National Defence Committee on June 20th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you.

Mr. Bachand.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Academics tell us that the generals are still fighting the last war, but in my opinion, that is not the picture that you are painting.

As far as the Land Force Doctrine and Training System is concerned, I read that this is taking place in Kingston and in many schools. You mentioned the school in Wainwright, but there is also one in Gagetown.

First of all, are you the one who establishes the doctrine and training, or is this done by another general?

[MGen Stuart Beare]

I work in partnership with the director general responsible for land force capacity renewal. We are partners in the Doctrine and Training System. The link between doctrine, training and operations is unification. Lessons learned under my control have a direct bearing on the drafting of the doctrine.

We are a small group of chiefs who focus only on the doctrine of land forces. The staff colleges and the lessons learned are the link between that and our training centres.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

We have seen what is going on in some schools, such as the one in Gagetown. Earlier, I was somewhat surprised to hear you talk about the artillery. I would imagine that you were referring specifically to mortar, etc., because the big guns that fire at 15 kilometres probably do not exist anymore. The armed vehicles and others constitute, in my opinion, technology and doctrine that no longer are adaptive to the current situation. And yet, we still see this being talked about in the schools.

Are we not making mistakes when we, for example, train people to operate armed vehicles when, in fact, we no longer need them in Afghanistan? Are such mistakes occurring?

[MGen Stuart Beare]

If you view that as an error, yes. However, we consider that it is the very basis of land training which gives Canadians the option to assign part of the military to resolve a crisis occurring somewhere. There is no guarantee that we will always be facing situations like the one in Afghanistan. So we have a basic capacity to fight in a contemporary setting, and we can, because of this basic capacity, take a tactical team, like the one currently in Afghanistan, and adapt it to a specific mission. This is the point where we are at now. We do not want our army to be trained solely for the purpose of participating in the mission in Afghanistan.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Thank you.

With time running out, we'd like to thank you, sir, for being here. You answered the questions very capably, as we thought you would, and I think it added a lot to our knowledge of the situation and exactly how our troops are prepared when they go over there and get into the live situations they're in.

Thank you very much.

We're going to take a very short, one-minute pause before we get into committee business, so that we can wish our guests goodbye.

[MGen Stuart Beare]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

I'd like to call the meeting back to order, please.

Well, that was quick. Thank you very much.

First of all, committee, I'd like to thank you all for giving me this opportunity. I talked to all the parties about giving me a few minutes to address a situation that arose out of a previous meeting. If you give me a few minutes, I'd like to recap what happened and then see if the resolution I have developed is acceptable to you. I'd like to address the events of June 8, first of all, and then the June 13 committee meetings.

First I want to assure Mr. Bachand and all members that my vacating the chair at the June 8 meeting was not part of a prearranged scheme to adjourn the meeting early. I have not played, I am not playing, and I will not play those kinds of games with this committee; however, the motion to adjourn early was presented, it was handled properly by Mr. Bachand and the clerk, and it was passed.

From that early adjournment motion, there were two motions presented by Ms. Black at the June 13 meeting. One motion dealt with potential future dilatory motions; it was eventually withdrawn. The motion in question in my mind is the one in which Ms. Black asked for an apology to be sent to the witnesses.

After reviewing the motion, I sought advice, researched the acceptability of that motion, and received some varying options and opinions. The clerk had ruled the motion acceptable, based on his research and advice he had received, and rightly so. I have been told by some that the motion was admissible and by others that it was not. What I should have done, the more so because of the conflicting views of the committee members, was left these arguments to the committee.

First of all, Mr. Bachand, I want to assure you that exposing you to that original situation was not my intent.

To Ms. Black, I'd like to circulate to the committee a letter that I have prepared for your perusal and for input. The letter is being passed out; I'll wait until it's handed out to everybody.

What I would do is this: we'd have the list of witnesses who were here, and under the heading there, the witness's name would be entered.

I would like to apologize for the early adjournment of the June 8^th meeting of the Standing Committee on National Defence.

I appreciate the fact that, at the Committee's request, you took time out of your busy schedule to appear at the meeting to offer your perspective on the issue we are studying. In many cases, witnesses use the question and answer portion of these meetings to make points they did not have time to make during their ten-minute presentation.

Any information you would have presented in the remaining scheduled time of the meeting and that you were unable to present because of the early adjournment, I invite you to submit to the committee as written evidence to be used in the preparation of our final report.

Once again, please accept my apology and I thank you for taking the time to appear at our committee and presenting your views.

That will be over my signature.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's the path I would like to pursue. I would suppose, Ms. Black, that because it was your motion, you may wish to comment.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

What is the status of the motion now, or do you plan on presenting the motion to the committee again as well?

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

I suppose if this avenue is not acceptable, that's what I'm saying: the motion that I ruled out of order is now back in play. This is an offer I'm making to take care of that issue, as I indicated.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

I'd be interested in hearing the opinions of some of the other people around the table.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Let's start, then, with our usual process--first the official opposition, and then the Bloc, and then the Conservatives, if they wish.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you.

Obviously this was a very important issue, and we were planning to support Ms. Black's motion.

I think given the nature of the letter and what the chair has said, and unless Ms. Black insists otherwise, I'd be inclined to go with this and leave the motion as abandoned, unless you really want to ask people to come back, in a sense, and present themselves for questioning. They might not want to come back; that's the only other thing left. This letter takes care of all the other issues you raised.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Mr. Bachand.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

I am not as complaisant as my colleague.

Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, you were not here when these things occurred. The resolution and Ms. Black's motion clearly states that the committee, and not the chair, apologizes. The committee is apologizing for the poor conduct of the Conservative members. They were the ones who voted in favour of the motion to adjourn. No one on this side of the table did that. As a result of the way that the matter was then resolved, there was even talk about the opposition demanding the resignation of the chair because, in my opinion, we cannot treat witnesses in that manner, and try to then hide the fact and say that we did not know what happened. That is not tolerable. Given the entire procedure, we will set the resolution aside and accept your letter of apology.

I would have liked to adopt the motion today, because the conduct of the Conservative members of the committee is really at issue. You had to be here to have seen it. It was done abruptly. I feel that the witnesses were not treated properly.

If we do not want to politicize the committee too much, we have to get off on the right foot. I am prepared to accept your apology, I know that you were not involved in that. You will agree with me, however, that it is curious that you came to see me in the lobby on Monday in order to tell me that you had nothing to do with it and then, the following day, you stated that the resolution being discussed was not in order.

If my friends from the Liberal Party want to be complacent, so be it, but I think that we will be heading towards other problems. It is good of you, Mr. Chairman, to accept this responsibility and to say that it was your fault, when you in fact were not there. For that matter, perhaps I should be the one writing a letter of apology, because I was chairing the meeting.

I would have preferred the motion to have been left as is. If it is not to be, we will be voting in favour of the motion on the table. You have a letter of apology and a motion. I do not know what is on the table, but if it is the motion, I will vote for it. If it is the other motion, I will vote against it because it seems to me that another very important factor is involved. Apologizing to the committee members and witnesses does not amount to very much, but it would have been polite to have called these witnesses back and asked them to complete their testimony.

That is not what is said in the chairman's letter today. It states that because of the meeting ending so quickly, we were inviting them to forward their information to the committee in the form of a brief. That means that the Conservative members, once they have a majority and don't want to hear certain testimony, will put an end to the meeting and ask the witnesses to send the remainder of their presentation to us in writing. That is not how I'm hoping to treat witnesses.

Personally, I would prefer the first motion to remain on the table, but I will see how things unfold before I decide how I will vote.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

In response, Mr. Bachand, I think the issue I'm addressing is my action to declare the apology motion out of order.

Now the issue of the German motion was put, it was passed, and that's the way it should stand.

But maybe if I could let Ms. Black have her....

Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I think this is a sincere attempt on the chair's part, and certainly on our part, to take an unfortunate incident that happened quickly and put it behind us, so we can move on with the business of the committee in a reasonable way. I think we all have to accept that we have to operate on a certain level of good faith and not presuppose what might happen at some time in the future. Something happened that obviously caused some angst amongst various folks, and that's clearly acknowledged. For me, I'd like to put this behind us in a reasonably compromising fashion and as quickly as possible, so we can move on to the real business of the committee.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Mr. Dosanjh.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

May I make a very friendly suggestion?

If my Bloc colleagues would agree, perhaps the letter can be amended to give the witnesses a choice to either complete their testimony in writing, or if they wish to come back, to do so and be subjected to questioning. As I understand it, that's all that was left. Am I right?

[A voice]

Yes.

[Ujjal Dosanjh, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

If you leave that to the witnesses, they can either come back or simply write additional material to submit to the committee. That way, you've overcome the hesitation that our Bloc colleagues have.

I leave that as a suggestion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

I'm just trying to follow the list here.

Mr. McGuire.

[Joe McGuire, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Claude has made some very good points that what we do here today and how we're going to handle what happened on the eighth is really going to colour how the committee is going to function in the future.

We had two motions coming from the adjournment of that meeting. One was the dilatory one, which was claimed to need unanimous consent when it actually didn't need unanimous consent. The other one...as she rightly said, the committee should have asked for the input once you made your decision, if they agreed with your decision.

Now, I think both of those motions should be reintroduced and voted on. I think that's one way to address what was done that day. Both of these motions were perfectly in order and should have been voted on then, instead of this rigmarole we've been through. And besides that, the way the witnesses were...20 more minutes would have finished the witnesses. There was no great big rush. We were just about done, and we could have gotten through it quite easily without anything untoward happening.

Claude was in the chair, and he was as shocked as the witnesses that this happened so quickly.

I think if we're going to act as a group, a common frontier, to do what we can for the armed forces in this country, then we should wipe the slate clean, begin anew, and deal with these motions--get them behind us and let's proceed with our work from there.

[The Chair, Conservative, Rick Casson]

Ms. Black.