National Defence Committee on Nov. 17th, 2011

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

Yes, sir.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

That's helpful.

What about in terms of structures on a particular site? I'm assuming that at a hub the structures would tend to be much less permanent than, say, at a camp.

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

Correct. What you will need, based on the range and activities being forecast, will be some basic parameters you will try to put in place. I talked about warehouse space as an example. There would potentially be throughput for the military, so if I'm doing force projection, I'm bringing troops in, maybe overnighting them, maybe moving them on. There could be a requirement for feeding that you would have too, based on your troop size.

All of those fundamental logistics questions would need to be answered, and we would have to go through a process of evaluation of what you can get based on where you are, and dependent upon which country you are considering, there are various levels of capability that exist. My sense is you will end up with a complement of military and civilian and contract capabilities, in terms of what you went after.

Am I saying it is cost neutral? No, it is not cost neutral, but at the same time the intent is not to build a capability, to have something sitting there waiting. The key is to have a flexible arrangement that allows you, based on a named operation, to be able to start to use the arrangements you have in place, to start to build that capability.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

It's an essential idea to have, in effect—I was going to say a storage shed, but that's a little crude—someplace where there is already materiel that the CF could use and just be able to scale up from that basic....

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

I don't foresee at this time it being prepositioning of materiel, if that's what your question is implying. I see very clearly force projection sustainment. You will need warehouse space. If you're putting a force into a place, I'm going to bring materiel in. I'm going to then change it from that strategic lift to that tactical lift. I will go through the mechanics of what that looks like—so it's a seaport, air-head facilities, warehouse space. We will go through that assessment. If you're asking specifically if I need to go rent warehouse space today to have stuff prepositioned, the answer is no.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

What about…? We'll take Jamaica as an example. It's not likely we're going to be conducting a war in the Gulf of Mexico, but presumably you would anticipate some humanitarian intervention. Would you preposition materiel in Jamaica that you may not in some other potential theatre?

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

Jamaica is probably a good example, if we think back to the Haiti issue. In the Haiti earthquake--very tragic--we actually were able to use Jamaica as an air-head, so in fact the air force used it primarily for strategic lift and then they transshipped into tactical lift to move into Port-au-Prince. At the same time, I was using the Dominican Republic as a seaport because we didn't know the conditions in Port-au-Prince.

All that to say, you do have a flexible capability in that part of the region, and I would say disaster assistance, very clearly. Unfortunately, that part of the region every year has a hurricane watch. For us to be able to be prepared to respond to that part of the world, not unlike others, is very real. The government has shown a level of interest and need, so therefore I think it's prudent that we look at that part of the world also.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Last but not least, Mr. Alexander, you have the floor again.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Could I give my time to Mr. Opitz, please, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Sure.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Just on that point, General, so we're clear, these informal agreements between other militaries would be somewhat formalized through the memorandums of understanding, so it's clearly articulated who's using what, what resources, that kind of thing. Would that be fair to say?

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

Again, I don't want to over-complicate the legalese. When I use the term “MOU”, in my mind it refers to a government-to-government relationship that is short of a treaty, in terms of how you would be allowed to move people through and talk about some jurisdiction issues and such. When you talk about the levels of military support—I made mention of cross-servicing arrangements—that is more of a U.S. term. I also talk about mutual logistic support arrangements, and I mentioned that in the Italy context. We use that presently in a NATO context.

To the extent to which existing authorities exist in government, for us to enter into agreements, whether it's cross-servicing arrangements where authorities exist or whether it's mutual logistic support arrangements where authorities exist, then it is a tool that we will continue to use.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Perfect.

In terms of recruitment for CANOSCOM, so “loggies”, engineers, comms-types, how do you go about that? How do you generate your own troops?

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

I, personally, do not have to generate my own troops. The training system, of course...when you talk about loggies, as an example, they are actually owned by the joint community. So the Chief of Military Personnel is the functional authority for logistics. That capability will be generated. In terms of force flows and requirements, I add into that. If I see deficiencies in training of logisticians coming out, whether it be the enlisted ranks or the officers, I will provide input to the training system to identify those additional training requirements.

The piece that I really love is that CANOSCOM has been, in my humble opinion, a success story of great professionals doing great work, so I don't have any issues with respect to recruiting, in terms of getting people who want to come and join the organization. But, again, the actual recruit in the door, that is not something I have to spend time on personally.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

On that point, then—and I ask you to answer briefly, because I want to share my time and give Mr. Chisu one more opportunity—in a Maple Leaf article, I think a couple of years ago, it described how CANOSCOM has helped our allies. It served as a model. So you had NATO come in, the UN. Approximately 25 different countries have come to observe CANOSCOM's operation and have looked at how they could apply that template, that battle rhythm, and all the other good stuff you do to their own armies.

Can you comment on how we helped our allies improve their logistical tail, so to speak?

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

Relationships, in my mind, are critical. Part of my responsibility, with strategic importance, is that I sit on a number of boards or forums that allow me to interact with the international. There's one in particular. We have a Quadrilateral Logistics Forum, which essentially is the United States, the U.K., Australia, and ourselves. We meet twice a year. It's exactly that: we share best practices, we share areas that we think we need to enhance in coalition operations, and we actually learn from each other.

But I do agree about joint operations and how CANOSCOM is seen. It is seen as a force multiplier from many international venues. Again, the U.K. has very much a joint focus, in terms of what it's doing. Australia, which is about our size, very clearly has a significant joint focus. Collectively, we agree that where we are today and what we have evolved towards is a combat multiplier in terms of the conduct of military operations. I do agree with you that the Canadian military is seen as not necessarily the frontrunner, but we are seen as one of the strong proponents of coalition operations and joint operations and provide some great lessons and feedback.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you.

Go ahead.

[Corneliu Chisu, Conservative, Pickering—Scarborough East, ON]

Thank you very much.

General, I have a very short question regarding the relations with other forces in theatre, from the logistics point of view, and on whether you have any interaction with Public Works for certain supports.

Why am I asking you this one? It's because, for example, we have a complicated situation in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is surrounded by so-called friendly countries, the friendly country of Iran, the Waziristan region on the east side. You probably have difficulties or complexities in repatriating, for example, sensitive military hardware. This is the context in which I am asking this question on cooperation with other forces.

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

It is a challenging environment in which to work. In simple terms, if you were to take an overlay of the map around Afghanistan, ISAF over the last number of years has made great advances in terms of expanding ground lines of communication in from the north by rail. A lot of those are bilateral arrangements--the U.S. with other countries, the U.K. with other countries--but it is inflow, as we speak. Clearly, we all understand that as we look to do mission transition, the collective nations are looking for opportunities for outflow, and again, there are significant nation-to-nation engagements that are happening.

I only say that the north, and you have alluded to it...and that part of the world can be very difficult. It's long in terms of negotiation. NATO, because it doesn't bring anything to the table per se on the collective voice of nations, has a bit of a challenge right now, as it is trying, for instance, to establish treaty-level agreements with various northern nations and provide an exit strategy for materiel and such. Therefore, the south ends up being the primary ground line. Again, Pakistan, from my perspective, has worked reasonably well. It has its challenges, but in terms of cost and in terms of our ability to do business, we have essentially established a framework that allows us to use ground lines of communication.

Likewise, the air force...and it's probably a good question for them. But where I get involved is watching the overflight approval process that ends up being very dynamic. Again, it is country-to-country approval, so you find for the most part that the Pakistan overflight route is probably the primary one that we use, and then once you get outside of that, another challenge exists.

All that is to say that we have maintained reasonable relationships with Pakistan, but we have to respect how they operate. For instance, in terms of ground lines, they do not allow foreign militaries to move through. Therefore, our support arrangement for movement of materiel has been a contracted support arrangement that we've had in place for years, and it's relatively effective. So the short answer is that while challenging, it is workable.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

I have a couple of questions for you, General.

When we're talking about readiness, and training is part of readiness, you're saying that because you have joint operations with so many of the personnel who are part of CANOSCOM.... In the past, exercises like Tropical Hammer were run. Are those types of exercises in your division still taking place, to maintain that level of readiness as we go through a quieter time now that operations are winding down in Afghanistan and operations in Libya have come to an end?

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

Tropical Hammer wasn't a very effective tool to essentially generate capability at the general operations support level. To be very candid, as I came in and took responsibility for the high road to readiness training that was undertaken primarily by the army, where it brought together the task force going in, that's where I focused the effort. So instead of doing an independent operation, we added the training requirements to that work-up to high readiness to try to benefit from that overall scheme and take advantage of that.

Moving forward, it's the great question of how you maintain that operational readiness. Again, I think it's really important that we start to move toward taking advantage of CF joint capabilities, whether it's JOINTEX or otherwise.

For instance, we have the division down in Kingston that we'll be supporting as a task force. We'll start to look at getting involved in that. I have a responsibility, for instance, to support the division as it takes on those training opportunities from a Joint Support Group and a Joint Signals Regiment and other complementary capabilities, because I will essentially take advantage of CF joint training opportunities to build and manage capabilities in that framework.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

At Wainwright this year, for both Exercise Maple Resolve and Exercise Maple Defender, the army and air force were both involved in joint operations and joint training, along with some of our allies. Was CANOSCOM involved in those training exercises?

[MGen Mark McQuillan]

Not directly in those. We would have had augmentation but not direct involvement in those.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

CANOSCOM is now five years old. It has been referred to as the crown jewel of the Canadian Armed Forces. It has also been a game changer, I would think, in our ability to deploy rapidly.

As we go forward...and now you're bringing forward the hub concept, and you're saying seven hubs is ideally where you're going, how many of those hubs have actually been set up now? You talked about Cyprus and you talked about Germany, but how many other hubs are in the process of being set up, and will we get to the seven hubs you hope to have?