National Defence Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2011

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

Yes.

Thank you, Lieutenant-General.

There's an article in this morning's paper by Jack Granatstein, which may have direct bearing on your abilities, your readiness, if you will, as a Canadian army. The article is entitled “NATO is a shell of its former self”. It's quite a thorough review of Britain's reduced capabilities, certainly the Greek reduced capabilities, and Italy's reduced capabilities. The shoe has yet to drop with the U.S., but it's pretty obvious that there's going to be a substantially reduced capability in the U.S.

Then he gets to Canada, and he says:

The $9 billion the federal government seems prepared to spend--even if almost no one except the defence minister really believes that figure--will skyrocket. If DND sticks to buying the F-35, therefore, other items will need to go. The big naval procurement plans, proudly announced a few weeks back, will certainly be slowed. So will the army's Close Combat Vehicle project, the refurbishment of the Light Armoured Vehicle fleet, and myriad other programs. Some informed sources have even suggested that the army's nine infantry battalions might be reduced to six.

That's a potentially significant hit on your readiness to do all the things the government has tasked to you to do.

I'd be interested in your thoughts as to how in effect you might defend the army's ability to project itself in all of the tasks you might be asked to do, and what you're trained to do, given the enormous constraints that pretty well all the armies around the world are under--and so also will be Canada.

[LGen Peter J. Devlin]

Thank you, sir; great point, great question.

I'm fiercely proud of our army--50% regular, 50% reserve--an army that has three regular brigades, ten reserve brigades, and the battalions and regiments you talked about are the regular elements, the nine regular battalions that we have.

We have made adjustments. We continue to make adjustments in that those battalions are not all identical. We are moving so that three out of nine battalions will be light battalions, trained, equipped, and gifted at doing light infantry operations--

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

Just for my own sake, because I'm not quite sure what that means, can you explain what a “light” battalion means?

[LGen Peter J. Devlin]

Perhaps I could roll back a bit. There is the future land combat vehicle system, which is doing an upgrade to our LAV III. It's purchasing 100-ish close combat vehicles and 500 tactical armoured patrol vehicles.

The end state will see close combat vehicles in a regiment of our infantry. It will see our three infantry regiments, each with three battalions that will have one light and two mechanized. There is a mix. It's an asymmetric approach because of the number of vehicles we have, the respect for the complexity of the equipment, the sparing, the maintenance, and the infrastructure necessary to be able to support those fleets.

So I believe we have made adjustments respectful of the budget, respectful of the plan to purchase those three major fleets--LAV III, close combat vehicle, and tactical armoured patrol vehicles--and we provide the Canadian Forces with the flexibility it needs to be able to respond to anticipated tasks in the future.

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

Given, if you will, the reality of government's desire to reduce the military budget, what is the difference between, if you will—this is a very poor phrase—the wish list and the reality list, in terms of the differences in those vehicles and also in terms of your personnel?

[LGen Peter J. Devlin]

I don't know what the.... So we would want more people, or more...?

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

Presumably at one point or another the army submitted a set of specifications for going forward.

[LGen Peter J. Devlin]

Sure.

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

You're obviously adjusting, so what's the difference between what you initially asked for and what you're getting?

[LGen Peter J. Devlin]

Thanks, sir.

With each of those vehicle purchases, to use that as an example, there is a base number of vehicles, plus an option. We anticipate that we would not have that: that the government would not have the flexibility to exercise the options.

For instance, in the tactical and patrol vehicle buy, it's 500 and an option for another 100. We anticipate that we would probably not receive government authority to purchase the options that are built into each one of those vehicle purchases.

That's my response on the equipment side--

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

In percentage terms, is it roughly true that with each buy you're basically down 20% or potentially down 20%?

[LGen Peter J. Devlin]

Sir, I wouldn't say that we are down. I would say that we said “this is what we need and this option provides additional flexibility for the army”. We have provided these. These buys go through, and of course the LAV upgrade contract was signed last month. Each of the contenders of the CCV, the close combat vehicle, and the tactical armoured patrol vehicle are undergoing testing at present, and we're hopeful that there will be a decision in the spring of 2012 for which vehicle best meets the needs of our country.

So there is a base we need and then there is an option that provides additional flexibility.

On the people side, we have made adjustments to harness the learning that is taking place in Afghanistan with what I call the enablers. Lessons that have been learned there, such as counter improvised explosive devices information, operations, civilian-military cooperation, and our cooperation and our learning with helicopters, are all things in which we have invested people out of the field force into a different part of the field force.

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

Does that mean--

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Your time has expired. I know it goes by fast when you're having fun.

We're going to go to our five-minute round.

Mr. Opitz, would you like to kick us off?

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses.

General and Army Sergeant-Major, it's delightful to have you here today.

Thank you so much, General. As a class B reservist myself in the past, in planning exercises I've seen you many times at Wainwright and at other places, planning and doing your job, and of course we've seen some of the deployments that you've been on.

You've served Canada brilliantly and with great honour, sir, as has the Army Sergeant-Major. I'd like to thank you both for your service.

For clarity on some of the questions that my honourable friend was asking, as a class B reservist backfilling a regular force position and doing some of those budgeting exercises, I know it would be true that I think what we're really talking about is a prioritization of what factors you have in terms of allocated resources and what you can buy. Would you then organize those things, in the course of action, based on certain sets of scenarios?

[LGen Peter J. Devlin]

Thank you, sir.

That's in fact what has happened, sir. The purchase of the future land combat vehicles was very much developed on the priorities of and with respect to the Canada First defence strategy.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

That's great.

You talked about lessons learned in Afghanistan and in other missions. From Bosnia in the early 1990s to having progressed through a full-fledged combat mission and now into a training mission in Afghanistan, how are you, as the CLS, applying those lessons learned?

I'm going to also address the Army Sergeant-Major as well, because I'm interested in your perspective on how you're going to apply those lessons learned to developing senior NCOs and bringing up those troops, especially troops that have not had the opportunity because they're either young or not fully trained yet and have not been in Afghanistan to benefit from those lessons learned.

General, could you comment on that, please?

[LGen Peter J. Devlin]

I sure can, sir. Thank you very much; a great point.

I think Mr. Moretti and I are fiercely proud of the learning that has taken place over the past decade. I use the term “warrior spirit” because these soldiers are guys and gals who are confident, are skilled, and enjoy a great respect from Canadians. They have adjusted their training. We have helped adjust their training. We have institutionalized some of these enablers. I would use examples like our ability to operate with helicopters, so our air mobile capability is something that has developed over our period of time in Afghanistan. The respect for counter improvised explosive devices, the counter-IED task force that has been established, provides a great connection with our allies. In fact, Canada is hosting an international symposium in Quebec early next month on counter improvised explosive devices.

Our influence activities, both information operations and CIMIC, our very healthy respect for the need to be driven by intelligence and the analysis of the battlefield, our source handling, how we coordinate and synchronize a level of awareness of the battlefield that causes us to advance with deliberate purpose--all are things that have changed over our time in Afghanistan.

Some of these capabilities are institutionalized. Some of these are tied to how we train. We have a very strong lessons learned process. Every “roto” into Afghanistan has had a lessons learned team visit to be aware of the evolving tactics, techniques, and procedures, and changes in how the threat has evolved. That has been brought back to our training at the Canadian Manoeuvre Training Centre so that the troops going into battle next have that rich understanding of what is happening today.

I would also emphasize the fact that our awareness and our coordination with our whole-of-government partners has also grown tremendously over that period of time.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Mr. Moretti.

[Sgt Maj Gino Moretti]

Thank you very much, sir.

I would like to make one very important point.

When we speak about warrior spirit, we also tell the soldiers how to be morally and ethically correct at any moment in time.

I had the opportunity to become an RCIS divisional sergeant-major in Afghanistan for one year, with 22 nations. As I saw the young Canadians on the battlefield, it was awesome, because I knew that if something was going to happen, we all reacted as one team in a firefight: the lessons learned were always given back to Canada to make sure that the next rotation was ready.

I had an opportunity to take part in deployments to the Netherlands, in a combat environment, as well as in Romania. We had problems. We lost some of their soldiers, because they were not as well prepared as Canadians.

They had not learned the lessons at that moment in time, and that cost lives. One of our systems.... As I said, we train to a platinum level, but we do train for the worse-case scenarios so when the soldier does go, he has learned the lessons before deploying so that we don't lose a Canadian life on the battlefield, sir.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

On reserves specifically, it's one thing to maintain the battle readiness, the operating readiness of regular force soldiers, because obviously they're full-time and they're committed to the training cycle. But it's a little more difficult with reservists because when they do go, our class A--in particular, those who have served in Afghanistan--make up to, I think, anywhere between 22% and 25% of any given mission at times. Now these troops are back, skill fade is something that we have to be cognizant of.

What are the plans to try to maintain at least a basic level of readiness, especially with those soldiers who have come back from Afghanistan with combat skills in place?

[LGen Peter J. Devlin]

Thank you, sir. That's a great point and a question close to my heart.

I would first emphasize that funding for class A, our reserve army, is not threatened. It is protected. It is 37.5 days per year plus seven days of collective training, plus augmentation to regular force training events. It is protected because it's vital that our army, the Canadian Forces in Canada, has that level of training.

So we provide training. We provide collective training opportunities and we provide the bigger collective training opportunities where we need to keep those reserve soldiers at that level of training. In our equipment buys, there are fleets that will be kept at the area of level to provide access to the reserve soldiers who have not seen that over the past number of years, because the vehicles have been used in Afghanistan. I think that's also a vitally important part of reserve readiness.

The last point I would make would be one tied to these enablers. Because reserve soldiers are magical folks and some of those skill sets--CIMIC, influence activities--are things that could be a secondary task to a reserve unit, we are studying now how they could augment and provide a great strength to the challenges of tomorrow.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Your time has expired.

Mr. Kellway, you have the floor.

[Matthew Kellway, NDP, Beaches—East York, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, General and Sergeant-Major, for being here with us today.

You know, I'm struck, as our witnesses keep coming forward, the many well-decorated witnesses from our military forces...and they talk about the Canada First defence strategy. They talk about it very proudly and laud its existence. But it seems to me that it poses some very serious difficulties, frankly, for this issue of readiness. I come back to the role described in that strategy of projecting leadership abroad. It almost seems to contradict readiness.

I looked at your notes, General, this morning, which I appreciate very much. But you talk about the fact that we don't know exactly what the world is going to look like three to five years from now and that there is a menu of new and unanticipated challenges. Where we seem to end up is with a commitment that our military forces be all things to everybody and go anywhere, from the frozen north to the jungles in the south.

I don't know if there's a question there, but I'd like to know how we are to take seriously the notion of readiness when the military keeps coming to us saying that we need to be everything to everybody at any time.

Can you respond to that for me?

[LGen Peter J. Devlin]

I sure can.