. The Canadian Forces, all three branches, and SOF operators already train to anticipate what might happen next.

They're able to do this because they have a well-educated leadership structure, well-educated leaders at all levels. They're familiar with international relations; they're familiar with the world that's unfolding around us. They can anticipate. They talk in the mess on Friday afternoon after work about what's probably coming next. It's an issue that they're always engaged in, and they bring that kind of sophistication in their understanding of the world to all of their training in innovative ways, as they always have done for over a hundred years.

[VAdm Larry Murray]

Can I just say something, since I'm allowed to be subjective and I'm no longer...?

I would also say there's something fundamentally inherently Canadian about it. I think it's to do with our education system before people are in the forces. I've now served in a lot of different places with a lot of different folks, and fundamentally Canadians are different, and they do bring a certain something to the table that really does matter, and thankfully the Canadian Forces builds on that. But I think it's education, it's training, it's the foundation of what is your ethical base, and it's perhaps the nature of this country and how we find balance. I'm not sure.

[Dr. Lee Windsor]

If I can just hot pursue that with one observation on what we've seen over the years at the University of New Brunswick, the Canadian Forces are a reflection of our multicultural society, and they are inherently more sensitive to those cultural differences that define the new kind of stability-building and counter-insurgency operation of the last 20 years.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, NDP, David Christopherson]

Thank you.

Over to Mr. Brahmi. You have the floor, sir.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Windsor, when you decided to publish your book, there was a lot of criticism based on the fact it was not impartial since you were receiving funds mainly from the Canadian government, specifically the Department of National Defence.

Since a major part of your funding comes from the government, how can you have an objective approach? How do you balance your funding so that you can maintain some objectiveness?

[Dr. Lee Windsor]

I didn't anticipate having my credibility questioned.

What you're speaking about is the now defunct Security and Defence Forum program that has existed since 1971, whereby the Department of National Defence provided research grant funding to universities across Canada to conduct research on matters related to national defence, including military history. That program, when it was conceived of and established in 1971, and throughout its 40 years of existence, has had as its foundational principle the idea that it would not be directed research, research directed by the Government of Canada to support the Government of Canada. Indeed I would put to you that a great number of the most vocal critics of government defence and foreign policy have been those scholars who come from the various centres—now called the Security and Defence Forum centres across Canada—funded by that pool of grant funding.

Therefore, no one asked the Gregg Centre to conduct that study of Task Force 1-07. Nobody told me to go to Afghanistan. Nobody from Ottawa told us what to include as the findings of that book. We undertook it as an independent scholarly exercise, and I suppose some of the critique came from a rather...the book had some harsh words for the Canadian media about the situation in Afghanistan between 2006 and 2007. One bad review came out from a media person, who was arguably offended by that hard line against the media, and the review stuck.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

One of the things that was criticized was your optimism in your analysis of the number of Canadian soldiers who were killed. We noted that this number increased over the years, until 2011, with a peak in 2010, I think. That was more or less criticized. Some people didn't agree with your optimism about a situation that was worsening every year.

[Dr. Lee Windsor]

Might I ask, sir, have you read the review?

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

No, this is not a question about the book review. If we look at the number of Canadian casualties over the years, we see it has increased, but you did not elaborate too much upon that when you described the situation in Afghanistan.

[Dr. Lee Windsor]

Have you read the book, sir?

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

No, unfortunately, I haven't had the time to read it.

[Dr. Lee Windsor]

This is my point in asking if you have read the review or if you have read the book. The reviewer had not read the book. Had you read the study—

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

My question is this: how do you evaluate the Canadian Forces performance in Afghanistan? Do you think the number of casualties is higher because the resources have been allocated elsewhere? Why did the number of casualties increase? Is it because we moved some forces to Kandahar, which is a more dangerous area, or is it because Afghan resistance was becoming more and more organized?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. Brahmi, your time is up.

May we have a short response, if possible, Professor Windsor.

[Dr. Lee Windsor]

That's going to be a difficult short response.

I would suggest to you that the shortest answer I can offer, because we have done follow-on work, is that I think everyone concerned with the mission was optimistic in 2006 and 2007. In 2008 we saw an enemy response to the way in which Canada, NATO, and the United Nations were delivering effects and operations in Kandahar. In particular, the nature of providing reconstruction assistance across a broad swath of Kandahar without securing the areas that were being reconstructed meant that the opposing force murdered the people whom we had assisted.

The Canadian Forces then became embroiled in a campaign to try to protect the wide array of people across southern Afghanistan whom the Canadian government had engaged in reconstruction tasks with. The rest is history. We're all familiar with the series of small battles that raged across the province. I don't think anybody anticipated that. It certainly was news that was greeted with a very heavy heart, as I lost friends in that timeframe.

I would suggest to you again that we were—I've said enough.