Evidence of meeting #19 for Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was training.
A recording is available from Parliament.
December 1st, 2010 / 4:45 p.m.
Geoff Poapst Principal, IPA Group
Some people say it means India Pale Ale.
4:45 p.m.
Bloc
Claude Bachand Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
This afternoon, I surfed on Internet but I could not find anything about your company. How come? Don't you have a Web site? The only thing I found was this quotation by the honorable Peter McKay:
“Winning the war in Afghanistan is not simply a matter of military might. It's going to require obviously an effort to build the capacity of the Afghan government to deliver more for their people.”
How come...?
4:45 p.m.
Principal, IPA Group
We do not have a Web site because it is very expensive. There are only the two of us, and up to now, we focused exclusively on the development of training programs. It is as simple as that.
4:45 p.m.
Bloc
Claude Bachand Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Did you say earlier that you had trained 500 people in Afghanistan for $2,500 per participant?
4:45 p.m.
Principal, IPA Group
Roughly, yes. This amount does not include security and transport costs, but does include program development and delivery.
4:45 p.m.
Bloc
Claude Bachand Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
I must tell you that, in my opinion, your references are not that good. You mention NDS and Mr. Duke. However we all know what he thinks of the courts, and the total discretion he is asking for CSIS. I have a lot of misgivings about these two people.
You say you want to give management training courses. How do you see 950 military people training Afghan forces? Would you want to be involved? How would you want to proceed?
4:45 p.m.
Principal, IPA Group
We work primarily with NDS, our colleagues in Washington and the national police, but not really with the armed forces. However it is possible that this kind of training has already started with our forces and others.
4:45 p.m.
Principal, IPA Group
May I add to that?
I think one of the things we have seen in Afghanistan is that the train-the-trainer idea has not been very well developed. We have seen a lot of mentoring activities. We have, in fact, tried to encourage NDS people to be properly trained to deliver training programs.
Our view is that we have a fully developed train-the-trainer program that we have delivered successfully in North America, and we would like to see that train-the-trainer model using the methodology we spoke about in our remarks, and use that methodology because we think it's more effective. If that methodology were being employed by the military, we think that would turn the military into more effective trainers than might otherwise be the case.
4:45 p.m.
Bloc
Claude Bachand Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Mr. Luxton, you say in your document that there are critical shortfalls in NATO Counter-IED resources.
Could you please briefly describe these shortfalls?
4:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Allen Vanguard Corporation
With your permission, I will answer your question in English. Like my colleague, I speak French like a street hockey player.
The reference, of course, is to NATO's capability in gaps and helping to build up indigenous capability in counter-IEDs. NATO is highly attuned to the need to do this. NATO has a vision that this should proceed. There are gaps, significant gaps, in its ability to resource it, which NATO, I believe, is addressing. And of course with that, there are very significant gaps in the current state of indigenous capability in countering IEDs.
So this is where in fact we are hopeful that Allen Vanguard may, in the near future, be actually playing a strategic role to start that first important part of the process, which is to develop a strategy by providing advisory assistance in this regard to the Afghan government and to then be developing a comprehensive plan for how to build up this capability, to mentor the senior officers from the Afghan security institutions that would then become the nucleus for a national counter-IED capability. From there, it would roll out the program of equipping and training specialized units that would, in total, provide a collective and effective capability against IEDs.
4:50 p.m.
Bloc
Claude Bachand Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
When you talk about the Allied Command Transformation, training and doctrine, are you talking about the institution in Norfolk?
4:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Allen Vanguard Corporation
It is the combination of NATO, ISAF, NTMA—I'm assuming you're familiar with these organizations. Allied Command Transformation may turn out to have a role to play in that, because—
4:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Allen Vanguard Corporation
They are out of Norfolk, yes.
4:50 p.m.
Bloc
Claude Bachand Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
Finally, you stress the need to be able to collect and handle intelligence data. This is usually a function of the military. Do you see a kind of cooperation with the armed forces, so that they would give you any intelligence data they have collected?
This is really very important, because people often know where the IEDs are, and military officers can handle this data. Would that be a problem if military officers gave this information to a private corporation supporting them in their counter-IED efforts?
4:50 p.m.
President and Chief Executive Officer, Allen Vanguard Corporation
The role of the private corporation here, as it's normally played in this kind of security capacity-building, is not to be handling intelligence or doing the counter-IED; it's to be providing the plans, the framework, the training, and the equipment to build up that capability. This would be a joint agency capability, as they conceive it, and intelligence information would be passed between those agencies, not to a private company.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
We're going to have to leave it there. Thank you very much.
We'll now go over to the government side.
Mr. Hawn.
4:50 p.m.
Conservative
Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB
Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll be sharing my time with Mr. Dechert, given the short time that we've got left.
Mr. Inns, we talk about concentrating the NDS, and you have experience with the NDS. We did hear a comment in June, when we were in Afghanistan, from Nadir Nadiri, who is the head of the Afghan independent human rights commission, about how much improved NDS was.
Do you have enough experience with the NDS yourself to give an assessment of that from when you started to when you finished or what you're aware of?