National Defence Committee on May 25th, 2010

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

I have one last question, if I have time, and maybe both of you can jump in.

We talked about the nineties, and I won't get you to explain your version of that. We were told by some that things have changed at the UN, with Resolution 1265, the responsibility to protect civilians, the New Horizon project, etc. Do either of you think Canada should be playing a role at the UN in trying to assist this process and provide some leadership at the UN on this matter, or should we leave that to somebody else?

[Dr. Ann Livingstone]

In every meeting I go to, I'm asked one question: when will Canada come back and help us? I think Canada's leadership on the world stage—particularly in areas like New Horizon, which talks about partnering, which talks about the need for a command-and-control structure, which talks about the need for training and equipment—Canada's long-term history, and Canada's experience in Afghanistan makes it a principal player in this.

[David Lord]

I think we've been through an extraordinary period since 9/11, and this has changed the direction that began at the end of the Cold War. I think we're continually going through a readjustment, and the current readjustment that is out there is the Americans returning to more of a multilateral approach, more work through multilateral organizations like the United Nations, coming to friends and allies and asking for their support in that new direction. While we've been focused almost exclusively on Afghanistan, there has been a lot of other movement and progress within the United Nations, and we should be looking at not necessarily going back to a leadership role--that would be great--but simply greater participation, because that's where a lot of the action has been and will continue to be.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to Mr. Hawn.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you both for being here and for your excellent presentations.

I want to explore the skill sets and the Canadian approach a little bit. We talked about the skill sets that we're developing in Afghanistan, that we have developed, that take account of cultural differences and the spectrum of things we have to deal with in a place like that.

I'd like comments from both of you, I guess, on the Canadian approach, which changed significantly about a year and a half ago and is now being copied, basically, by the allies, wherein we now have the capacity, boots on the ground, to go into a place and (a) clear the Taliban, and (b) stay there and do development, and that goes back to development without peace. Yes, that's difficult, but I'd like to suggest that peace is local. All politics is local, peace is local, so development, I suggest, can go on locally in places in Afghanistan--not necessarily the whole country--but really, that is a more practical approach to it.

I'd like comments from both of you, please.

[Dr. Ann Livingstone]

Yes, I would tend to agree, sir, it is local, and you start small. You have to make it fit where you are.

I think some of the skill sets that are most important are simple skill sets that are quite complex, like mentoring and advising and monitoring and evaluating and knowing how to negotiate and mediate, knowing how to have intercultural communication, being savvy to what that landscape is. I think Canada, in this instance, has acquitted itself quite brilliantly in understanding how to do that. Therefore, when it comes time to develop that local development capacity, there is a trust relationship that is built there that is really critically important in Afghanistan, but you would find that same need in the Congo.

[David Lord]

In your study you focused on peace operations post-2011. I think one thing you might want to consider, and this might sound a little bit off the wall, is the possibility of progress toward a political settlement within Afghanistan, greater involvement of the United Nations in leading that and also forming the backbone of a security structure to implement a national political settlement within Afghanistan, and possibly a role for Canada in a peace operation that is run by the United Nations within Afghanistan post-2011.

I would agree with you and with Ann that peace is necessary at the local level across the board in any country, to have that kind of sense of security and harmony and a space for development and progress and so on. But I think you also need it at the national level and you need it at the regional level when it comes to Afghanistan, and that's something I think we should be working toward.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Yes, it's a building-block approach, I would suggest.

We talked about the continuum of operations and how at the far end or the higher end of the spectrum they can be pretty chaotic. The UN has bluntly, in my view, been a dismal failure at dealing with chaos. How do we get the UN back on track in being able to deal with chaos more effectively than they have in the past?

[Dr. Ann Livingstone]

I would assert that the UN is only as strong as its member states allow it to be. It's a voluntary compliance organization, and I think here again is where the developed world's absence from the discourse and absence from decision-making has allowed or has resulted in the UN's abysmal responses.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Can I ask you to go a little deeper? Two-thirds of the members of the UN are not democracies. I think this is some of the frustration of the developed world in trying to deal through the UN, because they get thwarted to death at most turns by the undemocratic two-thirds of the organization. How do we fix that?

[Dr. Ann Livingstone]

Right. Again, one can say that we wish we could wave the magic wand and have them all democratic in a nightfall, but I think the reality is that the slow drip, drip of leadership, mentoring, and advising by countries such as Canada helps to dissuade and helps to change.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Part of that is again complex peace operations versus the classical word “peacekeeping”. There's a fair bit of education I think that needs to go on for the Canadian public. We've talked about the attention span of the public and government, and the media, frankly, because it is a long-term process; it's a drip, drip process. How do we keep Canadians' attention span long enough to try to build a little bit of understanding about some of these very complex operations? It's not just simply put on a blue beret and strap on a sidearm and go fix the Congo.

[Dr. Ann Livingstone]

I think that's where Parliament has such an important role as a teacher, as a leader to its constituents. I think that's where history becomes very important. I think that's where myth busting becomes extremely important. And institutions like Peacebuild and the PPC can be helpful in that, but when economic tensions and economic realities address local folks' pocketbooks, it makes it a little bit harder to keep the attention span going on, I'll grant you that.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Lord, do you have any comments on that?

[David Lord]

I'd agree very much with the idea that Parliament should be leading on this kind of issue. I think part of what you're doing here with this study and other studies that the committee undertakes is part of that process. I'd also make a pitch for talking more with NGOs and with academics, and maintaining those connections, maintaining that kind of consultative mechanism and momentum, because that's a means of connecting with the public and connecting with larger constituencies.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I'd like to talk about parliamentary involvement in decisions a little bit. The decision to deploy troops is a prerogative of the executive, technically speaking, although obviously parliamentarians should have a knowledge. I would suggest that in terms of the pre-discussion about parameters, about conditions under which we should deploy, it's the purview of parliamentarians to work with the public to build understanding and so on. But because of time constraints and lack of specific knowledge by parliamentarians about a specific situation, I think it would be a little bit unrealistic in a lot of cases for Parliament to make the decision on deployment.

Do you have comments on that?

[David Lord]

I would agree with you on that. I think any new situation is going to be difficult. I think there's perhaps a problem arising where we're looking for the perfect situation for Canada to get involved in. That ain't going to happen. It's going to be a place where we don't have the knowledge, where we don't necessarily have the historical capacities, where it will seem to be a great necessity. There will be public pressure. There will be political pressure. Hopefully, we've learned some things in relation to Afghanistan and other events of the recent past about how to gather information, how to process that information, and how to move along with the public on some of these issues, and to communicate more about what are the parameters for involvement.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Martin for cinq minutes.

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

Merci beaucoup, monsieur le président.

Thank you very much, Ms. Livingstone and Mr. Lord, for being here today.

Ms. Livingstone, what do we do in cases...? These days most conflicts are intra-state; there's no willing partner, which, as you said, was a prerequisite for action, but we have a responsibility to protect. What can we do to deal with those conflicts?

[Dr. Ann Livingstone]

Responsibility to protect as a political process I think is different from protection of civilians. I would like to address it from a protection of civilians perspective, because I'm not adroit enough at speaking about politics.

When we have the kinds of conflicts that we do, where we see the damage to the civilian population, whether it's in genocide or the mass rape that we're seeing in Congo, I think one of the questions that has to be asked is, how and when do we engage? Do we engage at the prevention cycle, at the very beginning of it, when we see the patterns emerging, or is this a good use of resources and time, and is this a values issue? In the intra-state conflict, where it's all confused with economics, and it's confused with politics and with time, I think that's when we have difficulty making a decision.

I'm not sure I'm answering your question.

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

In the interest of full disclosure, I asked Jack Granatstein the same question and he couldn't answer it either. It's a tough one.

I'd like to ask both of you for your ideas. Do we have to improve our own intelligence capabilities, including our ability to provide better skill sets in language and culture? We saw in Afghanistan what in my personal view was an abysmal failure in terms of understanding the people and the cultures that we were dealing with. In the process of that, we've had an appalling political process that had to.... We had a good military intervention, but the political process was a mere runt compared to the military one. Part of that I think is due to the fact that we didn't understand the culture. I'm not sure we actually have the cultural and linguistic capabilities to do that, nor the intelligence capabilities, which I don't think we have external to our borders.

Do we need to develop such a capability, and if so, how would we do it?

[David Lord]

I think Jack Granatstein said he wasn't qualified to answer that question.

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

He said he couldn't.

[David Lord]

But I'll take it at a different angle. As far as the intelligence establishment, I'm not qualified to answer that question either, but I certainly have opinions about what could be done to increase the knowledge of parliamentarians, the media, and the bureaucracy in these kinds of situations. Part of it is using this tool of parliamentary committees to get involved and get focused on a particular issue and begin bringing in expert witnesses. There are hundreds of non-governmental organizations, academics, people within various diasporas, and so on, who have a tremendous amount of knowledge about their particular homelands, areas of work, and/or academic expertise. I think one of the issues is pulling that information together in a hurry in certain circumstances to be able to begin making the judgment calls that are necessary.

So in relation to Congo, Haiti, Côte d'Ivoire, or Ethiopia, there are hundreds if not thousands of people within Canada who have a tremendous amount of knowledge related to those situations. Some sort of systematic process could tap into that.

[Dr. Ann Livingstone]

As a quick example, when we were preparing for a course we were delivering to the UN police in Darfur, we reached into the diaspora community in Hamilton and learned how to address issues of sexual and gender-based violence that are culturally taboo. So we were able to get questions translated in Darfur. My staff understood how to put culture into the training materials, which then resulted in a very successful course in Darfur that allowed police to be more effective at gathering evidence.