National Defence Committee on Oct. 18th, 2006

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

General Hillier, you don't recall ever—?

[Gen R.J. Hillier]

Mr. Hawn, I do recall: I've never sent such a memo. Not only that; I can categorically say that we don't have 1,200 to 1,600 troops. I just went through the greatly detailed process of what we're doing to make sure we can pragmatically, with common sense, handle the demands of the mission in Afghanistan, and that leaves no room for a significant mission elsewhere—at all.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Okay, good.

This is for both of you gentlemen.

Is there one thing more important than all others to ensure the long-term future of the Canadian Forces? .

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Is there one thing more important than the other to ensure the success of Canadian troops?

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

In the long term, beyond the mission: the long-term future of the Canadian Forces.

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

For the long-term future of the Canadian Forces, I believe it is a coherent plan and the money to implement the plan. The Canadian Forces need long-term investment. For many years they were underfunded, and this has basically hollowed out the military. The CDS was alluding to the fact that sometimes when they want to put infantry companies together, they've got to get two and put them together.

We're got a great re-equipment challenge, and we have a manpower challenge to increase the size of the forces. It will take a long time and a lot of money for Canada to have the very effective armed force that it deserves as a G8 country.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Sorry, I didn't mean to surprise you with my French.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

You caught us all a little by surprise there.

Ms. Bennett will end the second round. You have five minutes.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you very much.

I think you know that Canadians still aren't sure about what we're doing there and how it seems the nature of our assignment has changed, particularly around the three Ds. I want to know if there is a plan to engage Canadians in the decisions that need to be taken in terms of how much of it is development, how much is....

We thought we were there to protect the schools, yet hundreds of schools are still being blown up. We seem to be doing something other than what we thought we were there for. That would be my first question. How do you, as a government, make a decision as to whether you spend more on the military or more on development? How will Canadians be involved in that decision?

Second, I want to know if every soldier is tested for PTSD on return, and are they treated and looked after before they are even considered for redeployment there?

Third, General Hillier had asked...in terms of looking after the soldiers, I understand that soldiers are treated on the base, but families are waiting two years to get a family doctor in town. You are still not treating families as families. In situations like PTSD you are at a huge risk of domestic violence, and it seems extraordinarily unsupportive of our troops for us not to be able to treat our military families as families.

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

I'll try to answer as quickly as possible.

There is actually no change in the plan. It is actually the same task and the same original plan to which the previous government committed the troops in Kandahar. What has happened is that the intensity of the insurgency has increased over the last few months. As the insurgency increases, we have to react with more and more military operations to suppress it.

In the increases we're putting over there, you'll notice that we're not only increasing our capability to carry out military operations, combat operations, but we're also putting resources in there to make sure our development succeeds. We haven't lost the focus that we have to develop and suppress the insurgency at the same time; it's just that the challenge right now is that there is a pulse, an increase, in the insurgency. As that insurgency comes under control and is suppressed, we can put ever-increasing effort on development. Right now we are definitely oriented to developing--to get projects going, to get success there. One of the examples you see in the press; as I said, we had six soldiers killed trying to build a road.

I'll have CDS speak to this in more detail, but all our returning soldiers receive careful assessment of their situation, both from a physical and medical point of view and from a psychological point of view.

With respect to family doctors, I'll put it this way: officially the Canadian Forces and the Government of Canada are not responsible for providing medical care to families, except in isolated areas. The sole responsibility of the Department of National Defence is to provide medical care to their soldiers, sailors, airmen, and airwomen, but the Canadian Forces have been moving as quickly as possible in their family support centres, certainly in the areas that are not in major urban areas, to try to make some arrangements with the local people to try to get the doctors there to give some care.

An example is Petawawa. If you go up to Petawawa, which is not a big town, they themselves in Petawawa have a shortage of doctors, but the local family centre and the local town have made some arrangement whereby they hire doctors on a part-time basis to provide care to the families. But--how will I put it?--this is not a prime responsibility of the federal government.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

That's no way to treat the families. You can't do family medicine without seeing the whole family.

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

I'm just saying that may be so, and we're trying to do the best we can, but except in isolated areas, we cannot commit Canadian Forces--

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Why? I thought you wanted to support the troops.

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Because you are now getting into constitutional issues. The provinces deliver medical help, and you're a doctor, you should know--

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

I know that the troops are not being treated well. Some of them are on two-year waiting lists, Mr. Minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

The time has expired, Mr. Minister, I'm sorry.

The time has expired, but if the CDS wants to jump in on that issue with someone else, that's fine.

That ends our second round. When we get into our third round, we have 20 minutes left and we have five-minute spots. How it will proceed will be as pre-organized--the Liberal Party and back to the government, over to the Bloc, and then back to the government, and that'll bring us almost to the end.

[Carolyn Bennett, Liberal, St. Paul's, ON]

Surely I can get one little question in, Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Well, you're way down the list here, and if everybody gives up a little bit of their time we can, but....

It starts with Mr. Dosanjh, and then back to Ms. Gallant, for five minutes.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Mr. Minister, I just want to put on the record that I actually beg to differ with you that this is the same mission that was started by our government. The mission is totally out of focus. CIDA money isn't flowing to the PRT in an adequate fashion. All we've been doing for the last several months is war fighting. Security was part of this mission. This mission is absolutely unbalanced.

I have a question I really want to ask you. When we were talking about what preparations and discussions you may have had when you placed the motion for extension before the House, it is obviously now clear that General Hillier and others in the military are having to take extra special measures to ensure that we don't fall short in terms of the numbers of troops required to actually fulfill the mission until 2009.

The question I have, sir, is this. Did you really consider the issue of how stretched we might be with the capabilities we had if you extended the mission in a rush fashion, as you did, to 2009?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

I guess the short answer to that, Mr. Dosanjh, is yes, we did consider it, and I must remind you that you did vote against the extension of the mission. Yes, we did do the calculation. We did do the calculation on the advice of the Chief of the Defence Staff, and I'll have the Chief of the Defence Staff make his own comment in a minute. We did this on the basis of the best military advice we could have at the time.

Chief.

[Gen R.J. Hillier]

I would simply say, from a strictly military perspective, our mission remains the same--to help Afghans build a country of their own that they want in a democratic political process, with all the positive characteristics that can come from that, including removing the terrorists' base and increasing the security and stability for people who live there.

We are doing a significant amount of combat operations, because the security threat in the short term is the main obstacle to building that country. But to say that's all we are doing is absolutely incorrect. We are doing a whole variety of development in the south--Canadian Forces with Foreign Affairs and with CIDA. We're building bridges, building a road, delivering medical assistance to village after village after village, and helping build schools. We're working with the Governor of Kandahar and his tribal councils to help them develop efficient processes and procedures to deliver to the population what they want to deliver to them. We're helping train and equip their police force. We're helping to build the type of capacity that the police force can use then to actually sustain security once their army is built to a level and the Taliban are reduced to a level such that we can get a cross-over so they're running the security part of it.

We're doing all of that while the combat operations carry on. There are hundreds of other organizations and countries spending money to do that also, so what I talk about there is only a small part of the overall piece. And the effect of it cannot be underestimated.

Part of the CIDA money has gone into inoculations of children, which is something that we take for granted here in Canada, where our children are inoculated against the basic diseases of life as a matter of course. We don't even stop to think about it. This is the first time this has ever occurred in Afghanistan. In part as a result of $2 million of CIDA funding, five million children have been inoculated against polio, which is a main killer in that country. When you see the little kids running around--55% are less than 14 in that population, so their average age is slightly younger than the age of those of us who are sitting around this table--and see the visible diseases and parasites on them and then realize what those basic programs are doing for the people, not only in Kandahar but also around the rest of Afghanistan, you realize it's not just about fighting.

The fighting is necessary if the Taliban continue to destroy that process, and we're engaged in it to help them. The Taliban are the cause of the fighting, and the other Afghans, the vast majority of the population of the country around all of Afghanistan, in the south in Kandahar, want us there to help them rebuild.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

One minute.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Mr. Minister, if we're talking about the categorization or the characterization of the mission, the purpose is to create a stable country, and I understand that. The mission is the mission of the military and the PRT. PRT was the mission, and the defence forces were there to assist the PRT.

Now it seems that defence has become the major element--in fact, contrary to what NATO said. In January, Major Andrew Elms, the British spokesman for the NATO force, said, and let me quote, “If you think of a policeman who's armed, but he does not go out looking for a fight, that's along the lines we're looking at in terms of the NATO mission”. Sir, that is not the mission we have today.

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

I disagree with you, Mr. Dosanjh. The mission is exactly the same. The military has not received one iota of change in direction from the original government. It's the same mission. What has happened is that the intensity of the insurgency has gone up, which has required us to put more military power into the place to try to suppress the insurgency, so we can get on with development.

Our government's main focus is on development—governance, development, and security. Security is there to support development, and that's what we're attempting to do, despite these very trying conditions.