Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the committee for the opportunity to speak with you today.
I've been following your transcripts and your conversations at a distance. In fact I've engaged a couple of graduate students to keep track of the debates that have been going on and the questions and answers. I'm sure you realize this is great food for op-eds in newspapers, but it's also a great case study for students who are trying to understand what I like to call a vigilant Parliament.
I have to apologize for not providing you with any notes beforehand. It was reading week at Queen's last week, and I read something else. The graduate students were looking at the transcripts until last night, when I read them all.
I want to preface this morning's discussion with some remarks that I think will put the issue of defence procurement, as I see it, in context.
The first problem to be addressed is not procurement but the ongoing and immediate capabilities crisis in the Canadian armed forces. The procurement problem is not a crisis of process but a crisis of decision. This is, in any case, a second-order matter, though not an unimportant matter. Let me explain this line of reasoning, and then at the conclusion I'll make some remarks about some of the issues I think have highlighted this debate.
In 2004 a research team at Queen's University published an often quoted work. I'll advertise it. It's called Canada Without Armed Forces.
I asked the researchers a seemingly simple question. It was the question that I think should engage the House and this committee of inquiries over any number of years. The question I put to them was simply this. Based on the capabilities of the Canadian Forces, defined as equipment and people available in 2003--the research year that we did this work--and the signed contracts for new equipment on the table at the time, what would the Canadian armed forces look like in five years, ten years, and fifteen years further out?
Let me briefly read you the main findings of that research. The study revealed a future force undeserving of the title. Rather rapidly and then inevitably, in five years to ten years, Canada's major military equipment will succumb to the combined effects of overuse and technical obsolescence, making them operationally irrelevant. People with the right balance of age, experience, and training will not be available to replace those who will leave the armed forces over the next several years. Support equipment is disintegrating, and little has been done, or can be done in some cases, to stop it, because spare parts and technicians are not available to solve the problems.
Canada is heading for a long period when the government will be without effective military resources, even for domestic defence and territorial surveillance. Even if the next government were to provide nearly unlimited funds in an attempt to overcome this crisis, this deficit, little can be done before the apprehended crisis becomes fact.
Mr. Chairman, this is a statement of the national defence crisis facing this committee and Canada. This is a crisis that no one in the defence establishment at the time refuted, except to say, lamely, we have plans. What they did not say is that we have no money and we have no political support to act on the crisis.
The crisis is upon the nation, and it is unfolding much as we described. Time is the enemy, not money. However, the crisis is overshadowed by the gallant and persistent efforts of General Hillier and members of the Canadian Forces, who in combat operations are making do.
The response one might expect from a vigilant Parliament would have been immediate action to forestall the most dangerous aspects of the crisis. But such action was stalled for two main reasons, in my opinion: first, by a failure of the political community to act in unison to develop a non-partisan national defence strategy; second, by a muddled, directionless public bureaucracy, incapable of developing a plan to resolve the crisis.
That brings me to Mr. Alan Williams' study, which was just completed with our program at Queen's University over the last year.
Again, as with Canada Without Armed Forces, when Mr. Williams started this study I put to him what I thought was a straightforward question. I said to him: “Alan, what would you do if the Prime Minister came into your office and said to you that he wanted the Canadian armed forces rebuilt in five years, or else, and then he left the room? What procurement reforms would you make to accomplish this task?” That's the question.
The result of his work was Reinventing Canadian Defence Procurement, A View from the Inside. It's on the table, I believe, or it's certainly available.
I want to point out that the title Reinventing Canadian Defence Procurement is not accidental. The title was meant to convey starkly that reforming the process, adjusting procedures, or throwing money around Ottawa is not good enough. I'm not interested in reforming failures. Thus, the title and the intent of the research, as Alan Williams will describe in a few moments, is to create a defence procurement system to meet the current crisis, and with political support to prevent the crisis we are now in from recurring.
Let me turn now to six issues on the present debate and to discussion about defence procurement that concern me and some of the citizens, students, and other people I speak to often.
First, what we procure and how depends on your answer to this question. What do we want the Canadian Forces to do? The answer, in my view, is confounded by those who try, for whatever reason, to attach or hobble defence policy in the Canadian Forces to specific tasks and missions such as peacekeeping or domestic operations.
In my view, the object of our defence forces must be to develop efficient, effective units that can, at the direction of the government, apply coercive and, if necessary, deadly force to situations endangering Canada's security and defence.
Defence procurement and defence administration generally are the instruments that must be used to provide the means to reach this end. Every other policy or decision that inappropriately interferes with this effort adds negative costs to defence policy.
My second point.... The Canadian armed forces are composed of certain basic capabilities that provide the foundation for operations. No matter what missions governments place on the Canadian Forces, Canada's geography will demand that large sums be spent on transportation, communications, surveillance, and technical capabilities. This suite of capabilities should be considered as operational overhead, without which the Canadian Forces will not be able to conduct any operations in Canada or elsewhere. For this committee and others like it in the future, the question to the government is not whether we maintain these capabilities, but how we do so efficiently and in time to avoid crises in defence and foreign policy.
Thirdly, I have a couple of words on competition within the process, and here Prime Minister Mackenzie King's ambiguity is always useful: competition if necessary, but not necessarily competition as we might think of it in “normal times”.
Alan Williams and I have had long discussions--I think that's a fair word--on this topic. And I think we agree, though our agreement is conditioned by circumstances: in my case, by the circumstances we face today. I will of course let Mr. Williams speak for himself.
The assertion is that competition helps lower costs, and generally I agree with that position. In recent times and debates and statements, critics have declared that the lack of competition, as they term it, on some projects now on the table cost Canadians a lot of money. Non-competition is, in effect, a tax on defence procurement.
My view in the present circumstances is that whatever extra spending there may be is a tax caused not by lack of competition, but by failure of governments to make timely and necessary procurement decisions, decisions that have to be made in time for careful, reasonable competitions to occur. Because we didn't make decisions and are now in a crisis situation, the tax that Canadians are going to pay follows from that, and not from a lack of competition alone.
Fourthly, in the current debate I think we sometimes lose sight of the first principle. The critical requirement is to provide members of the Canadian armed forces with the capabilities necessary for them to do what governments ask the armed forces to do.
In the current discussions much is made of the supposed rush to buy aircraft, but today I would like to emphasize that in the list of statements of requirements as part of that discussion, time is as valid a factor as is any other factor. Indeed, today for aircraft, ships, vehicles, and people, time may be the overriding factor. Napoleon once cautioned his marshals to ask of him anything but time. I think it is a caution that governments today might take heed of.
Fifth, I am, and I was, disturbed by the apparent reluctance of officials to engage in or encourage any substantial discussion on the relationship between process, government organization, accountability, and outcomes. Witnesses have said to you, “There is no need to massively overhaul the system, nor is there any requirement to create new agencies or organizations”. They went on to emphasize and praise “the dedication and professionalism of the civilians and military members” in the system and all the various departments involved in the process. They conceded, however, that “A lot of challenges remain, but they are not insurmountable”.
Unfortunately, as far as I can see from the transcripts, the witnesses did not describe what the challenges might be, but implied that Parliament ought to trust us. But if the process and the structure and the organization are fine, what accounts for Canada without armed forces? Perhaps it's members of Parliament. That seems to be the only answer to the witnesses' statements.
The problem in the system can be explained, can be talked about. And when we ask why does the system fail, I think the answer is we don't know why the system fails. And we don't know why the system fails because there is no member of Parliament, no minister who is responsible to tell you why the system works or why it fails. There are just a lot of members who have things to say.
My final observation is that in my analysis of the session so far I worry that in the continuing and recurring evidence and questions we are missing the wartime context of the matter that's before you. I think it is strange that members of Parliament and the political community generally will argue over $400 million or $500 million and where contracts are going, while at the same time we're spending lives in Afghanistan and elsewhere to meet the government's and Parliament's objectives.
I think we need to discuss not just the dollars, but what is happening to rebuild the armed forces. From my non-partisan political perspective--and I have no political bones at all, of course, or sense--I don't know why the government isn't being challenged for not buying six C-17s. We had 32 Hercules. Why are we arguing over buying just a few, when perhaps government should be challenged to buy 32? Why aren't we rebuilding the armed forces instead of arguing over things as though we were discussing matters in some sort of abstract situation?
Mr. Chairman, let me return to my opening statement. The crisis this committee is dealing with is not defence procurement as a sometime matter abstracted from circumstances of the times. Canada and the Canadian Forces have been in the midst of a war since about 1992. And we are finding ourselves by our own decisions and choices conducting operations--that is, spending lives--while the capabilities of the Canadian armed forces are literally disintegrating as we talk.
Managing defence procurement in the crisis of failing capabilities and now in wartime demands is demanding, costly, and the prime responsibility of this Parliament. Defence procurement and managing this war demands an agile whole-of-government approach to the problem.
I recommend that this committee conduct its inquiries with this idea in mind. In that regard, and in advance, I strongly recommend that the committee accept Alan Williams' recommendation for the establishment of “Defence Procurement Canada” to manage the whole-of-government system for defence procurement.
Finally, the question I think Canadian political leaders should be prepared to answer is this: What exactly are you going to do, what is your funded plan, to rebuild the Canadian Forces over the next five years? I think Canadians might like to listen to that answer.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.