Government Operations Committee on Feb. 15th, 2022

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Could I ask one question related to the shipyards? I think we're all very interested in the qualification of the Davie shipyard in Quebec as the third official shipyard. My question is, will the the addition of the third official shipyard help with delays and scheduling risks?

I believe you mentioned that the government has implemented lessons learned from the past in bringing on the third shipyard under the national shipbuilding strategy. What lessons specifically do you think should be used to help draft the umbrella agreement for the third shipyard?

[Andrew Hayes]

At this point, I don't know exactly what the status of bringing Davie on is. I know that at the time of our audit they were in negotiations about the umbrella agreement.

With respect to the umbrella agreement, one of the most important pieces from our perspective is the idea of “target state”: reaching target state to be able to produce the ships according to the time frames and requirements that are outlined.

At this point, one of the recommendations we made was to learn from the previous experiences with the shipbuilding strategy to date, and from that perspective, we would expect that the departments have taken on the information about how to approach reaching target state and the reasonable amount of time that would take for a shipyard, also so that they can plan ahead to when those ships can be delivered in a reasonable time frame.

[Anthony Housefather, Liberal, Mount Royal, QC]

Thanks very much.

I assume that my time is close to ending, so let me thank both of you again for your work on both of these reports and all that you do.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you, Mr. Housefather.

We'll now go to Ms. Vignola for six minutes.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Hayes and Mr. Swales, thank you for being with us this afternoon.

I have read your reports on military procurement, aviation and shipbuilding. I had to wonder, have we had nothing but armed forces in this country for the past 15 years? I got the impression that we've had little planning, few monitoring structures, little procurement and little construction, or perhaps we didn't know where we were at or where we were going. I'm making a general observation.

With respect to the Air Force, you mentioned that we have more pilots retiring than new pilots in training, and as stated earlier, only 64% of pilots at National Defence are qualified to fly the CF‑18.

To your knowledge, has the situation changed at all? Has it gotten better or worse?

[Andrew Hayes]

I will start answering, but I will ask Mr. Swales to finish off.

We have no information on the status of pilots in the Armed Forces.

[Nicholas Swales]

I would add that in this year's annual performance report for the Department of National Defence, you can see that they are short-staffed in half of the military roles. It doesn't identify which roles, but pilot is likely one of them. We still don't have enough pilots.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Okay.

One might assume from this report that the situation has worsened. It's getting worse, but now they want to buy 80 new aircraft. If there are not enough pilots, that means there are not enough pilots to train the new pilots. That's a major cause for concern.

In your recommendation for the Air Force, you suggest introducing recruitment and retention strategies. The department responded that they have a fighter sustainment renewal initiative that would bring in 200 technicians. As part of its defence policy for Canada, it wants to create 200 pilot positions. That's my understanding.

In your opinion, if the department achieves this goal of 200 new technicians and 200 new pilots, will that be enough to meet operational requirements and international commitments?

[Andrew Hayes]

I think it's hard to say if that will be enough. There's also the cold, hard fact that the aircraft will be even older.

Mr. Swales, do you have anything to add?

[Nicholas Swales]

I would point out that it depends on how many losses are incurred in the interim. We do not know that right now. Those two figures need to be correlated.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

In your report, you mention the hours required to maintain the aircraft, 24 hours of maintenance for each hour of flight time.

Do you know if the number of hours has increased?

[Andrew Hayes]

I don't know if that number has already gone up, but maintenance could take longer as the aircraft age.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

All right.

In the same report, you recommend that National Defence analyze improvements to be made to the CF‑18s to ensure operational relevance through 2032. National Defence responded that the analysis would be completed in 2019.

Have you followed up on the analysis? What were the results?

[Andrew Hayes]

We haven't followed up on that analysis, but we plan to in the future.

[Julie Vignola, Bloc, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Okay.

We learned recently that the government had initiated a competition to procure armed drones, to be based in Nova Scotia and British Columbia. Two hundred and forty Royal Canadian Air Force staff will be needed to operate these drones.

If we add to this the current and emerging aircraft requirements, is it realistic to make these purchases without ensuring we have the human resources needed?

[Andrew Hayes]

I would ask Mr. Swales to respond, as I don't know the details about this.

[Nicholas Swales]

This is not just an Air Force issue. From that perspective, it is more of a challenge for the military in general, whether they have enough personnel to run various programs and take care of equipment.

As I said, certainly, based on the public performance report, there is cause for concern about the number of personnel the military has in general, as well as the degree to which personnel are trained.

[The Chair, Conservative, Robert Gordon Kitchen]

Thank you.

We'll now go to Mr. Johns, for six minutes.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Thank you both for your testimony. I really appreciate having you here.

I'm going to follow the same thread of questioning as Mr. Paul-Hus and Mrs. Vignola.

With regard to the personnel shortages, can you talk a bit about our failure to recruit? Do you have any idea what other countries have done to ensure they have capacity or number of personnel? Where are we falling short?

Obviously, human resources is a big issue, crossing all sectors of society right now, but what are the barriers? Is it compensation, is it the work environment? Can you cite some of those things that might have been identified and you noticed while you were doing your research?

[Andrew Hayes]

It is important to recognize that the information we have in this report is a few years old. There have been developments along the way. Basically, the COVID-19 pandemic created some changes in the industries that could contribute in some ways or others to technicians or pilots being available. However, at this point, I don't know what has actually transpired at National Defence.

As was brought up in a previous question, there can be a number of factors, including the attraction of working on new equipment instead of old equipment, but then again, I am only speculating at this point.

Mr. Swales, do you have anything you might add to that?

[Nicholas Swales]

No, we haven't looked at what other countries may have done by way of special recruiting strategies.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Are there barriers that you can identify that are notable?

[Nicholas Swales]

The last work we did on this in any depth was our 2016 audit of recruitment, and we raised a number of issues then about whether the recruiting personnel were providing the fulsome exposure to the different options available, and also whether some of the issues around training times would have perhaps discouraged people from wanting to join. Those are some of the issues we raised back in 2016.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

I'm just going to stay on that HR issue, because I know that it's a DND issue generally, and especially with shipbuilding. Given the number of civilian workers at the Department of National Defence, how much has the contracting out of defence work contributed to the delays? In other words, how much of the delay is due to hiring temporary workers and contract workers as opposed to having a properly staffed public service?

[Andrew Hayes]

I don't know if we can say that we looked carefully at that element in the contracting out of staff.

Mr. Swales, would you like to answer that?