National Defence Committee on Dec. 15th, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Good morning, everyone.

We're going to continue our study on readiness. Joining us this morning is Vice-Admiral Bruce Donaldson. Of course we've had the vice-admiral here before on supplementary estimates.

We have our full contingent.

Before the admiral starts, just to remind everyone, tomorrow is the deadline for getting the last of your witness lists in to the clerk so that we can organize the last of the study on readiness. We want to get it done some time in February.

Also, now that the House has approved our trip to Toronto and Kingston—and we are going to have a public meeting in Kingston—think about who you would like to have at that committee meeting in Kingston, who those invitees to testify might be. We'll ask that everyone take that into consideration when you submit your witness lists today or tomorrow.

With that, Admiral, the floor is yours.

[Vice-Admiral Bruce Donaldson, Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, Department of National Defence]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good morning, committee members.

I'd like to start by thanking you for the invitation to discuss Canadian Forces readiness from my perspective as Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, and to thank you for taking this on as an area of study and for spending so much time with so many of my colleagues. I'll try to answer any outstanding questions you may have as you begin to wrap up this phase of the study.

When you first began examining the issue of readiness last month, you heard from General Natynczyk, who described a few of our most notable operational successes over the last couple of years, such as our quick response to the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti or our rapid deployment to Libya this past spring, and how the Canadian Forces' high level of readiness was key to delivering the operational effect that was needed in these situations.

In the simplest of terms, General Natynczyk described readiness as “the ability to get the right people, with the right skills and the right equipment, into the right place at the right time...and to sustain that for as long as is required”.

Since then, you've heard from some of the many stakeholders across the defence team who helped contribute to those successes and whose efforts help generate and sustain the operational readiness of the Canadian Forces. Over the past few weeks, they have provided you with a great deal of information about the different ingredients of readiness and you have raised some excellent questions about the management, costs, and future of Canadian Forces readiness.

As the officer responsible for the realization of defence program objectives, I am in the best position to provide answers.

In particular, I know that some committee members have raised questions about government's current fiscal situation and how this could have a potential impact on our operational readiness. The short answer to that question, Mr. Chair, is that the readiness levels of the Canadian Forces, and what readiness looks like overall, will almost certainly change significantly over the coming years. However, I'd add that the government's fiscal policy will only be one of the many factors influencing this change. This is because the Canadian Forces as a whole will be transitioning to a new strategic reality over the same timeframe.

For nearly a decade now, the Canadian Forces have essentially operated in a war-time posture because of our sizeable commitments in Afghanistan. When it comes to resource management, all bets are off when a military goes to war. To deliver on our operational objectives and protect our deployed personnel, the government and the Canadian Forces accepted a significant increase in costs associated with equipment, personnel, and readiness. In addition to helping us succeed in Afghanistan, this short-term surge in operational focus helped achieve the broader readiness levels described to you by the Chief of Defence Staff, the readiness that allowed us to deploy so quickly to Haiti and to Libya and enabled us to modernize and coordinate such sizeable security efforts in support of the Vancouver Olympics and the G-8 and G-20 events in Ontario.

Of course, now that our combat mission has concluded and we are no longer sustaining a 3,000 person task force in Kandahar province, we must take steps to bring our resource requirements back into balance with broader priorities, both in terms of the economic priorities of Canadians as well as in support of our own longer-term capability requirements.

In this context, determining how much to invest in operational readiness is a complex undertaking. For any given potential operation there are a number of different questions related to readiness that need to be asked, such as how big will the operation be, how quickly will we need to deploy, how independent will we need to be, or what enablers can we rely upon other countries to provide, how long will we need to sustain our commitment, and how many other operations should we be prepared to undertake at the same time?

Each of these questions touches on a different aspect of readiness for our force, and for each one, the more ambitious we become, the more resources we must be prepared to invest, resources that then cannot be invested in other areas, such as developing new capabilities or upgrading our infrastructure. No matter how we respond to these kinds of questions, the answers must be achievable within our forecasted budget levels, and they must be sustainable in the long term.

Fortunately, we knew we would have to face these challenges well in advance of the close-out of our combat operations. We acted early on a number of fronts to rebalance the Canadian Forces in response to this transition. Like other federal departments and agencies, we have completed a strategic review and continue to work in support of the government's deficit reduction action plan, but we have also undertaken a number of internally initiated programs in an effort to identify and incorporate lessons learned from our recent operations, to strategically reorient the structures and practices of the defence team, and to prepare ourselves for the security challenges of the future.

This transformation effort is well under way, but it will take time to complete. In some cases the suggestions arising from these studies and initiatives are already being implemented, while in others they are still under review.

But while it is too soon to predict its exact outcome, we will continue to focus the end product on delivering the same three core roles outlined in the Canada First defence strategy: defending Canadians at home, contributing to the defence of North America, and projecting Canadian leadership abroad.

To achieve this vision we will continue to respect the same four pillars of personnel, equipment, infrastructure, and readiness, and we'll balance our resource investment across all four accordingly, because this is what generates effective, deployable capabilities. After all, even the finest soldier can't be deployed without thousands of hours of training, a base from which to operate, and all of the equipment, logistics, and medical support that he or she requires. And even the most advanced aircraft requires a capable pilot, either on the ground or in the aircraft, a reliable ground crew, a hangar, a runway, and adequate fuel and armaments to succeed in its mission.

Of course, adapting to this new post-Afghanistan context and achieving the right investment balance will require tough decisions. Building a new capability or even sustaining the current level of some capabilities will require trade-offs in others. After all, as the Chief of the Defence Staff said, readiness is expensive, so we'll have to be strategic and selective about where and how we devote our resources.

Unfortunately, this may require us to sacrifice some operational agility and flexibility in the short term so that we can generate capabilities we'll need in the longer term.

I cannot promise that over the next few years we will be able to sustain all of our six core missions simultaneously to the extent that we did in 2010. However, what I can promise is that the Canadian Forces will be ready to deliver the best operational output possible with the resources that we have. After all, Mr. Chair, we have a great integrated team at National Defence, with a common vision and an impressive track record, and by continuing the great work that is already under way, I believe we have every reason to be confident that in moving forward we will continue to deliver on the defence and security needs of Canadians and their government.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Admiral, for your opening comments.

We're going to go to our first round. Mr. Kellway, you have seven minutes.

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

Thank you very much.

Vice-Admiral, thank you very much for coming here today.

Your comments in many respects are very similar to those of the chief and the other commanders of the various parts of the Canadian Forces who have come before us, in that you've provided the same definition of readiness, you've talked about a transformation, but you've also concluded that the forces are ready to deliver.

Is there anything in your presentation this morning that implies that the Canadian Forces aren't ready?

[VAdm Bruce Donaldson]

No, sir. But what I can say is that as we look forward to the future, the question really is, ready for what? These are policy decisions made by government. As we shape the future force and as we orient the future force, these are some decisions that will have to be taken so that in a resource-constrained environment, as we are all in, we can actually shape the force to be ready for what Canadians and the government wish us to respond to.

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

Okay.

Mr. Chair, I have no further questions.

On behalf of the official opposition, Vice-Admiral, I thank you for your leadership, and the chief as well, as well as all the other chiefs and commanders who have come before us. I hope you will in some fashion pass on our best wishes for a merry Christmas and a happy new year to all the troops, and our thanks for the service they have provided to our country. All the best.

Thank you.

[VAdm Bruce Donaldson]

Thank you, sir. I'll pass that on.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Mr. Chisu, you're up.

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

Thank you very much, Admiral, for your presentation.

I am delighted to hear that everything is going well in the Canadian Forces.

You mentioned in your presentation as one of the points preparing ourselves for the security challenges of the future. I understand that the security challenges to our military and generally for our government are threats that cannot be neglected at this point. So what is your organization's analysis of Canada's future security environment? And what types of operations should the Canadian Forces be preparing for?

In this context, can you explain lessons learned from Afghanistan from the intelligence point of view, the fusion centres and something...? What is your role in cyber warfare and other issues that can gravely affect our forces in operations—not in combat operations, but also in other types of operations?

I am just outlining the context of the threat from China—and less from Russia. China is a threat on these issues and our deployment in every part of the world—be it in combat, be it in peacekeeping operations, and be it in other fields. They can also be a threat to our own computer systems.

Can you elaborate on these things as to how we are ready, and how we are preparing ourselves for these issues?

[VAdm Bruce Donaldson]

Thank you for your question, sir.

We have eight hours, do we?

Let me offer a couple of thoughts on that, sir.

First of all, in terms of future security environment, we do work across the department and the Canadian Forces to make judgments about security trends, not just in defence, but in other aspects of social and economic development that may affect the future security environment, so we can shape our forces to be ready for it. We also compare notes with allies and we work as whole-of-government in coming to these judgments.

It is very, very difficult to predict the future. What I can say is that we've come to the shocking conclusion that the future will be just as unpredictable and fraught with security challenges as the present, and that our best strategy is to prepare our forces to be flexible, to be combat-capable, to be interoperable with our allies, and to be resilient in warfare.

Now, when we look at things like cyber threats and this type of thing, what we're talking about principally from a Canadian Forces standpoint is making sure that our forces are survivable in the future warfare environment. So we're doing a lot of work in that domain with the rest of government and within the Canadian Forces to understand the types of vulnerabilities that we have in our systems, and to strengthen them against attack, to make sure that in the information warfare domain we will prevail and we will triumph, and to make sure that as emerging capabilities are assessed around the world in terms of military capability, the Canadian Forces are in the position to remain world-class in terms of our ability to operate in potential future environments.

I can also say that in the area of cyber warfare it is very much a growth industry. It is a big concern, we all know, of our government and of our allies. We continue to partner with our allies and with the rest of government to understand that developing domain and to participate where we can in it.

I'm not sure that this gives you a great detailed sense of what we're tackling, but I can say that within the force development domain, I have put a team together to do this very thing, and to make sure that as we're shaping future forces they will be compatible with that threat environment and with our allies to operate in the future.

In terms of lessons learned in Afghanistan, particularly in intelligence, I think the biggest lesson we learned was that when something happens, it's too late to try to throw a team together to assess intelligence. We put an all-source intelligence centre together in Afghanistan, and we evolved it over a number of years. As we repatriate that, and we have repatriated that, we don't want to disperse that knowledge and those practices, that doctrine, and that structure back into our institutions, so that we can just pull it all together again in the future. So we are looking at how we would keep a core of that. You can only afford to keep so many people sitting around waiting just in case, but we are looking at keeping a core of that so that we could reconstitute it quickly. We have a large number of people ready, trained, and available to repopulate it for a new mission, should that be required.

I'll also say that domestically we've learned an awful lot about managing information, managing support to law enforcement, which is principally our role in major security support and this type of thing, and an all-source information management centre, separating intelligence from criminal intelligence, from situational awareness, in a way that is consistent with Canadian law. It's something we worked an awful lot on before the Olympics, and that stands us in good stead moving forward.

I hope that starts to answer some of your questions.

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

Yes, it does.

I know that as Vice Chief of Defence Staff you have a lot of responsibilities. Actually, you are responsible for preparing the readiness, basically, for the Canadian operation of forces. So can you just elaborate the same way on the intelligence? What about the UAVs that we are looking to improve? This is part of the intelligence, just a corollary from the intelligence part, so it was very useful in Afghanistan, and that is probably the future. Are you looking forward to improving the UAVs?

I remember in Afghanistan, when I was deployed, it was the Danish, or whatever that.... If you can speak about this....

[VAdm Bruce Donaldson]

Yes, sir.

I confirm that uninhabited aerial vehicles are becoming more and more an important part of situational awareness on the battlefield at the level of individual units, at the level of formations, and in fact at the level of nations.

But let me step back before I talk about that and say that modern warfare requires accurate weapons, it requires a speedy response in defence and in attack, and it requires agility. But the core and the centre of gravity of modern warfare capability is information management, because accurate weapons are useless if you don't have accurate information.

In fact, in a modern warfare environment, the idea of conducting an attack on scanty information borders on illegal, and we're highly conscious of our responsibilities in warfare. So information management is critically important. Information management relates to the collection, analysis, and processing of information, turning it into understanding, and disseminating it to those who need to know it.

The All Source Intelligence Centre is an important part of that analysis and dissemination, but on the collection side, every component of a battlefield, regardless of whether it's in the air, on the ground, or on or under the ocean, is a sensor for gathering information, as are other sources of intelligence. They are brought together and fused into an understanding of the picture.

We found in Afghanistan, as we have found in other domains—in Libya and many others—that uninhabited aerial vehicles are a tremendous asset in collecting information, in monitoring activities and movements, in fact, and in some cases in delivering weapons. The advantage they have is that you can put them at a higher degree of risk because they are uninhabited. The disadvantage they have is that they cannot make judgments. You have to connect the instrument with some way of making a judgment about the information it's gathering so you can control it.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Your time has expired.

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

Thank you very much, Admiral, for your eloquent explanation.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Mr. McKay, you have the floor.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Admiral Donaldson.

In some respects I'm tempted to adopt Mr. Kellway's remarks and say that we've had a succession of people in here much like you and all of your colleagues, all of whom say you're ready, so we should just wind this whole thing up and say that you're ready. I'm going to resist that temptation, but still wish a merry Christmas to you and also to those troops you so ably represent and who do such a fine representation for us.

[VAdm Bruce Donaldson]

Thank you.

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

Syria is heating up; it's pretty fair to say that. You can see the diplomatic moves that are coming. The Arab League has basically isolated Syria. We have a warship in the vicinity. The opposition is moving beyond their base. Turkey is adopting a stance that is, for want of a better term, far more belligerent. There are refugee flows back and forth.

It's not unreasonable to anticipate that the world is going to require a greater intervention. I wonder whether you could share with the committee the state of readiness of the forces to participate in that state of readiness, with possibly an intervention or possibly just simply an evacuation of Canadian nationals or dual nationals, or whatever. Could you tell us about your state of readiness? I would have thought that any prudent planning would have to include Syria as the foremost potential point of intervention.

[VAdm Bruce Donaldson]

Sir, thank you for the question.

History has taught us that the most likely point of intervention is not always the point that demands the intervention. But let me talk a little bit about the potential for deployment to that region of the world. We've been tracking it very closely for some time.

We maintain readiness to evacuate Canadian citizens all the time. We have aircraft and we have a group of soldiers ready to deploy to assist that. When there is an area of the world where the likelihood of a requirement for Canadian Forces participation in evacuation goes up, then our level of readiness and our level of planning goes up at the same time. I can say that we are tracking this very closely and we remain ready to respond.

I can also say that the Canadian Forces, by virtue of its size, has capacity limitations for major international conflict. We have always looked to partner with allied nations in delivering full military effect in far-flung areas of the world, as we have in Afghanistan and as we did in Libya through NATO. So the question becomes, in a potential or another operation in that part of the world, what type of contribution would be appropriate for Canada?

I can say that across a number of fronts we retain readiness, as we demonstrated in Libya and as we have demonstrated in Afghanistan. We retain readiness to participate in that type of action, but the key questions are: what type of action will it be, what will be the authorization for that action, and what will the government decide in terms of a Canadian contribution?

I can say that as we reconstitute from Afghanistan, we are further capacity-limited than we have been typically—just as we reconstitute the equipment that was in Afghanistan. But I can also say that in an emergency, and particularly here at home, we are ready to deal with any eventuality.

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

Staying with Syria for the moment, we're given to understand that the Minister of Foreign Affairs is about to make an announcement. I'm assuming that the Canadian Forces would be involved in that announcement. The announcement may well be, as a minimum, the evacuation of Canadians.

That is a bit of a risky undertaking in and of itself, and may well engender some resistance on the part of the Syrians. Effectively, the question here is, how ready are we to intervene to secure the safety of Canadians in Syria? The secondary question really is, are we prepared to be involved in any securitization of territory or whatever, in conjunction with the forces of resistance to the Assad government?

[VAdm Bruce Donaldson]

First of all, sir, I wouldn't want to speculate on an impending ministerial announcement—

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

Apparently it's not going to be a long speculation.

[VAdm Bruce Donaldson]

—but I would say that any evacuation mission depends upon the circumstances on the ground. It is far more expeditious, it is far cheaper, and frankly far less angst-ridden for Canadians to evacuate using commercial means. If aircraft are still flying and if vessels are still going into port, just to make their way, get on a plane, and leave is far easier than doing this in a military context.

So there are ways, and the consular offices, embassies, etc., remain in contact with Canadians in countries. And they're far better positioned to speak to how they go about this than I am, but there are ways of communicating to people and giving them direction—suggesting they leave or directing them to leave.

If there is a requirement for Canadian Forces support, it's often because those normal means are either insufficient or are not available.

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

You talked about capacity limits. What does that mean?

[VAdm Bruce Donaldson]

Capacity limits mean, for example, that we have only so many aircraft. We have only so many C-17s, only so many Airbus or so many Hercules aircraft, etc.

But in terms of a full-fledged evacuation, I think we're well positioned to contribute to what invariably would be an effort coordinated with, I would think, the Americans, the Brits, the French, and others.

In that type of an operation, we tend to take all comers. Obviously we want to rescue Canadians, but quite often we don't have a full aircraft, and we'll take anybody who is leaving. The forces of other nations will do that too.

Finally, we are ready to do things like securing an airfield or securing a port and that type of thing. The Canadian Forces maintain combat troops ready to do that. It is certainly not the preferred option for us or, generally speaking, for the country in question. The host country has a huge interest in allowing people who wish to depart to do so. We generally can rely on either cooperation or acquiescence in matters like this.

I defer to my colleagues in Foreign Affairs to discuss how that's gone historically. But I'm fairly optimistic that it would be a rare occasion when we would need to fight our way in. We would have to do that very carefully, because doing that could put Canadians at greater risk, frankly.

Does that answer your question?