National Defence Committee on May 13th, 2010

[Dr. Jack Granatstein]

That would be a very useful step. The difficulty is that we have not really managed to create a SHIRBRIG that is effective. To try to create one that was culturally sensitive for different areas of the world would be even harder. There's no guarantee, of course, that at any point the Security Council would be able to muster support for deployment of such a brigade.

It's hard to make this work. It's hard to have the United Nations work as an effective organization in these areas. Every time, we find ourselves cobbling together a force to meet specific needs, and we go to those countries that are willing—to be blunt—to sell their troops to the United Nations for the fee that the UN pays countries for their troops. Countries such as Bangladesh and others basically earn a large part of their foreign funds by deploying troops. This is not necessarily a recipe for effectiveness.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Let me ask another scenario, where we describe some of the challenges that oppose, but where we have a domestic self-interest. In Somalia, where al-Shabaab is arguably protecting al-Qaeda, what could our role be? Would we work with the AU? Are you looking for a more robust NATO to partner with the AU? What would be a solution to deal with this festering situation within Somalia?

[Dr. Jack Granatstein]

I don't know. I think our most effective contribution would not be troops; it would likely be training, it would likely be cash, it would likely be aid.

It is entirely possible that if piracy continues the way it is going from Somalia-based organizations--or “disorganizations”, as we might call them--there will be some demand for an end to this. It could conceivably turn into a NATO operation, in which case we might very well be part of that.

Given our past experience in Somalia, given the past UN and U.S. experiences in Somalia, that's something we should be very careful in dealing with. It's complicated by the fact that there is now a very large Somalian diaspora in Canada, which seems to me to be divided in many ways. So anything we do is going to run into support and opposition from Somali Canadians. So it's a complicated issue.

The test for us has to be what serves our national interest best, and can our forces play a useful role? I don't think we want to be a situation where idealism, altruism, is necessarily the driving force for us. It must be a question of whether it serves our interests. Is it something our forces can do?

Let's be a little hard-headed as we approach these problems.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

Now I will give the floor to Mr. Braid.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you, Professor Granatstein, for being with us today. It's very helpful testimony and presentation.

Professor Granatstein, in response to a question from Mr. Wilfert you indicated that post-Afghanistan it would be important for the Canadian Forces to have some R and R, as it were. We had a previous witness speak about the importance of a respite. Do you have any thoughts on what an appropriate period of time should be for that respite?

[Dr. Jack Granatstein]

It should be one or two years, minimum, before any other large deployment. We can handle small deployments, we can handle short deployments, but in terms of any major one-year-plus deployment abroad of more than 1,000 troops, infantry in particular, we should have a two-year gap.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Very good.

There have been some references to the importance of having fixed withdrawal dates as well. Could you underscore some of the advantages of having a fixed withdrawal date?

[Dr. Jack Granatstein]

You know when you're coming home--that's the basic advantage, and that seems pretty clear to me. We can always extend, but having a date at which you're getting out.... I'm not talking about a major war, where of course there is no date. I'm talking about deployments where Canada is a member of a UN operation or a coalition doing a specific job that is not a threat to the overall survival of this nation. Obviously in a major war there is no end date; there is no exit date. But in the kinds of operations we have done and are likely to be doing in the next generation or so, an end date reassures the public and the government that there is a way out of the situation. I think that's important.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

You've clearly highlighted for us some of your concerns--some of the pitfalls and drawbacks of UN peacekeeping operations. Could you speak to some of the systemic issues at the United Nations that adversely affect the opportunity for the success of a mission? Has there been any improvement over time, through UN reform and review of the UN department of peacekeeping, in some of those systemic issues?

[Dr. Jack Granatstein]

I think the peacekeeping department is better now than it was. General Lewis MacKenzie used to talk about how if you phoned up New York on the weekend, there was nobody there. If you called after six o'clock New York time, nobody answered the phone. That doesn't happen now. Things are better in that respect. There are more people, more organization, and more efficiency at that end of the operation. It's now perhaps at the scale of a third-world military, as opposed to a fifth-world military, as it was 20 years ago. That's an improvement, but it needs a lot more.

The basic problem at the UN is political: the veto; a Security Council that, post-cold war or not, is still divided. The national interests of the Security Council members continue to exist. They're not going to go away.

We can see this, for example, on a question like sanctions against Iran, which may result in an operation being required somewhere down the road. Is there agreement on moving toward sanctions? Well, there's nothing real. Is there a possibility of real agreement? It's not very likely.

I don't know how one overcomes that. It's the failure of the UN to get its act together that leads to coalitions of the willing, that leads to eventualities like the Iraq war in 2003, where in the absence of UN ability to move, the United States felt obliged to act in its definition of national interest.

That is not the most desirable way to proceed, but we should understand at least why it happens. It is because the UN is simply not able to do that. That's the problem we face. How we fix that, I don't know.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

You mentioned the subcontracting of peacekeeping operations to NATO and the Organization of African Unity. Why has the UN needed to subcontract?

[Dr. Jack Granatstein]

It's simply because it couldn't do the job itself. It couldn't put together a force able to fight a war, fight a robust enemy, or engage in hard operations. It was simply unable to do that, so it had to go elsewhere to achieve that. Sometimes it has worked, sometimes it hasn't.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I give the floor to Mr. Bachand.

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

Mr. Granatstein, do you believe that subcontracting tasks will become more frequent? Also, is NATO in danger of becoming the military arm of the United Nations?

[Dr. Jack Granatstein]

It's a possibility. The experience in Afghanistan, however, has not been so positive that NATO is likely to whoop and cheer if it's asked to engage in some difficult operation in a far-off part of the world. That doesn't mean it won't. It's quite often the case that NATO is the only possible organization to do a difficult job that most nations believe should be done.

Obviously it's preferable for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to operate in area--in its sphere of influence. But it is a good thing that there is an organization like NATO that is, in some circumstances, willing to go out of area to do those jobs that must be done. What seems to be clear, unfortunately, is that the United Nations is not likely to be able to do those jobs on its own, and that will lead to requests for NATO.

All I will say is that NATO should be able to act in a more efficient way than it has so far. I talked earlier about the necessity for NATO countries to buy into an operation before the commitment is made. I think that's critical. That's the one lesson that stands out from Afghanistan. There must be buy-in from the members of NATO to participate. It's not enough to say NATO is going in, and then have 15 members say “Okay, but we're not going to do anything. We won't fight and we won't provide anything.”

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

You seemed to say earlier that the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, which has held many meetings, wanted to participate... Were you thinking of the NATO strategic framework being developed at this time? Yes.

Let us talk about this strategic framework. We know that NATO is in increasing danger of becoming the subcontractor of the United Nations. As you know, there have been long debates about this. I have been a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of NATO for 10 years now. Two things strike me. First, the matter of cost-sharing.

Is that what you meant? In Afghanistan, I had the demonstration that cardinal points are extremely important. I went to Faizabad with German troops and I traveled the whole day long in a beautiful Mercedes jeep. At 8 PM, I was told that we had to go back to camp for security reasons because there were threats. In fact, there were not really any threats in the North.

On the other hand, when I traveled in the South, we did not go back home at 8 PM because we were not traveling in little Mercedes jeeps. We had to travel in LAV IIIs because it was really rough. So, there is no equal sharing as far as funding and casualties are concerned. Canada pays a higher price than the nations operating in the North.

Many people are now talking about compulsory rotations so that casualties be shared among the various countries. I believe that NATO will have big responsibilities and big debates in the future, and that will not be easy either. It may be that the problems we see at NATO are even more acute at the UN. When many nations are involved, some will probably want to shirk their responsibilities and others will have to compensate.

Are you in favour of cost-sharing? Do you believe that in Afghanistan, for example, there should be a compulsory rotation of the forces so that it not be always the same nations in the South and in the North?

[Dr. Jack Granatstein]

I do agree. I think that's in fact where we have to go. You have to put the money on the table; you have to put your people on the table at the same time; you have to accept the possibility that there will be casualties; and you have to accept the possibility that a few countries cannot always bear the burden.

Again, as I said earlier, Canada has not always been the best of NATO members. We have done our job in Afghanistan. It has been a costly job. We've done it well. We deserve credit for that, but the complaints we have raised about other countries ring a little hollow, given our past record in the alliance. So I think we have done well. I think we can legitimately point our fingers at some of our friends in the alliance, but what we must draw from this is how we can fix the alliance.

The new strategic concept, it seems to me, really must deal with this head-on and face it, and recognize that burden-sharing is real. We can't expect the Americans to do it all; we shouldn't expect Canadians to carry the entire burden for as long as we did in Kandahar. At minimum, it is scandalous that those German troops won't go out after eight o'clock. You could have rapid reaction forces within Afghanistan that could move quickly by helicopter to an area where there is a crisis. To me, that would seem to be a minimum response one could have, where you have different provinces with different nations running them.

Let's be clear: the NATO operation in Afghanistan has not exactly been a huge success in terms of coordinating different training methods, different operational methods. Some of the flaws in the alliance have shown up rather clearly, and one of the obvious fixes, it seems to me, is to create a NATO civil operations branch, a secretariat or directorate, so that we don't make the same kinds of mistakes we made in Afghanistan the next time around.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to Mr. Boughen. You have five minutes.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

Professor, welcome. I just have a couple of questions.

You alluded a number of times in your speech to the size of the Canadian Forces—the army, air force, and navy—and you also chatted a little bit about the capabilities of the forces. Could you share with the group what you think the size of the forces should be, and how you see them doing the job in terms of their capabilities?

[Dr. Jack Granatstein]

We have a force now of about 65,000 regulars and approximately 30,000 reservists. I think we need a minimum of 10,000 more regular force personnel, and a reserve force of approximately 50,000. In other words, we need a force of about 120,000 all told to be able to do the things we want to do.

The fact our infantry are so short-staffed that they have to pirate companies from one battalion to fill out the ranks of a battalion that's deploying is an indication of the difficulty we have.

This, of course, costs money. This takes time. It takes training. I don't think there's necessarily a shortage of recruits at the moment, but there is, however, a shortage of training spaces—for training trainers primarily—because of the stress of the deployments. That's another advantage of the R and R period that I had suggested was necessary. It allows the training system to catch up.

On capabilities, again I think we need to be a multi-purpose force, given our location, given our image of ourselves and our responsibilities around the world.

The area that I think is in most serious difficulty is the navy. There was a letter by the chief of maritime staff yesterday, I believe, that talked about how the navy was taking maritime coastal defence vessels out of service, laying up some of the frigates, and reducing the capabilities of some of our already obsolete AORs. This is pretty serious.

We've waited far too long for the shipbuilding policy to come out, on which various acquisitions hinge, and we're into a crisis, given the long lead time it takes to acquire ships. I think the navy is critical for us. For a force with about 8,000 personnel, it has done extraordinarily good service around the world. It can't keep that up very much longer, and unless we get under way quickly on acquiring new fighting vessels and new support vessels, we are going to be in very serious difficulty.

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to Mr. Wilfert.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have two areas of questioning.

You established that there's vital interest in the Caribbean and Latin America. Obviously, we have issues dealing with global warming, oil exploration in the Arctic, and some strategic issues with regard to contested space there. In the Pacific Ocean, there's the rise of China, particularly maybe an arms race, and dealing with the navy. When Professor Bland was before us, he argued we should be building a navy-centric rather than an army-centric military in order to respond to these issues. Could you comment?

[Dr. Jack Granatstein]

I have a great deal of regard for Doug Bland, who's a very capable and thoughtful man on these issues. There's a lot to be said for being navy-centric. However, it is much more expensive than being equal among the services, or being army-centric or air-centric. The cost of ships is staggering, and it goes up all the time. If we're going to go that route, and a case can be made for it, we need to be prepared to spend more money than we have been spending thus far.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Richmond Hill, ON]

I appreciate that.

If we did not have an army, navy, or air force, and we were to design one in order to respond to the national interests you've indicated, how would you design it? What would you suggest we really need?