National Defence Committee on Nov. 26th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Good morning everyone and welcome before the Standing Committee on National Defence.

This is meeting 41. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we will do a study on recruitment and retention strategy.

It's our pleasure to have with us three witnesses. First, we have

Major-General Semianiw, Chief of Military Personnel.

Thank you for being here.

We have Commodore Daniel MacKeigan, Commander, Canadian Forces Recruitment Group.

Thank you for being with us.

We also have Karol Wenek, Director General, Military Personnel.

Thank you for being with us.

Gentlemen, you will have 5 to 8 minutes to make your statements, after which the members of the committee will want to ask you some questions.

[Major-General W. Semianiw, Chief of Military Personnel, Department of National Defence]

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, it is a pleasure to appear before you today to provide an update on recruiting and retention in the Canadian Forces.

As you're aware, people are the backbone of the Canadian Forces. They are the key to achieving the Canada First defence strategy objectives, including our force expansion goals. As I think you will see, we've devoted significant effort to understanding the linkages between recruiting, attrition, and retention, and making sure that we get them right. Indeed, as you are aware, in my role as the chief of military personnel, the functional authority for all personnel matters and issues for the Canadian Forces, caring for the ill, the injured, and their families, is my top priority. My number two and three priorities, which I have stated publicly on many occasions, are recruiting from Canada's best and retaining the best that the Canadian Forces has.

Before I begin, let me introduce some key members of my team who will be assisting me here today.

I have with me today Commodore Daniel MacKeigan, Commander of the Canadian Forces Recruiting Group. He is the officer principally charged with attracting and enrolling Canadians from across the country. I also have Mr. Karol Wenek, Director General, Military Personnel. He is responsible for identifying not only how many personnel we need to recruit and in which occupations, but he is also responsible for the other end of the spectrum: monitoring attrition and retention within the CF and developing the strategies to ensure we retain Canada's best.

Finally, in addition to my opening comments today, I'll be providing some exhibits that will provide clarifying information on our challenges and successes, and would ask members of the committee that you can take a look at them after my opening remarks. They will assist you in posing questions and I think in having an informed discussion on these two very important issues.

The story today in terms of both recruiting and retention is a positive one. This success, however, needs to be understood in the context of our personnel history dating back to the 1990s. As you are aware, significant force reductions during that period resulted in the Canadian Forces' total strength dipping to approximately 55,000 by 1999. Not only that, but these reductions had resulted in a skewed demographic profile, not only in general experience levels across the Canadian Forces but also across a number of our military occupations.

When the CFDS, therefore, provided us with the stable funding necessary to grow the CF to 68,000 by financial year 2010-2011, we were presented with unique recruiting challenges. In that context, it is important to note that the CF cannot buy experience per se; we need to develop uniquely military skills throughout a career. In addition, the unique nature of military employment can mean that there is a two– to seven–year lag effect between the time recruits are enrolled until they are trained and fully employable.

In effect, then, not only were we required to compete with other potential employers in a booming economy, but we needed to adopt recruiting strategies that could ensure that we obtained the right number of personnel overall, and equally important, that they be in the right occupations. This is an issue we will come back to in the question period. It's not just about recruiting 60,000, 70,000, 80,000, or recruiting 7,000; it's having the right recruits in the right jobs with the right skills.

That is the challenge. There may be difficulties but, to my mind, that is the challenge.

How are we doing? The answer, in short, is pretty good.

I removed the “darn” here, because it's not in my vocabulary: we're doing pretty good.

To date this year we've enrolled 5,494 recruits, or 74% of our annual overall target, or strategic intake plan, of 7,440. Indeed, total enrolments to the end of October are 8% higher than they were at the same time last year. Of 101 military occupations, 32 have already achieved their recruiting targets.

How did we achieve this success? It would be easy to say that the economic downturn was key to this success, and indeed, we believe it played an important role. However, long before the economic downturn, and beginning with Operation Connection, which was a program, an operation, to better connect the military with Canadians, we purposely built and implemented recruiting and attraction strategies that resulted in significantly more potential recruits considering the Canadian Forces as a career choice.

These included implementing proactive outreach programs; identifying and focusing on hard-to-recruit or stressed occupations; streamlining processing and improving customer service; optimizing new technologies, such as e-recruiting; and mounting focused marketing and attraction campaigns.

I'll just come back to one point. We use the words “stressed occupations”. You'll hear us use it quite a bit. They are those occupations we have a hard time recruiting. You'll see that we've identified clearly what those are, as Commodore Dan MacKeigan will speak to later.

We have developed programs aimed at those occupations.

While we have had significant success in recruiting, there is no doubt that we also have our challenges. As you are aware, the Canadian Forces must continue to compete in a highly competitive environment, especially as our ideal demographic pool, the 17– to 24–year old cohort, continues to shrink as a percentage of the overall Canadian population. In addition, while we have made great strides in improving results for some traditionally hard-to-recruit occupations, some remain a challenge.

That said, our recruiting system has proven highly adaptive and we are now shaping up strategies to target these occupations; our recent successes in moving the yardsticks with some of the naval occupations is a case in point. Indeed, we have recruited more naval personnel to this point than we did all of last year.

At the other end of the spectrum from recruiting are attrition and retention. Indeed, as I alluded to earlier, they are part of a complex, interconnected, closed-loop system of human resource activities. I'll give an example here, moving away from my introduction. If you were to say to me today, “General, stop recruiting”, you would not see the effect for probably another six, seven, or eight months. It's an area where you can't just push a button and see the effect tomorrow. As Karol will tell you, it takes time, given what we have in place.

The fact is that we need some attrition to ensure growth. I'll repeat that: we need some attrition to ensure growth. Attrition is not a bad thing. We need it to ensure an appropriate demographic profile and to ensure that experience and continuity are maintained whilst, frankly, allowing new blood to enter the organization. We need to have attrition.

The key is to predict, monitor, and manage attrition to achieve these objectives. As I alluded to earlier, the demographic profile of the Canadian Forces following the reductions of the 1990s made this activity especially complex, as there's an experience trough that needs to be carefully managed.

As in recruiting, we have put significant effort into attrition and retention activities and we are meeting with significant success. Last September, for example, our attrition rate reached approximately 9.2%, a rate that was clearly having a negative impact on Canadian Forces growth. As of this month, the attrition rate is now at 7.9%. Even more importantly, the voluntary attrition rate has declined nearly two percentage points to 5.1%.

The impact of this reduced attrition rate cannot be understated. It clearly reduces the stresses on both our recruiting and our training systems. Equally important, it allows the Canadian Forces to optimize the precious skill sets of highly experienced personnel during a period of significant forces growth, recapitalization, and operations.

I'll move away from my notes here. If you have people who leave the forces at the rank of colonel, it's not a one-for-one exchange. It doesn't just mean that I have to recruit one person at the beginning; I probably have to recruit two or three. Karol will elaborate on that. Again, this comes back to the importance of having a retention strategy in place that actually keeps people in the Canadian Forces for the right reasons.

What we are now doing is developing and indeed implementing, where immediately possible, a Canadian Forces-wide retention strategy, which was issued this past summer. Thus, we have implemented a number of initiatives at our recruit school to reduce training attrition, ranging from enhancing military fitness programs and testing to minimizing the initial shock of military life on young recruits, many of whom are away from home for the first time.

Without in any way compromising our standards, we have adopted a philosophy of “train to retain”. At the other end of the spectrum, we are encouraging longer-term personnel to stay by addressing those issues perceived as dissatisfiers in service life, such as personal recognition, terms of service, work-life balance, and many others.

What does this mean for the Canadian Forces? In short, the Canadian Forces is on schedule, indeed ahead of schedule, to achieve our fiscal year 2011-12 growth target of 68,000 regular force personnel. In fact, I am already at 67,350, and that is now a problem for me, because if I'm asked why I don't just keep recruiting folks, the answer is very simply that we also need a training system that has the capacity to meet all the additional recruits, and we are building that training system over time.

Are things perfect? No. We realize, of course, that we still have challenges ahead of us. These include addressing the shortages in some technical occupations, the stressed trades.

However, targeted recruiting activities appear to be even moving the yardsticks in these traditionally difficult occupations. The larger challenge we likely be to ensure that we maintain the right balance between recruiting, growth and attrition over the next few years, optimizing our recruiting and training systems.

In closing, let me say that our efforts in recruiting and managing attrition represent a success story. While we acknowledge that we have our work cut out for us, we are nonetheless well down the path to achieving the forces growth required by the Canada First defence strategy. While there is no doubt that the economy has played a role, this success derives equally from a lot of hard work, not only from my team, but also from the navy, the army, and the air force.

Again, I'd like to thank the members of this committee for addressing this very important matter and for your strong support for the members and families of the Canadian Forces. Both Commodore MacKeigan and Mr. Wenek, who are my experts in both of these areas, and I, if needed, are pleased to answer any questions you might have.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Major-General, thanks for that presentation.

I will give the floor to Mr. Wilfert.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll share my time with Ms. Neville.

Thank you, General. Thank you, gentlemen, for coming.

I'm glad to hear your story, and obviously the issue particularly on retention is absolutely critical.

On the senior level management area, can you elaborate...? There have been concerns about retention at that level. How we are addressing that?

[MGen W. Semianiw]

You will see in my introductory comments, which I did include to ensure that I stayed within my eight-minute time limit, because I know timings are very important here in this committee, that there are two areas when you take a look at the challenge.

Challenges were during years zero to three, which I touched on. To elaborate, what we've done in the recruit school to take our attrition rate at the recruit school from perhaps 24% down to maybe 15%, positive...but the flip side is this whole area of the 19 to 24 age group. That's the second issue.

The point to note is that with the younger age--speaking on behalf of my children--everything is transactional. It's not relational. Even though I tell my children I love them every day, it's still very transactional at that age.

At the other end, 19 to 24 years, it is very relational, as Karol will tell you. It's not about benefits. It's not about money. It's all about how people are treated, being part of the organization.

Given the transformation, given everything we've done, given the Canadian Forces have grown, that has been an area that's come up as a spike. Karol will be more than happy to address what we've done in those areas. I'll give you one of them.

One of the dissatisfiers was this, and Karol will jump in here if I have it wrong. We have certain gateways at which you leave the Canadian Forces.

Monsieur le président, I think we have almost two hours, so if I can, I'll take a little bit more time to answer the questions.

At any rate, you hit that 20-year gateway, and the next gateway would be about year 27. Those are the pension gateways we had. And if you said you would stay, but then you decided to leave, you would be penalized when it came to your pension.

What we put into place, actually before we issued the retention strategy, again, if you remember part of its process, was a small tool that allowed people to stay in, not be penalized, if they wanted, for a shorter period of time.

[Karol Wenek, Director General, Military Personnel, Department of National Defence]

Correct.

Mr. President, I think there are really three factors that we need to look at in terms of explaining and dealing with senior-level attrition and retention. One is the structural issue that the general has referred to.

Back in the 1970s, when the terms of service structure for the Canadian Forces was designed and implemented, they put in place a provision that at certain gates people had the option of leaving voluntarily or the Canadian Forces had the option of directing release if they felt there were surplus numbers there or if they wanted to retain a more robust population in the Canadian Forces.

So one of the gates that was put in place at that time was the 20-year service point, and there was also a special provision made in the Canadian Forces pension act that would allow for the collection of a pension based on 20 years of service at that point.

About eight years or so ago, when we started looking at the demographics of the Canadian Forces population, we said that's not going to serve us in the long run. So we introduced a change to that provision at that time. The Canadian Forces Superannuation Act changed to require 25 years of service prior to being eligible to collect a pension.

But we also realized that for those people who were currently serving on the 20-year-of-service term, it wasn't really going to have much effect on them. We said it's going to take about a generation for that cohort to clear, but then everyone serving from that point forward would be obliged to serve to at least 25 years before they could collect a pension.

For that group that was in the 20-year-of-service term, we de-penalized early attrition after 20 years of service. We actually put a little bit of incentive in and said every additional year you serve beyond 20 years will count towards your pension. So if you serve 22 years and decide to leave, then you get a 44% pension.

[MGen W. Semianiw]

That ensured that we actually kept some of that experience for a couple of years.

[Karol Wenek]

Exactly.

The other issue that I think we need to look at, which makes senior-level management loss a concern, is that the demographic profile of the Canadian Forces is far from ideal. In fact it is bimodal, if you want to put it that way. We have a very large cohort of young people, we have a very large cohort of long-service people, and we have a very small cohort of mid-career folks—and that is the future leadership of the Canadian Forces.

So we have to try to keep them—just about everybody—because the depth there is just not that great. At the same time, we need to bridge that period by keeping the long-service people, who are the experienced, more senior people, as long as possible. This is something you can't fix once you've made the mistake. That mistake was made back in the 1990s during the downsizing period, when we did not have a controlled release program or downsizing program that would have preserved the profile. But that horse is long out of the barn, and again, we have to wait for time to cure the situation.

The third issue that I think bears on the loss of senior people has to do with current conditions of service. As you all understand, we're a long way away from the time when we had single-income families. Dual-income families have been the norm for approximately 20 to 30 years. Military families as well must deal with that requirement.

One of the issues that undercuts the ability of military families to preserve their income stream is the mobility requirements of the Canadian Forces. We have a huge geography and we have bases scattered all over the country. In this respect, we're very comparable to Australia. We have about the same size of military force, and the same magnitude of geography, and they have to move people frequently as well.

That is disruptive to the income stream for families, and it's disruptive to children's schooling. At about the age of 40 or so, when they're at about 20 years of service and have kids in school, high school, or university and a spouse or partner who may be well-established in a job, the proposition of moving them 1,000 kilometres away forces decisions for them.

What we were trying to do to redress that issue as part of the retention strategy was to see whether we could develop regional career profiles that would allow people to remain for at least most of their careers in the same region. It will be a challenge. It's more achievable for the navy, which has east coast and west coast home ports, and some of them go to NDHQ at later stages of their career. It will be more of a challenge for the army, the air force, and the support occupations.

Those are really the three issues: the structural issue, the demographic one, and the conditions of service.

[MGen W. Semianiw]

I move 15,000 people a year, of whom half are actually part of the program. We can get into that later in the questions.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I appreciate that you're addressing that and I thank you for that information.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

Now I will give the floor to Monsieur Paillé.

[Pascal-Pierre Paillé, Bloc, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also want to thank our guests.

I want to put several questions to you, starting with recruiting. I will admit that there is something I do not understand. You need a new cohort of soldiers for the Canadian Forces but, as you probably know, there is some resistance in Quebec to recruiting in cegeps and even in high schools.

You said that you seem to be on track in relation to your objectives and that you have even already surpassed some of them. I would like to know if you intend to review that policy in order to limit your recruitment in education institutions. As far as I am concerned, that is completely inconsistent with your stated objective.

[Commodore Daniel MacKeigan, Commander, Canadian Forces Recruiting Group, Department of National Defence]

Thank you.

I am quite aware of the situation with the unions, which we were able to observe in the streets. I do not do any recruitment in high schools because those students are too young. In cegeps, we only provide information.

I only run programs to give information; they're information sessions.

As I said before, I send the same message as the guidance counsellors, and that's why we're frequently invited to schools. I tell my recruiters—they're employed as recruiters, but they're not “recruiting” in the schools— to say: “Don't drop math and physics. Keep your options open.”

The guidance counsellors really like my young adults to come to schools and give this message.

Only six cegeps have refused to meet with my recruiters. There is nothing new there.

For a long time they have not invited us, and we don't go where we're not invited.

[MGen W. Semianiw]

It's a really good question, Mr. Chair.

Let me elaborate.

I find that a bit confusing.

If it's a challenge in Quebec, why is recruiting up in Quebec between 8% and 10%? I'm not sending people out into the street to pull people into the recruiting centres; they're walking in on their own.

It's an issue I've thought about quite a bit, given that my family comes from Quebec, and somehow something doesn't connect. Perhaps it's generational. But recruiting in Quebec in particular, I'll be as bold as saying that it's perhaps almost 15% higher than it used to be.

Again, it's not just the young. You need to be aware, ladies and gentlemen of this committee, that we have recruits at the recruit school who are 51 years old. As I told you last time, I'd be more than happy to recruit any of you into the Canadian Forces. We have recruits who are 51, so you can't say anymore that it's just young people. That's the way it used to be, but people of any age are coming into the recruiting centres, particularly in Quebec.

It is incredible. If it is a challenge, it is very difficult to explain.

[Pascal-Pierre Paillé, Bloc, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you for your explanation. However, my position is as follows: I have no problem with you recruiting young people but I have problems with you recruiting in the education institutions of Quebec.

I have been told that some members of the reserve would be laid off. Naturally, I will not reveal my sources, Mr. Chair. According to my information, there will be some rotation and some temporary layoffs, of about 30 days, between January 1 and April 1, 2010. Can you give us some details about that?

[MGen W. Semianiw]

Yes. You're obviously talking about

people who belong to class B, reservists who work nearly full time. There are class B people in each commandment of the Canadian Forces.

What I'll tell you is that with regard to your comment or your question, under my command it's not the case. Under my command, there is not a temporary layoff of class Bs.

To be fair, I'm not current, so I can't give you details. I'm not the commander; I don't run the Canadian Forces. So it's a question you may want to pose to the vice-chief, who I believe is coming next week.

We will deal with the situation of class B staff.

What I can tell you is that under my organization of about 17,000, there are no temporary layoffs of class B.

[Pascal-Pierre Paillé, Bloc, Louis-Hébert, QC]

You said that you are looking at the balance between work life and military life, as well as supporting families. You probably know that in Quebec city, in my riding, there is talk of building a new armoury in the area of Sainte-Foy. However, the decision has been made without military families being consulted.

You may not be personally aware of this matter. I understand that my question is very specific but I would like to know if, under your policy, you intend to look at the requests of military families before taking any steps to build this future armoury.

[MGen W. Semianiw]

I don't know the direct answer to the question, because I do not know what's happening with building the new armoury. That I don't know.

Mais par contre, we have surveys. I've brought with me my director general of military personnel research and analysis, Madam Susan Truscott. We put surveys out to the families.

We ask questions.

You know, “What is military life like?”, or “What do you think about this?”

It comes back to issues that Karol Wenek addressed about mobility. We need to move ahead with defining a modern mobility policy for the Canadian Forces that sees greater geographical stability for families; that is the issue.

But I don't know the answer to your particular question. You'd probably have to ask the commander of the army.

If I can elaborate, I think it's important that as you move ahead on this issue, members of the committee, you remember that the make-up of the Canadian family has changed dramatically. I'm sure you all know that. It's not just two parents. In many cases, it's one parent, maybe more than one parent, maybe more than two. This also brings with it challenge in what we do here.

[Pascal-Pierre Paillé, Bloc, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Mr. Harris has the floor.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you all for coming this morning. It's a complex topic, as you've outlined.

I'm sure you have surveys of your own, as the chief recruiter, Commander MacKeigan, and I'm sure you are aware of some of the public domain information. I saw a survey or reports of a survey several months ago. I don't have it with me, unfortunately, but it said that the majority of people who join the Canadian Forces aren't necessarily the gung-ho “I want to go there and fight the enemy or get involved”, but are doing it for career reasons.

First, would you agree with that?

And second, what happens in this period of zero to three years that you do get...? Well, you've improved it, but it's 25% attrition. Are young people who join disappointed with the options they're presented with? Give us a little scenario.

Suppose I decide I want to join the forces because I have a good, positive feel about the forces and I think it's the place for me, but I'd like to have a career. I don't really know what I can do. You have 101 occupations.

Do you actually say, “Okay, Mr. Harris, come in: we'll give you a test to see what your interests are and we'll try to provide a career path or training program for you”?

[MGen W. Semianiw]

What I'll do, Mr. Chair, is give a quick answer to the first question, then turn it over to Commodore MacKeigan. We'll come back to the second one.

Having been intimately involved with what happens at recruit school, I'll answer your question as if Mr. Jack Harris were a recruit. I'll go through with you what would happen.

Just quickly, remember, people join the Canadian Forces probably for seven different reasons. You are right, some of it is career, some of it is security, some of it is because my parents were in the military, some of it is for the country and many other reasons. There are a lot of reasons why people actually join. The other one I'll have Commodore MacKeigan elaborate on.

Remember, if we enrol 7,000, it doesn't mean 7,000 will walk through the front door. It probably means closer to 25,000 to 30,000 will walk through the front door, of which we pick 7,000.

There was a newspaper article that I read, I think in the Citizen or the Post, that was incorrect. I was going to phone the reporter, but I kind of let it lie. It said the Canadian Forces had not met its targets. We had 30,000 people walk through the front door. We only picked those 7,000 or whatever, knowing that we maybe missed that target by 20 or 30 people.

If I'd wanted to get the target, I would have phoned him and said, “Push the button, bring more people in”, but that's not what we do. I want to make sure we have the right people in there, so it's only a point I would add.

I'll turn it over to Dan, who will elaborate on the recruiting piece.

[Cmdre Daniel MacKeigan]

Mr. Chair, when an interested person comes into a recruiting centre, they see a standard customer service desk, like they'd see in any properly run establishment. We ask them why they're there, we thank them for coming in, and we invite them to sit down.

Most people have an idea of what they want to do. Fortunately or unfortunately, it's based on war movies, books, video games, or, best of all, from the advertisements you see on television, the fight campaign--in that case a better idea. They will generally come in and say, “I want to be in the air force”, “I want to be in the army”--in fact, a lot say they want to be in the army-- or, “I want to be in the navy”.

Then we sit you down to evaluate what are your strengths, your aptitude. You do a very rigorous test, and out of that comes your suitability for things you could do, based on what you've done to date. Then we question if you are interested in any of those. If you say, “Yes, I am, but do you have any other choices?”, we may say, “Yes, you're in luck, these are open”. Then we carry on the process of medical, etc., ultimately leading to an offer and enrolment.

My military career counsellors are quite good at the subjective and objective portions of trying to figure out the best fit for a person. I'll be frank: they're a mix of guidance counsellor and used car salesman. If someone comes in and says they'd like to be in the army and want to do a particular thing, they will be asked if they have thought about an alternative. It's something I want and they want: it's like a dance of the dialectic. We bring them to a point where both groups are happy.

We don't lie to anyone or not say what the trades are about.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I have two other questions, just quickly. I don't if you'll have time to answer them, but—

[MGen W. Semianiw]

Do you want me to answer the second one?