National Defence Committee on June 20th, 2006

[MGen Stuart Beare]

Yes. The two programs that peak and trough, depending on the capacity we have to deliver them, are Bold Eagle and Tommy Prince. Bold Eagle attracts reserve soldiers and Tommy Prince attracts them into the regular army. That's just for the army; I'm not talking about the maritime or air forces. The answer is, yes, we are working hard to attract, recruit, and enroll members of all communities across the country, including aboriginals.

Bold Eagle doesn't get you a full-time soldier; it gets you a reserve soldier. We hope it creates a network of positive experiences and essentially expands the network of more positive experiences for more people to be attracted to join us.

Our recruiting centres are deliberately no longer looking at their communities as if they're all one. Communities are communities of communities. They're orienting the recruiting drive to target—maybe that's not a good word—to communicate with communities in their culture and in their language to bring them to us. We're asking them to join a national institution called the Canadian Forces. We're not trying to sell them a bill of goods here. We adapt or communicate, in the language and in the methods that appeal to those communities, our profession as a Canadian institution to attract them to us, without having to treat everybody the same in terms of the method of communication.

In British Columbia, we have a hugely successful program that speaks to the Indo-Canadian community and specifically communicates with them and to them through methods and outreach programs that work for them. But the minute a young man or woman of that community joins us, they're joining a national institution. If we can accommodate them, as we are doing with dress and ceremonial factors, then all the more power to them and all the more power to us.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Okay. Thanks.

The army has the new Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre in Wainwright. Being a member of Parliament from Alberta, I'm fairly familiar with the terrain. Being a person who hasn't seen Afghanistan but has seen the pictures, the terrain looks more like the west side of Alberta than the east of Alberta, which is where Wainwright is. Could you elaborate on how the training at Wainwright overcomes some of the minuses of the terrain factor that some of the soldiers in Afghanistan would have to deal with?

[MGen Stuart Beare]

Sir, I believe you're intending to go to Afghanistan. When you get to Kandahar, it doesn't look anything like the Rocky Mountains. It's flat and hot.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

No, but the border with Pakistan is where the current mission is.

[MGen Stuart Beare]

Some of our operations go there.

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Wetaskiwin, AB]

Yes.

[MGen Stuart Beare]

You're absolutely right. Essentially, they have all terrains. They have high plateaus, deserts, mountains, greenery, and sand.

In terms of our capacity to live in those environments, in the mountains and in the deserts, basically on our own, without support, our baseline training provides that. If we need specialist skills for mountain operations, we train individuals in those skills. They get that and take that with them. Mountain operations have those individuals on the team.

The most important thing to replicate in Wainwright isn't necessarily the terrain. It's what I call the “human environment” or the “conflict environment”. Our folks aren't trying to overcome mountains, fields, and deserts. That's only where they're living. They're actually challenged to overcome the human conditions where they're operating.

In the case of an Afghanistan mission, they're presented with a replication of the Afghani environment. They see civilians, farmers, and commercial trade. They're presented with confrontational scenarios as represented by corrupt officials, the dispossessed, terrorist extremists, and the Taliban. That's what Wainwright allows us to do.

As a matter of fact, this year we've actually awarded a contract to a company in the United States to role-play specific actors on the battle space. We want it to be very professionally done, and they'll be starting to do that this fall in Wainwright. This is a method the U.S. military has been using for quite some time.

That's the replication we're really focusing on.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Bouchard.

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you for your presentation and for being here.

Earlier, my colleague asked you a question about the number of soldiers that could be engaged in offensive action. I did not really understand your answer, but I would like to question you further on this matter.

Could you tell us the number of soldiers who are at the front, meaning those who are pursuing the Taliban and those who are truly engaged in offensive actions? Are there 200, 300 or more soldiers?

[Mgén Stuart Beare]

More than 1,000.

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

More than 1,000?

[MGen Stuart Beare]

That is correct, because you have to include all of those who are participating in operations outside of the camp. We have three infantry companies, each one with between 130 and 140 soldiers. During a deployment, they all participate. They are supported by the artillery which locates the shooting,

the forward observation officer.

The artillery provides the guns that support our troops on manoeuvres. Our engineers enable the soldiers to travel over ground in mined territory or if there is a threat of imitative electronic deception. They protect the troops. The team responsible for air surveillance provide a visual image of the terrain in front of the troops. All of these forces are therefore involved in the manoeuvres. At the end of the day, it may be that only one or two combat soldiers have done the work enabling them to...

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

...to detain...

[MGen Stuart Beare]

...to detain an adversary. In the end, perhaps only two soldiers were required to do this job, but the entire force will have supported them, operationally, by providing medical care in the event of injury, providing communications, intelligence or firepower. The tactical group comprises approximately 1,500 people who are deployed on the ground, working together in order to achieve the same objective.

Moreover, the national command, which constitutes the chain of command providing contact with Ottawa, includes about 200 people. It provides intelligence to the forces. In addition, there is the national support group which provides supplies and support to our soldiers.

Indeed, we don't make any distinction between the combat soldier and the support soldier. They are all soldiers, they all participate in the same operation. We do a lot of manoeuvres in Kandahar, if we compare ourselves to our colleagues in allied forces.

It is difficult to provide you with figures, because it is difficult to make a distinction between those who are part of this group and those who are not. Most of the 1,500 soldiers in the tactical groups work outside of the camp.

[Robert Bouchard, Bloc, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, QC]

Thank you.

You appear to be relying on many Canadian bases to obtain the number of soldiers required for our mission in Afghanistan. Do you believe that you are asking for the maximum number?

I will ask my question another way. If we were to consider all of the military resources of Canada, how would you qualify your requirement for soldiers? Since there are more than 2,000 soldiers in Afghanistan and considering all of our staff in Canada, would you say that you have a heavy, normal or regular, or small demand?

[MGen Stuart Beare]

There are nearly 18,000 members of the Canadian land forces. We provide 4,000 soldiers per year to foreign operations. This is a planning number. When we have a mission such as the one in Afghanistan, we adjust our figures so that we can achieve the operational objectives based on our capacities in Canada. So we deploy nearly 4,000 soldiers per year for one mission, the mission in Afghanistan. There are two rotations per year. We do more than just participate in foreign operations.

As I said at the outset, we are experiencing a period of growth, a period of transformation. We still have the responsibility of supporting the basic force in order to be able to participate in this type of mission abroad or in Canada over the next five to ten years. That all takes work.

All Canadian Forces are involved in these four tasks. As for the land forces specifically, these four tasks keep us very busy: support for generating forces, operations, transformation and growth.

As I said earlier, we need to expand the basic force. We want to increase the number of our units. Given the growth which is now allowed in the Canadian Forces, I am confident that we will be able to do this. Meanwhile, we always have to maintain a balance between the operations in Canada and those abroad.

So I will not tell you that those soldiers that we deploy are not ready.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you.

We'll have to move on.

Ms. Gallant, and then Mr. McGuire.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and through you, to the witness.

In terms of training new recruits, what's the determining rate factor now? In other words, what is the greatest challenge the Canadian Forces must overcome at this point in time in getting a new recruit up to fighting capability?

[MGen Stuart Beare]

There are things we are seeking to do. Number one is accelerate the time from a person being interested to being signed up. Then we're seeking to accelerate the time from being signed up to being a trained recruit—which is almost an oxymoron, in the sense that you're no longer a recruit, but you're in and employable—from the time you start your recruit training to the time you're employable in your trade.

Some trades could take a number of years. To train a pilot or a submariner takes years. So we are trying to accelerate the initial training period, which is just the recruit training—the “welcome to the uniform” stuff—to get the recruit into the hands of the army, navy, and air force, in order to train them in their specific skill quicker.

So it's attract more, sign them up more quickly, and get them through the basic training more quickly. They are not able to be deployed until they are trained in their specific trade in the army, infantry, artillery, engineer, signals, and so on, and until they've joined their teams in the units earmarked for operations.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

If we want to pinpoint the obstacle in getting to these various stages, would it be the number of trainers or positions available? What are the key obstacles we must overcome in order to speed these processes up?

[MGen Stuart Beare]

In the first instance, it's making sure as an institution that we change the way we think about how we attract people. The second is in our own bureaucracy, to go aggressively after the institutional barriers to getting people signed up quickly.

We have the challenge of citizenship and security clearances; we have all these necessary checks and balances that need to be tackled in order to allow us to enroll a person as a member in the Canadian Forces. The minute they sign on the line, we are obligated to them, as they are obligated to us.

So these challenges exist, they have been identified, and they are being tackled. But they do take the time they take.

In terms of production, we have not yet achieved the size of the training institutions we need to support and expand the CF. So we need not only to grow the field forces but at the same time grow the training institutions that allow us to create those field forces. We're not there yet.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

To what extent is emphasis placed on avoiding collateral damage or civilian casualties? For example, in assessing performance on the simulating devices that you mentioned earlier, how is the trainee's mark affected if they accidently shoot a civilian in the...? Do they have marks subtracted? What happens?

[MGen Stuart Beare]

In terms of individual training, when you're being taught a new skill, the school will provide you with scenarios that will challenge you. If you're a rifleman who is conducting infantry operations and you do something wrong, it will come back to you. The best teacher is failure under a controlled school environment. Having been presented with a failure, in judgment or otherwise, you have that fed back to you in a learning environment, which allows you to learn, internalize, and then go forward.

In Wainwright, for the collective training, you have a rifle company that is trying to clear through a town that has some insurgents in it; the insurgents, soldiers, and non-combatants are instrumented, and the minute anyone uses weapons-type force against a non-combatant, it flags up on our screen. It's a significant training event that is fed back, not just to the individual but to the whole team. How did you get into this circumstance? Why are you in this circumstance? What were you thinking when you did this? What would you do differently next time? We feed that back into our training scenarios as well.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

So there is a fair amount of emphasis put on avoiding civilian casualities.

[MGen Stuart Beare]

Absolutely. We're oriented to succeed in the mission. This went contrary to that.