National Defence Committee on Oct. 21st, 2014

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Could you provide us with the estimate made before the mission began?

[MGen Michael Hood]

No, the chief financial officer is responsible for that, not me.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you.

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

You have 10 seconds.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you very much, Ms. Michaud.

Mr. Williamson, go ahead, please.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Gentlemen, it's good to see you both here today. Thank you for joining us.

Today it seems there's been, at least from my reading and what I've been following, a lot of information on the army side and that of the air force. While I'm well aware, and I think Canadians are, of the contribution of the Royal Canadian Navy, I'm curious to know what other ally naval ships are in the region as well. Are we coordinating with them? Or is the water area sufficiently large that we're all just doing our own thing.

[MGen Michael Hood]

There are a number of standing NATO groups: there are some in mine countermeasures, and there's the one that we're in. The ships that are within it vary from time to time. We've been operating very closely with a Spanish ship, for example, which came under Canadian command while we were in the Black Sea. But on any given day those ships quite accurately represent the makeup of NATO, more or less, in and among the four groups. So it depends on the given day. They're able to flow in and out of the group as a national contribution as they see fit.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

But can you ballpark it? What kind of numbers are you looking at? Is it a dozen at the low end and two dozen at the high end? What's the sense? You're able to give specifics in terms of troops, but what is it in terms of ships and the assets we're seeing there?

[MGen Michael Hood]

If I look at the four standing groups, at one point I would have counted roughly 30 ships in total. But they vary. When you talk about mine countermeasures, there are quite smaller platforms up to larger frigates that we have. In the standing group that we've been in, it has varied from two to three ships over the length of our contribution.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Okay, thank you.

On the flip side, what's the capability of the Russian fleet in the area, and how active is it?

[RAdm Gilles Couturier]

The Russia fleet has some ships that are capable. We've seen them in operation and we've watched them from the result of their various missile shoot exercises. They are used to operating on their own, so if you compare that to what we're doing in NATO...and that's again one of the strengths. We've operated with the Brits, the Spanish, as you just heard, and even operated sometimes with the French and the Portugese. We have an ability there to act in a different way based on the interoperability that we develop. But basically on the Russian ships, they have capable ships around and we are certainly capable of handling our own part in the region.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Very good, thank you.

Look, often in this kind of coordination we focus on the big assets, but one of the questions I have is about communications just between the various coordinating parties in terms of not just language but the various nets. How are we communicating with our allies in a way that there's confidence that their communication isn't being picked up by the Russians, or by other entities? Are you satisfied that the level of communication has been adequate and things are running smoothly at that level?

[MGen Michael Hood]

NATO works under some principles of common capability and common operating procedures, but you need to recognize that for some of the newer NATO countries certainly, they're in transition from primarily Soviet Bloc infrastructure and slowly making the investments to come up to a NATO standard. That's why we talked about Romanian fighter aircraft, for example, as one indication.

But with respect to command and control and the operational backbone of NATO, we don't see any shortcomings, if I understand the intent of your question. We think it's quite effective and certainly would hold us up in peacetime as well as wartime.

[John Williamson, Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Right. But on that, what have been some of the challenges when you're dealing with some of these former Soviet Bloc countries? That's whom we're operating out of right now. Has that been a challenge? Are we recognizing deficiencies that have to be addressed, or...?

[MGen Michael Hood]

Certainly one of the areas that Canada offers a lot of training in is languages, through our military training cooperation program. At senior levels in many of the new NATO countries, English is spoken quite well and widely, but sometimes if you had been down at the tactical level, I would expect some of our soldiers would have been interacting with Polish soldiers, some of whom would not have spoken a lot of English.

There are some practical challenges with that, but these are starting to reduce over time as the capability of those nations increases, and the operating language of NATO certainly is English.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you, Mr. Williamson.

Mr. Harris.

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

Thank you, Chair.

First of all, I want to reiterate for the record what my colleague Madame Michaud just said, that the official opposition fully supports Operation Reassurance as part of our commitment to our NATO allies, and we're very happy to report here today.

Does Operation Reassurance end when the aircraft return home after the Baltic air policing? Is that the timeline we're dealing with, General Hood?

[MGen Michael Hood]

There are a couple of facets there, sir. One is that I spoke of the readiness action plan and the subsequent steps that NATO is initiating, as agreed to at the Wales Summit. This speaks to an enduring presence both from a command and control capacity—so involving some headquarters input, as well as elements that are going to continue this training mission.

With respect to Canada's contributions, we're in the process right now of offering recommendations of a possible continuation of that. The F-18 mission, however, will end at the end of the Baltic air policing.

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

I'm referring to the so-called Operation Reassurance, that mission. Will that end? I ask because those elements would include, I presume, the various training activities, the military, the vessel in the Baltic, and I suppose the planners who were sent initially. As I remember, some planners were sent to Brussels. Is all that part of Operation Reassurance and will all that come to an end at the end of the year?

[MGen Michael Hood]

As I mentioned, certainly the operational planners have returned home. They had gone and helped NATO with a lot of this readiness action plan work that has been going on, and working on a number of contingency plans. So that work has ceased.

The Baltic air policing mission will cease. The ship is forecast to continue to stay beyond the end of the year. And on the army element, we're looking at an exercise schedule and offering options for the minister to continue. So I can't speak much beyond December 31 at this point.

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

Thank you.

You told us that the CFO is in charge of all the money, but I have to raise the point of the budgetary implications of this. I have to assume that being in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean and in Europe for this length of time has cost a significant amount of money over and above the normal NATO participation costs. You're talking here about, as you say, evaluating what we might contribute in the future.

With all of the concern that we hear from time to time from your various colleagues about the ability to maintain readiness in the current budget circumstances, is there going to be a need for additional moneys in your defence budget to look after the cost of this particular mission and the cost of our mission in Iraq, and the other activities that might be contemplated here?

[MGen Michael Hood]

Sir, much like the time we were talking about the Philippines, as you'll recall, I'd have to defer the discussion around that to colleagues from the ADM Fin CS, and the CFO. Quite frankly, it's not part of my portfolio to manage the resources of the department, and I certainly have not been constrained in the types of elements that we bring forward to this point.

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

We'll have to maybe get somebody else to come to tell us about that.

Thank you, General.

I have one other question. Interoperability is an interesting matter that we talk about that from time to time here at this committee. One of the groups you worked with was the Romanian air force, which operates, I think, the MiG-21, and you've operated with all these other aircraft as well.

Interoperability, I guess, is more than having the same aircraft as the others; it's about being able to work together. Did you find that's something you could do? Obviously, they learned from you and you learned from them about how they operate and how those planes work. Was that a success with all these groups?

[MGen Michael Hood]

I'll talk to the Romanian piece right now specifically. Having spent almost four months operating with them and having the opportunity to do everything from basic fighter manoeuvres through different scenarios, we certainly found a very willing NATO partner in this.

There are varying capabilities in aircraft. There is always a certain amount of asymmetry as it relates to aircraft capability, but certainly Romania was proving itself to be a very capable partner, and I think we both benefited from that experience.

On the Baltic air policing mission, working with the Portuguese, which we have done for a number of years as part of NATO, it's quite a bit more seamless with the traditional NATO allies like them.