Evidence of meeting #18 for National Defence in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was conflict.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Ann Livingstone  Vice-President, Research, Education and Learning Design, Pearson Peacekeeping Centre
David Lord  Executive Director, Peacebuild
Clerk of the Committee  Mr. Paul Cardegna

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Maxime Bernier

Thank you very much.

Now I'll give the floor to Mr. Hawn.

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Livingstone, you mentioned a senior mission leaders course at the UN. I hadn't heard of that, although I understand what it is.

What kind of people are you trying to get there, and what are you trying to teach them?

12:20 p.m.

Vice-President, Research, Education and Learning Design, Pearson Peacekeeping Centre

Dr. Ann Livingstone

That course is sponsored and paid for by member states or institutions like the PPC. The United Nations puts together a list of potential SRSGs—heads of mission, force commanders, police commissioners, heads of country teams—and brings them together for a two-week period to work together in decision-making. They learn how the UN system works and what a mission looks like. We have been involved in those training activities several times now.

12:20 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

Mr. Lord, we've talked about the difficulty of getting into a mission, and obviously missions change over time, especially when you're there for a number of years and it may not look anything like it did at the start. Another factor in that is the local actors. You know, we don't get to pick the local actors. We don't get to pick the Taliban. We don't get to pick Hamid Karzai. We don't get to pick Karzai's brother or any of these guys, but we just have to work with them.

Can you just comment on some of the challenges of that and how we handle that, as we tend to apply Canadian context to Afghanistan, and the difficulty that presents to messaging, that it's not Canada and we can't expect things to happen in Afghanistan as they happen in Canada?

12:20 p.m.

Executive Director, Peacebuild

David Lord

I do see this as you do, as a tremendous dilemma. Situations will arise during the course of an engagement that make it look increasingly difficult, with the increasing possibility that we are looking at a tremendous waste of life and money and political capital. And how do you keep the faith? How do you continue to bring the public along with an engagement that remains necessary?

NGOs, for instance, were involved in Afghanistan prior to the Taliban and through the Taliban era. And they will continue to be involved there after the Americans are gone and perhaps.... There is that continuity of engagement of various groups and constituencies.

Canada will continue to be involved in Afghanistan diplomatically as long as it exists as a state. Our military intervention, as part of a larger process, has had its ups and downs, and hopefully we're moving very, very gradually towards a more peaceful Afghanistan where there will be stability and there won't be that need for the military commitment and so on.

Taking a long view is a means of appealing to the common sense of people. We've made these investments. It is important to us and to the region to try to keep things in perspective, while being realistic as well about the setbacks and not diminishing the importance of the setbacks.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

Along that line, 40 years ago Afghanistan really was a reasonably 20th century country with arts and culture and government and a thriving economy and so on. It has gone back to the 14th century in many ways. Obviously we're trying to bring it back to the 20th century.

I know there is no answer to this, but what is your perspective on the patience required and the challenge required to stick with this for the long term? And what do you see Canada doing to help that, post-2011, if you have some specific suggestions?

12:25 p.m.

Vice-President, Research, Education and Learning Design, Pearson Peacekeeping Centre

Dr. Ann Livingstone

In Afghanistan it's going to be that continued involvement at the local level and making sure that which is local stays safe. And that can extrapolate up, then, into the regional and then into the national. So with the staying power to ensure local stability, people begin to see how their lives are better and then they themselves take responsibility for their security. That will be the key for Canadians' involvement.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

Is it a matter of giving the Afghan people themselves just simply the confidence to say, “Yes, we can do this and we can control our future”? Right now they're probably not very confident.

12:25 p.m.

Vice-President, Research, Education and Learning Design, Pearson Peacekeeping Centre

Dr. Ann Livingstone

Part of it is confidence building. Part of it is capability analysis. A lot of it is capacity-building. A lot of it is involvement of the women of Afghanistan, who are far more powerful than we give them credit for being.

So again, it's that more holistic look at what we can do from our lessons learned and our best practices that will ensure the sacrifices that have been made are not in vain and they valorize that in many ways.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

Do you have any specific suggestions about what Canada's role should be, post-2011?

12:25 p.m.

Vice-President, Research, Education and Learning Design, Pearson Peacekeeping Centre

Dr. Ann Livingstone

In Afghanistan?

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

Yes.

12:25 p.m.

Vice-President, Research, Education and Learning Design, Pearson Peacekeeping Centre

Dr. Ann Livingstone

I would like to see Canada stay, in terms of development, in terms of diplomacy. I would like it to be engaged in capacity-building for the Afghan government. How do you get rule of law that is both culturally appropriate and within the confines of universal principles? Again, it is a long haul.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

Thank you.

12:25 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Maxime Bernier

Thank you very much.

We're going to have a third round of two minutes for each party.

First, Monsieur Bachand pour deux minutes, and after that Mr. Harris, and after that somebody from the Conservative Party.

12:25 p.m.

Bloc

Claude Bachand Bloc Saint-Jean, QC

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have two minutes, so I will be quick.

Could you talk a little about PRTs? In a way, PRTs are an American invention that NATO has accepted. As you know, PRTs are not all alike. Each country decides on its makeup and its philosophy. I clearly remember General Richards, from Great Britain, explaining to us that he was in favour of the ink spot theory. He said that it would be the PRTs throughout Afghanistan that would spread democracy and put children back into school, and so on. I have to say that they are not having much success at the moment.

So could you talk about PRTs? Do you think that they should have some basic uniformity? What is a PRT? Do you think that the ink spot theory is the best approach in Afghanistan, or anywhere else?

12:25 p.m.

Executive Director, Peacebuild

David Lord

I haven't seen any comprehensive study of the PRTs. I haven't seen very much information at all, objective information, about Canada's PRT, so I think it's difficult to make a judgment on their reach, their efficiency, and how useful a tool they've been in Afghanistan.

I agree that there are a lot of different kinds of approaches. One of the principal approaches I thought with our PRT was to be a springboard to augment the Government of Afghanistan's reach within and around Kandahar and so on. It does not seem to me to have been a success, from what I've...just in the limited Canadian PRT range.

12:30 p.m.

Vice-President, Research, Education and Learning Design, Pearson Peacekeeping Centre

Dr. Ann Livingstone

There has clearly been a need expressed by the 35 different PRTs for some semblance of coherence, for similar patterns. But again, when this is a new idea, sometimes we have to do what we do right now in order to learn the lessons, and figure out what the best practices are when we come back together again in this model.

12:30 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Maxime Bernier

Merci. Thank you very much.

Monsieur Harris.

12:30 p.m.

NDP

Jack Harris NDP St. John's East, NL

Thank you.

I have a rather vexed question. This is partly about military culture. We heard Mr. Hawn say we can't just put on a blue beret and a sidearm and go down to fix the Congo. I say this with respect: that's a scoffing view of the role of peacekeepers. We had General Hillier say, “We're here to kill scumbags and murderers.” So the military may have a view of their world that is totally different from other people's.

Are they the ones who do this mentoring, mediation, peace-building, capacity-building, all of that within their culture, or does that have to be done by somebody else? We put a lot of money into the military. We're spending a lot of money on the military in Afghanistan. Do we need, for lack of a better word, a peace corps that we are prepared to spend lots of money on to do similar work on the building side, or can it be done through the military? It's a very vexed question.

12:30 p.m.

Executive Director, Peacebuild

David Lord

Within the United Nations there's been a lot of work done in the last couple of years on building up mediation capacity, which is a political capacity. There's a mediation support unit that's been developed there that goes into hot spots and tries to work on solutions to emerging conflicts. NGOs are involved in peace-building at a local level. Some NGOs are involved in conflict resolution at the political level in track II kinds of diplomacy. There are all kinds of different instruments there.

The military, in these particular areas, I think sometimes has a need to act as a mediator, but the military, in my mind, is focused on military objectives. Diplomats, NGOs, local governments, and so on are focused on political objectives, economic objectives, security objectives. So there are different approaches and different sets of people involved in these kinds of issues. In some cases, there's a good fit; in others, it's not a good fit.

12:30 p.m.

Vice-President, Research, Education and Learning Design, Pearson Peacekeeping Centre

Dr. Ann Livingstone

I think this is where my language of the “blue briefcase” becomes really important. It is that other side of the security envelope where you get rule of law, corrections, justice, economics, and institution building, that has to move alongside of the military when you're coming into a secure environment. Is it just the military's job? No. Is it just a civilian job? No. It is this complex “joined-up-ness” that we still have a hard time getting our heads wrapped around.

Yes, it's vexing, but my suggestion would be that we'd better get our heads around it, because if we don't, what we see is that even if you get peace you'll see a return to conflict within a five-year window in about 50% of these things. One can make an argument that if you get rule of law institutions, good justice, good corrections, and good policing and public safety, that is a mitigating factor in returning to an insecure environment.

12:30 p.m.

A voice

And good parliaments.

12:30 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Maxime Bernier

Thank you very much.

Now I will give the floor to Mr. Hawn.

12:30 p.m.

Conservative

Laurie Hawn Conservative Edmonton Centre, AB

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Far from being a scoffing view of Congo, I would suggest it's a dose of just plain bloody reality. I would like your comment on what Mr. Harris said about the Canadian military. I would suggest to you, and I'd like your comment as you see fit, that the Canadian military is trained in much more than weaponry and so on. In my personal view, they are probably the most well-equipped individuals in this whole government group, who can take everything from doing the really tough stuff to doing the mentoring, the development, the training, and the capacity-building. They are probably, individually, the best trained group overall to do that. I'd like your comments on that.