National Defence Committee on March 8th, 2012

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

Do you feel that a C-117 and a crew should be reserved for DART in order to respond to those needs quickly?

[Jill Sinclair]

I think the way we have been dispersed but brought together quickly, as you saw when you visited the folks in Kingston during your visit, has proven itself to be extremely effective.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Your time is up.

Mr. Alexander, you have the last question of the day.

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

Thank you very much.

I'll ask one, and we might have a very short one from Mr. Chisu.

I thought we shouldn't let the session end without making some reference to the conflict and the deep crisis in Syria. Obviously, the decision for Canada to be involved beyond the way we're involved today, through sanctions, would be a political decision.

I'd like to ask about our readiness militarily and in a whole-of-government context to cope with potential demands to tighten sanctions or be involved on the ground in a robust humanitarian mode or in other modes, because certainly there are a lot of proposals out there that could see the international community become more heavily involved. For all of us who've played a part in developing or seeking the observance of the responsibility to protect, the death toll is something that none of us can ignore. All of us in Parliament are increasingly concerned.

There's also a report today of a potential high-level defection in the Syrian government. As sanctions ratchet up, the situation could take new turns.

What kind of contingency planning happens as a matter of course to make sure that options and capabilities are ready to inform political decisions down the road?

[Kerry Buck]

I think your question on readiness should be taken in a broad manner, because readiness to respond to Syria has to include a range of things.

Are we ready on sanctions? Yes. We imposed a fifth round of sanctions on the Assad regime on January 25. Are we ready on humanitarian assistance? Yes. We've announced that we'll be giving further humanitarian assistance, and we're working with partners to pressure the Assad regime to make sure there's humanitarian space to deliver that assistance.

Are we ready on diplomacy? Yes, to the extent that we can be. I have two comments here. I think the role and the leadership shown by the Arab League is very important—this is almost a historic evolution—and it's very important to have partners in the region leading the charge against Assad.

Second point: the Friends of Syria meeting that Minister Baird attended in Tunis two weeks ago is a very important international coalition to increase the pressure on Assad, but Assad appears to have taken a strategic decision that he's crossed that line. He's hanging on until there's extreme violence to move him out. I think that's the context we're in now. So the diplomacy that we're deploying is in an effort to pressure a man who's already cornered. And we have serious issues with Russia not allowing even the UN Security Council to make a sufficient condemnation of the situation. That's the context within which we're working.

On military readiness, I'll just make one point: Syria is not Libya. It's a place of an entirely different magnitude. I'll leave it at that. Right now we're all focusing on the diplomatic track and putting extreme pressure on Assad and on the Assad regime.

[Marie Gervais-Vidricaire]

If I may add to this, of course, we are already looking at what we could do in terms of programming when the situation will allow for it, but in the meantime, for example, we're providing support to the department of political affairs of the UN to support the efforts of Kofi Annan, who's the special envoy. We've just announced to DPA that we will be giving them $250,000 to support Kofi's efforts.

[Jill Sinclair]

Just to close out on that, you asked whether we're doing contingency planning. Defence departments and militaries do constant, consistent contingency planning. We're obsessed with contingency planning, so we're always taking a look at what's going on, where our assets are deployed, what's our level of readiness. I would just remind committee members that we have the Charlottetown in the Mediterranean. It's always good to have a ship in difficult neighbourhoods. Should there be a decision by the government to ask us to do anything in any eventuality, we would look at it and see what options we could put forward for government.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you.

We're almost out of time, but I have just one quick follow-up question before I adjourn.

Earlier this session the committee had a chance to witness training by the Canadian Forces at Wainwright. One of the things we picked up on is that they had actors stepping in for CIDA and for DFAIT officials. Part of readiness is training, so even though we're talking about the Canadian Forces here, because we have a whole-of-government approach, what is the civil service doing from the standpoint of DFAIT, and even within the Department of National Defence, to make sure that everyone is trained to a high level of readiness to be at the same level of deployability as the Canadian Forces members?

[Kerry Buck]

First, on the same level of deployability, we focus on making sure the individual civilians who can be deployed are ready. When we're dealing with training exercises like the one at Wainwright, we can't always field folks for the integrated training; we have to choose, because there is an imbalance between the number of CFs who deploy and the number of civilians. That's just the way it is, and in most operations that's the way it should be. So we try to avoid being absent from the training sessions, but sometimes it happens, because of imbalances in numbers, and it is what it is.

We've taken a number of steps to make sure our folks are ready. Our folks include the other civilians we help coordinate across government.

There are five steps I'll tell you about. One-third of participants in the Canadian Forces' 10-month senior-level national security program are now government civilians, including, right now, I think four officers from my branch. We also go. I've gone a few times to deliver training courses to that program as well. So we integrate at the trainee and the training level.

Point two, START officers in Marie's bureau regularly deliver courses, as I said, to the military on civilian-military cooperation and leadership, not just in that program but in other programs.

Point three, we have recurrent joint exercises in training between the civilian agencies and the Canadian Forces on responding to natural humanitarian disasters. We have rosters. We have contact lists that we're constantly updating. So if another big quake hits, we know each other. It's not personality driven. We know the skill sets and we've trained those folks together, so they're up to the same standard.

Point four, we exercise specifically with the DART on those same things.

Point five, we're working on institutionalizing liaison between DND and DFAIT to make sure there's cultural integration.

We're also working on a more systematized approach to our civilian deployments, and this is a work in progress. We've been doing it for a long time. We want to make sure it's a little more systematized, so we have better structure on our rosters, we know who has what skills, and we know when to deploy.

Go ahead, Marie.

[Marie Gervais-Vidricaire]

I would just add to this that quite a few of the START officers have done what we call hostile environment training, so that when something happens, they are ready to go.

[Jill Sinclair]

Chair, I'd simply echo your comments that training is key to readiness, and the more training we can do together, the better, and the more ready we're going to be to serve together.

As I think I mentioned earlier, one of the things we're going to have to make sure we keep our focus on when we reduce the operational tempo in Afghanistan is that we continue to do that training integration back here so that when we deploy, we go out as an effective joined-up team, because that's what we managed to get to in our deployment in Afghanistan and Haiti and elsewhere.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you very much.

We've had a very interesting exchange today, and we really appreciate your presentations and the direction you're giving us as a committee.

With that, the meeting is adjourned.