National Defence Committee on March 8th, 2012

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and through you to our speakers, thank you very much for coming today.

Ms. Sinclair did a good job of establishing, I think, the Canada First defence strategy as the basis for military readiness. But I have to admit I still find it an unsatisfactory basis for determining readiness, or an assessment of readiness, or even any operations.

In fact, you confirmed that for me today with the response: it means we have to be ready for uncertainty, and hence ready for everything.

It seems to me just too difficult to operationalize.

Ms. Buck, you spoke in your opening remarks about tracking analysis programming. But I'm wondering what forms the policy basis for all of that activity? Do you share with National Defence the Canada First defence strategy as the policy basis for what you engage in? That's part one of my question.

Perhaps you could leave room in your response for peacekeeping. We've had witnesses before this committee, and experts—I think we all agree—away from the table have lamented our lack of involvement with peacekeeping. You spoke about our involvement in peacekeeping here. They've even suggested that we can't even fill a school bus these days with peacekeepers. Our ability to engage in peacekeeping has virtually entirely atrophied in this country. We don't have people who are trained to do peacekeeping anymore. And we don't even have the right equipment to engage in peacekeeping.

I'm wondering, too, if you could give us your thoughts on our state of readiness for peacekeeping and our ability to deploy peacekeeping as a response to some of these fragile state issues.

Thank you.

[Kerry Buck]

I'll lead off. You asked if the Canada First defence strategy is something that DFAIT shared as part of our framework for readiness. Yes, it was developed in close consultation, etc., with us and others in the system. So yes.

I think Jill is better situated to answer your questions about the Canada First defence strategy as a framework.

On peacekeeping, Jill, maybe you can lead off if there's anything else we want to add.

[Jill Sinclair]

It is the Canada First defence strategy, and it assumes that it is embedded in a broader kind of Government of Canada approach. That is, CFDS doesn't say that we're going to go out and do everything all the time. It says that we have to be ready to look at this full spectrum of operations. Where we go, why we go, when, and what level of intensity is defined by the Government of Canada saying that this is a priority for us, and obviously it's a foreign policy priority in which we'd like you to engage. CFDS is not an overarching “Government of Canada, where will we be, everywhere, all the time”. It tells the defence department and the Canadian Forces what they have to get themselves ready for. Obviously, CFDS also has a capability part of it, which is about modernizing the forces to be able to do that.

I don't know if that's a convoluted response or not, but this is all about us and the CF being ready to respond to the Government of Canada's desire for us to deploy somewhere, and that's whether it's at home or abroad, and that's informed heavily by Foreign Affairs.

On peacekeeping, again, I would like to have one of my military colleagues at the table to kind of bring real veracity to this. But I think I'm not incorrect in saying that if a soldier or an airman or a sailor is trained for full-spectrum operations, which is everything from war fighting to engaging in complex and delicate failed and fragile state-building exercises, that is the same set of skills and techniques that one needs to be able to do peacekeeping.

Kerry can talk to the missions, but that is why the folks we do have deployed into UN operations around the world go through the same training system. They have a full spectrum of ability to be able to go into any sort of setting, and that relates to some of the questions about cultural sensitivity training and all sorts of other things.

I don't know, Kerry, if you want to talk to UN things a bit.

[Kerry Buck]

We're currently participating in 8 of 16 active UN-led missions. I won't use the word “peacekeeping” necessarily. Peacekeeping and peace support operations are different versions of UN operations, with different focuses, from robust military action to more comprehensive UN operations. So we call them UN peace support operations, which is our moniker.

As of January 2012 we had 198 uniformed personnel, 38 military and 160 police, deployed to UN operations, along with a number of civilian corrections experts as well, and some other civilians. So we do participate in them.

Part of our push—and we're the chair of the General Assembly's Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations—to be frank, is to engage more partners from the global south to participate alongside us. That's an important political signal to those countries in which the UN engages. It ensures more regional buy-in to the concept of peace support operations and it makes it more of a global political message to those states where the UN intervenes, that this is a global thing and not just a western thing. So we've really been working hard to expand not just the troop-contributing countries but other countries that will be in command.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Moving on, Mr. Chisu, you have the floor.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to the witnesses who are appearing in front of our committee.

I take this opportunity, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, to remember today, on this International Women's Day, the supreme sacrifice made by Captain Nichola Kathleen Sarah Goddard. She was killed on May 17, 2006, the first female Canadian soldier killed in combat operations. I think it is very appropriate to mention and to remember her. I was in Afghanistan in 2007 and it is still in my memory, her supreme sacrifice for our country.

I have a question for you. We are seeing more and more missions becoming multinational efforts, with Canada and our allies coordinating in a variety of areas. I am not looking only at the strategic level where you are able to coordinate these things, but I am looking at the tactical level.

I remember that in Kandahar you had officials both from DFAIT and from CIDA. Can you elaborate on lessons learned from Afghanistan in this very dynamic succession of operations, and how you think this cooperation will, in future, be elaborated on more and more? What do you think about that?

[Kerry Buck]

As to lessons we learned in Afghanistan, there are a lot of them. But in terms of how we work together, I said in my introductory remarks that in terms of our policy priorities, which map out into our programming priorities, that was whole of government. It was developed to whole of government, so the highest strategic level was fully integrated metrics for how we would measure our success.

When you got down to the deployments, it's really in the field and the theatre of operations where the rubber hit the road. Somebody talked earlier about cultural awareness training. We would have joint training of our civilian and military deployments before they go out and deploy. We would have joint training on cultural awareness by both military in the field and civilians. So it's joined up in terms of the trainers and the trainees.

Then, in terms of planning on the ground, if you're going into an area to clear and hold an area, obviously the Canadian Forces do more of the clearing, but the holding has to be done through a combination of forces—security perimeters, security support, and development programming and security programming, which we would do with the RCMP and others. That's how you hold an area and make sure insurgents don't come back in. To do that, we had to have fully joined-up planning in theatre and then fully joined-up deployments. We had people out in all the four operating bases at the PRT, etc.

Those are lessons we've really taken to heart. I won't talk now, but we've done it in different...like in the Haiti quake; we had the same kind of approach.

[Jill Sinclair]

I'd just add a word to that, because Kerry touched on what I think is the key issue, and that is the pre-deployment training. I think if there's anything that we really learned about how to prepare whole of integrated government teams, it was the training that we put people through, and it was really tough training. We brought civilians into the military training environment. We mocked up Afghan villages. We put together loya jirgas. We did a lot of role playing, all as integrated teams, so that folks, first of all, were exposed to everything: the military to the different way that civilians think and the issues they bring to the table, and vice versa. But also then, to be able to take that sense of community into the field....

As you know, when you're at the tactical level, all this stuff works because you're on the ground together and you make it work. That's the beauty of it. I think one of the lessons learned out of Afghanistan about our other operations is that we need to reverse engineer that to make sure we get that same degree of intense integration back here. I think we are making some progress there.

I would just note also that we have diplomatic advisors with our military personnel. We have military advisors with our diplomatic personnel. I know when Haiti broke, one of the first things we did was to send a senior military officer down to work alongside the ambassador. We embedded somebody from Foreign Affairs into the defence department, and also from CIDA too, because we needed to know what we were going to put on the pallets so that we were getting the right stuff to folks. That level of integration back in headquarters is one of the things that we will need to make sure we exercise and preserve when we're not in the intensity of operations that we were through in the last number of years.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Time has expired.

Mr. Brahmi now has the floor.

You have five minutes.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to begin by congratulating you on selecting today's witnesses. This panel is especially appropriate in light of International Women's Day.

On that note, yesterday, I was invited to speak at a meeting organized by the Centre de femmes du Haut-Richelieu, the Upper Richelieu women's centre, from my riding. In my speech, I pointed out the following paradox. On the one hand, status of women in Canada and in western countries in general has improved. On the other hand, status of women in some other countries has deteriorated. I used Afghanistan as an example.

This morning, I came across a very interesting article in The Globe and Mail, titled “Gender apartheid cannot be justified in the name of religion”. The article talks about the code of conduct enacted by Afghanistan's Ulema Council. The council is made up of 150 Afghan clerics. The article contains what I see as a rather relevant quote from Oxfam's executive director, Robert Fox, who talked about the code of conduct that plays a role in future male-female relationships in Afghanistan.

Mr. Fox said the following:

While the code is now legally binding, it comes at a critical time for Afghan women. Many are already concerned about the future, especially if peace talks with the Taliban move ahead.

I would like to hear what our experts think about the risk of the status and living conditions of Afghan women deteriorating if the talks with Taliban authorities do not advance.

[Kerry Buck]

The position of women in Afghanistan has always been a challenge, particularly so under the Taliban, of course. It's a society and culture that has a long, long history of women occupying a smaller space and a closed, private space. In the eighties, or more the seventies, there was a brief period when more Afghan women were in universities. They've got the capacity, they've got the willingness, and they've got the desire, but it's really an uphill battle in Afghanistan, trying to help Afghan women have a space where they don't get assassinated for taking public office.

We've made tremendous strides—we, the international community—working with some elements of Afghan women and the Afghan government to get more girls in school and to get more Afghan women MPs. No one ever thought this was going to be easy. It's particularly difficult in a place like Afghanistan.

I don't know what else to say. We've been targeting a lot of our programming to try to make sure, as I said, that we help Afghan women find that space. So there's training of Afghan women police, and training of other police in awareness of women's human rights as well. But this is a very difficult context that the international community went into at the beginning, post-Taliban, in a country like Afghanistan.

We agree, it's hard, and it's going to keep on being hard. It's always been hard, but we've had some successes with the Afghan women.

[Marie Gervais-Vidricaire]

I just want to add that, in terms of programming, we are very aware of that challenge. For instance, we support a project with Rights and Democracy that has to do with women's rights and access to justice. That is one of our many contributions.

I'm very worried that this problem may persist for many years. We will have to keep working on that, as it's a huge concern.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Ms. Sinclair, do you have anything to add?

[Jill Sinclair]

I have very little to add to that.

I think the international presence at the moment is very important in continuing to bring this debate to Afghanistan, but at the end of the day the society has to embrace it themselves. So I think that continuing international presence, our trainers...there are still 40-odd countries that are there that are trying to inculcate so that it is irreversible. But as Kerry said, this is a country that's been through an awful lot, so this massive cultural shift...we have to make sure it's sustained and enduring, but that really is up to the Afghans at the end of the day.

As both my colleagues have said, a lot of Afghan women have put their lives on the line for this one, so I don't think they're going to give up easily, but it's going to be a very tough fight. As you said, there are some other forces there that would put things back very quickly if they could, but can't quite yet.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

Moving on, Mr. Opitz.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

First of all, thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for being here today. You're three of the best panellists I have ever heard. You are very articulate, and you're certainly knowledgeable about your topics.

I know you've mentioned on a few occasions and just now that you wished you had your military colleagues here, but I think you're pretty well aware of what's going on in the military. And it sounds like you're uniformed people yourselves. I know you work very closely with the military, but that's obviously evident in the amount of work you've done on the whole-of-government approach.

I used to work at Canadian Forces College. I'm not sure if any of you were on that course.

Were you on the NSP?

[Jill Sinclair]

Yes.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Okay, well, there you go. It is, of course, our comrades from around the world, Canadian Forces officers, and of course EX-level civil servants, which I think is just a tremendous way to educate, to coordinate. The benefits of everything you've learned throughout your career, through that course and now, are actually quite evident in the effectiveness of it because you're able to basically interchange your own job with people in uniform, people in the military, and Foreign Affairs. And I was going to ask you about that entire whole-of-government approach, but you very effectively explained it earlier on, so I thank you for that.

One of the things that you did explain very clearly as well is in peacekeeping terms. I would disagree that it's atrophying, and you explained the training, the whole-of-government approach, because we do have to be ready for everything in peacekeeping. I would add that combat capability is also a credibility factor in any peacekeeper. We're not peacekeepers, per se. Peacekeeping is a tool in a toolbox that we employ, depending on where we have to go in the world. That's basically how it's applied. But if you are a credible force, then the people you are trying to keep apart tend to see you as somebody credible enough that they're not going to mess with you and they're going to abide by the rules of engagement and so forth.

I wanted to just turn to Ms. Marie Gervais-Vidricaire for a minute.

You were cut off a couple of times with a couple of speakers. I want to give you an opportunity if there is anything you want to say right now to add to the discussion.

[Marie Gervais-Vidricaire]

That's very kind of you. Thank you.

I wanted to maybe make a quick reference to what we do in terms of responding to natural disasters. When something happens—an earthquake, a flood, whatever—we have what we call standard operating procedures that were adopted a few years ago and are now very well appreciated by the various departments.

The way it works is this. We monitor the situation at DFAIT. If something happens, there's definitely a message sent to all the departments. If the disaster is big enough, we call immediately for a task force meeting, and National Defence would be part of it. Then if it's really a big catastrophe, let's say, like what we saw in Haiti, there's an interdepartmental team that is sent to evaluate the needs, whether the DART should be deployed, or what is needed in terms of humanitarian assistance, and so forth. That is dispatched very quickly. Then the rest of the response is also discussed by the various departments of the whole.

I think that's a concrete example of how we work together. I had the opportunity, for example, to go to Sri Lanka and Indonesia after the tsunami. I led the reconnaissance team there and I saw firsthand how well it works. Everybody knew what they had to do, what their role was. I think this is a great achievement that we've seen. It was adopted in 2003, I think. That has made a big difference in the way we do business. In terms of readiness to respond, I think it's a great achievement.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Do I still have time?

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

It's not a lot of time.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Okay, then it will be quick.

Both Ms. Buck and Ms. Sinclair, in turn, if you were to make two or three key recommendations for how we maintain our readiness, or two or three critical things that we need to be mindful of in maintaining readiness, what would you suggest? What would you recommend?

I'll start with Ms. Sinclair.

[Jill Sinclair]

I would like a little bit more time to consider the answer to this question. Are you asking about a whole-of-government perspective? Is that your question?

I think if we had more ability to interchange our personnel...because there's no substitute for being in each other's shoes. That's always a challenge, because people need their personnel to do their line jobs, but I think getting more folks.... We have had exchanges between Foreign Affairs and National Defence over the years, but I think more of this would be good.

So would continued improvement to the IT systems be good. They do talk to each other, but they need to talk with more fluidity to each other; that's the way the world works at the moment. I know from having worked at Foreign Affairs that there's an extraordinarily comprehensive system there.

IT is expensive. DND is able to tap into that. I'm not sure how much it's shared across the whole of government, because it's cumbersome and you need to make it secure—all those sorts of things.

Those are two quick thoughts. But as I say, I think your question deserves a more considered response.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

You can always add to that after the committee meeting. It was fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

That time has expired, unfortunately. We're well over time now. I know it's no fun, but I have to make sure I'm fair to all members.

Go ahead, Mrs. Groguhé.