National Defence Committee on March 6th, 2012

[VAdm Larry Murray]

I'll maybe start with General Bouchard.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

I'll ask Admiral Murray to take about a minute.

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

He's a very nasty chair.

[VAdm Larry Murray]

How much time do I have?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

You have about a minute, because we're already over time now.

[VAdm Larry Murray]

Okay.

I think Bouchard has done a great job. The forces keeping him in and drawing on his lessons learned both within Canada and in NATO was a great idea.

On the DFAIT-CIDA-CF thing and the corrections services, I agree that it's a challenge, but I would say that the Manley report, the government response to the Manley report, the lessons learned out of Afghanistan, the efforts of people—including one member of this committee—and the model coming out of Afghanistan are first class.

The challenge is to hang on to those lessons learned, to institutionalize them, and to ensure that we don't lose what we learned in Afghanistan, and what people like General Bouchard bring to the table about managing 31 nations and all that kind of stuff.

The Afghan whole-of-government approach and where it landed at the end of that mission is the best I've ever seen. I think it's as good as that of any of our allies. It was working on the ground, but it wasn't working in Ottawa. It has been working in Ottawa for the last few years, and we need to make sure we don't lose that model.

To your question about recruiting, I would say the answer is education. Education matters.

In response to your earlier question about reserves, I was amazed with the reserves. They bring Ph.D.s to the table. You'll find in the regular force actually that education is the answer in recruiting, as is ensuring that there are professional development opportunities both inside the military education structure and in civilian universities.

General Leslie's report on “tooth to tail” is being acted on, as far as I know. Part of the problem is that it's a budget process, and there's budget secrecy and all that kind of stuff. But the Chief of the Defence Staff said at the Ottawa conference on security and defence—as did the minister, I think, last week—that they were drawing on the Leslie report. Certainly, as I mentioned, I think it's no secret that the number of class Bs, the civilian infrastructure, and so on will change. I think there will certainly be significant aspects of Leslie's report that will be acted on and are being examined with care.

I'll stop there.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Just so the witnesses know, we're going to go to the five-minute round now, so please keep your responses very concise and to the point.

Mr. Chisu, you're kicking us off.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to the witnesses for the very good presentations that I heard.

And thank you, Admiral, for your balanced approach, which is a very important one. I think you made your point.

Dr. Windsor, I know that you assisted in Afghanistan during the period of 2006-07. I was on a tour of duty in 2007.

I will put the question to you regarding the lessons learned from the mission in Afghanistan. As you know very well, in 2006 we were just realizing that we were in combat. We have a lot of lessons to learn from that mission, and they are very valuable today in approaching other counter-insurgency operations. I don't know if you can elaborate on whether there will be a future approach to the counter-insurgency basically, and whether we need to be prepared for the counter-insurgency. What is your opinion on the counter-insurgency with regard to training, to approach, and to how we look at future missions, because they are also very well connected with anti-terrorist operations?

Thank you.

[Dr. Lee Windsor]

I'll try to be brief, although doing so is fundamentally difficult for university professors.

The Canadian Forces, or the army in particular, asks itself this question every day when it comes to structuring training courses in the combat arms. The response they've come to is the same one that I as a detached observer would recommend, looking at both the recent history and taking a longer view of the past, and that is that good counter-insurgency doctrine and training for armies, navies, and air forces is virtually the same as good doctrine and training for multi-purpose forces that are ready for any kind of conflict in the conflict spectrum, including peace-building, peace support, and stability-building operations, because the very same practices and the very same soldier skills, sailor skills, and air crew skills that are required to fight a counter-insurgency war or a high-intensity war against an equal enemy, or to conduct a peacekeeping or more classic peace-building operation, are the same. The level of violence, of course, changes the way in which one applies deadly force, but the necessity to have the basic fundamental skills required of a fighter squadron, a warship, or an infantry company to be able to destroy the enemy or neutralize its movement are the same.

So the argument in the army is to train the way you've always trained and add mission-specific components as necessary.

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

Dr. Windsor, you are a military historian, and we need to be aware that we are learning a lot of things from military history, actually from the First World War, concentrating on the western front. Joe Whiteside Boyle was a hero on the eastern front in Russia. I don't know if you are aware of him.

We have to see how counter-insurgency is working, so that is my question to you. In a counter-insurgency operation, you don't have an enemy who is identified by uniform; he blends into the population. Do you think we are prepared for that? What should we do to be ready for that?

[Dr. Lee Windsor]

To be ready, I would suggest that the maintenance of a long-service professional force is the most essential ingredient. Those NATO partners who have delivered the best kinds of forces to the Afghan counter-insurgency have been those such as Canada, which maintains long-service professional forces. If you want to fight an insurgency, you need older, disciplined, experienced sergeants and mid-grade officers who can make decisions about how to make the kinds of personal connections to the population that enable you to understand the insurgent opposition, and who can protect and assist the people that you've gone there to assist.

Any counter-insurgency operation must essentially be an assistance mission to the nation that's at risk. Older, more mature junior leaders are essential to winning that kind of struggle. I think some of the recent news reports we've heard coming out of Afghanistan, with the difficulties that the Americans are encountering, reveal the problem of military forces raised for service in shorter periods of time.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Moving on,

Ms. Moore now has the floor.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Can we stop the clock while he puts in his earphones?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

If you guys need translation equipment, the interpreters are on channel 2. I'm on channel 6.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Can we start the clock now, Mr. Chair?

It works, perfect.

My questions are specifically for you, Mr. Windsor. I see that you have studied post-traumatic stress syndrome at great length. The link with readiness may seem weak, but as mental health problems can affect soldiers and slow down operations, I still think there is a link.

A study done over a 4-year period on 800 members of the Royal 22^ème Royal Régiment, so infantry, who were deployed to Afghanistan, showed that 23% suffered from mental health problems and 20% suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome.

In your opinion, are the Canadian Forces doing all they can to prevent this problem and to make an early diagnosis in order to prescribe treatment? Do you think these mental health problems could have an adverse effect on the readiness of the Canadian Forces? Since those who suffer from those kinds of problems cannot be deployed, do you think it could negatively impact our operations?

[Dr. Lee Windsor]

Thank you for that question. Merci.

To start with, I'd like to take a very short but long view and suggest that throughout Canada's military history, the issue of mental casualties has always been a fundamental problem. The number of stress casualties and psychological exhaustion casualties has always been high when you engage in something as traumatic and violent as war. It is the reality of modern war, and in that sense, I would suggest to you that the research findings in the civilian psychiatric profession and corresponding developments in the military profession in Canada and in our NATO partners have come a long way in a hundred years, based on this experience.

At the Gregg Centre at the University of New Brunswick, we have been closely following the tour of duty that was deployed from there in 2007, and what we've seen suggests that never before have the Canadian Forces, in particular, been better prepared and equipped to handle the problem of mental health when it comes to soldiers. We attribute this to the challenge of the 1990s. In the 1990s, the Canadian Forces senior leadership recognized that mental health was an issue that must be addressed and that institutions must be created to screen soldiers before they enter the armed forces, to take care of them when they are mentally injured, and also to look after them after they are released from the Canadian Forces. Never before have those institutions and systems been better in our nation's history.

So I would put to you that yes, this issue is a significant problem, but as long as we continue to keep resourcing the institutions that have been created to address the problem, then in my opinion it is well attended to.

[Christine Moore, NDP, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Do you think that we should invest a bit more in this area, or do you think available resources on the ground are sufficient so that our soldiers are treated rapidly and thus able to take part in operations?

[Dr. Lee Windsor]

That's an excellent follow-up question. I would suggest that the issue is resourced effectively, to the best of my knowledge, for soldiers currently serving in uniform.

There are, however, two significant holes, two significant gaps that remain. One concerns veterans released from the Canadian Forces, and I understand the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs is looking into this question, and Veterans Affairs itself has been making progress recently to try to offer better services to those soldiers who have been released.

The other ongoing problem area continues to be with reserve soldiers, sailors, and air crew who have completed a tour of duty and returned to small communities across Canada. While there have been some steps taken to ensure that these soldiers and sailors and air crew can be provided with treatment, quite often it is difficult to keep track, frankly, of where these reservists disappear to. We've got some experience with reservists in northern New Brunswick and the far corners of Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, and despite the fact that services are available to them, that fact is irrelevant if those reservists don't know that the services are there and don't seek them out.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Your time has expired. Merci beaucoup.

Mr. Norlock, it's your turn.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and through you to our witnesses, thank you for appearing.

I have five minutes. Feel free to take that time to answer my question, Vice Admiral.

In 1996 you led a working group that sought to improve joint command and control functions. That being the beginning, in your opinion, how did the establishment of the 1st Canadian Division assist in the efficient and effective management of joint command and control operations?

Having answered that, what advice if any would you give for either continuing with the present approach or changing it?

[VAdm Larry Murray]

Thanks very much for that question. I would hasten to say that I retired in 1997, so I'm not an expert in everything that's unfolded in the evolution of that centre, although you're correct that absolutely, in the context of the reform package I mentioned, enhancing that whole area was a significant part of the recommendations.

My sense is that the subsequent chiefs of defence staff, deputy ministers, and ministers have paid great attention to that. I think that's evident in both Afghanistan and Libya, where with 15 minutes' notice we had a Canadian commander.... In fact, his story is that the biggest part of the problem was banging holes in the wall so they could hook up the communication pieces.

So I would say it's gone a long way. I would say that the Kingston headquarters has played a key role in all of that, and that continues to be the case. It would certainly be my hope that it be an essential capability. As I mentioned in my comments, the balance argument isn't just navy, army, air force; it also includes joint capability. The Kingston headquarters has been a pretty key player in that, and special forces capabilities, which were kind of nascent in the early 1990s, have become an absolutely essential—in today's world—component of the capabilities of the Canadian Forces.

Maybe I'll stop there.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Very good.

The next question...somewhat succinct, but perhaps both of you could answer.

How important is it to sustain long-term viability, not only of the Canadian Forces but also of the security of our nation through the procurement of new state-of-the-art equipment, and to ensure interoperability with our allies? In a previous question you were asked I think you agreed that interoperability...and the fact that Canada will be joining partners, in all likelihood NATO partners, in any future operations.

Could you both respond to that?

[VAdm Larry Murray]

I'll start and say it's essential, as I said in response to an earlier question. I think there has been a significant effort to do so, significant investment both in the training and the equipping, and we need to continue to do that, absolutely.

I think an additional complication, and my colleague alluded to it, is that in talking about the security of Canada, not just the defence of Canada, the whole-of-government issue comes into play: the establishment post-September 11, the maritime operational centres on both coasts, interdepartmental op centres where we have RCMP, coast guard, and Canada Border Services Agency folks full time drawing on and contributing to the DND maritime domain awareness picture and being able to communicate and operate with each other. This is really essential.

There are some legislative issues around that. There are some technical issues. But it is really essential that we don't lose sight of that ball and that we continue to ensure interoperability there. If we can do that, we will also ensure that we maintain the connections with Homeland Security in the U.S. and the U.S. Coast Guard, and so on. So the whole interoperability piece is much more complicated in this day and age than it was with just purely Cold War.... We operate with NATO or NORAD, or whatever; it's multi-dimensional, and it has to include other government departments in Canada as well.

[Dr. Lee Windsor]

I echo Admiral Murray's comments completely. I would just throw in one short caveat, one short additional comment that the exchange training programs with NATO partners are an essential part of that interoperability to ensure that we continue to speak the same military language.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

That would also facilitate the equipment.