National Defence Committee on Oct. 20th, 2011

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

I may be a little dated right now, but is that CATS, the common army training scenario.

[MGen Steve Bowes]

Yes, the common army training scenario.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

You mentioned military education—and here I would note that I spent three years at the Canadian Forces College. There's training on the ground, as the committee has observed recently. Can you talk a little bit about the military education system and its value in maintaining skills, knowledge, and professionalism, not only through our own system but also because we work cooperatively with other forces and nations around the world in terms of military education?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

Absolutely. To achieve my rank, we effectively spend about four years in professional military education, that is, courses and development. We like to pride ourselves that we have a continuous learning environment. We have to learn something new every day. As members of one of the four classical professions, we have a responsibility within that subset to improve ourselves, our knowledge, on a daily basis.

If you look back at slide 1, it talks about institutional training, foundation training, and high-readiness training. That doesn't mean that everybody in the Canadian Forces, or the army in particular, is doing the same thing at the same time. There are people at different stages all the way through to heading out the door on operations and preparedness, but we're always taking individuals at various levels of training. Even courses in Gagetown have a component that would be more accurately framed as military education—the history, the traditions, the ethos, ethics. We build up that body of knowledge. We move through a system where we assign development period levels to each officer and each soldier as they move through DP1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. We have specific goals assigned, and all of this is a subset of the Canadian Forces framework.

Going back to some of the lessons that were learned from hard issues in the 1990s, we have taken great steps towards a degreed officer corps, as an example, but have also moved beyond that towards graduate degrees in conjunction with the Canadian Forces College and the Royal Military College in Kingston, and incorporating a greater body of professional military knowledge, but also knowledge that is applicable across Canadian society. That's something we pride ourselves in.

[Ted Opitz, Conservative, Etobicoke Centre, ON]

Fantastic.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Your time has expired.

Ms. Fry, you have the floor.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Thank you very much, Chair.

As you all understand, I'm substituting for my colleague Mr. McKay.

But there are some things that have piqued my interest. If you go into a joint operation with NATO forces, for instance, in Syria, or in Libya at the moment, or in Afghanistan, what are your challenges in trying to mesh the Canadian set of doctrines, aspirations, etc., with those of your allies? That must be extremely challenging, I would think. Or is it?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

There would be no value here in underestimating the challenge that it poses, and Afghanistan is just one example. There were at one time 46 or 47 different nations contributing troops. The majority of the countries there might be from NATO, but there are many officers and soldiers from countries other than NATO, and that is a true challenge.

But through NATO we do have organizations that are designed to.... For example, for officers joining a joint headquarters, ISAF has two major headquarters. One has overall campaign responsibility, and there is a joint command headquarters that really looks at running the operation.

A couple of years ago, I was but one of 14 general officers serving in that headquarters, which represented about 11 different nations. So we come from diverse backgrounds but we also link back into that joint doctrine we have from NATO. That joint doctrine is taught at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto. So I first learned about the NATO joint doctrine when I was a major at the Canadian Forces College some 15 years ago. So that's a constant theme all the way through.

We continually strive for opportunities to train alongside other allies. We have a group of officers through the Directorate of Army Doctrine and Directorate of Army Training who attend working groups on a near monthly basis with our NATO allies and who constantly work issues and keep lines of communication open. That provides a core, and that core capability in any organization will provide the impetus for joint operations.

There are always going to be friction points in any organization just by combining more than one person. These are just things that we teach our individuals to work through.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

You talked about ethical training. Is there going to be a difference, let us say, with the natural ethical bent of a certain group of people within the joint forces that you might find yourself butting up against, for example, in terms of their understanding of human rights, or sense of understanding the culture of the particular country you're in? Do you find these kinds of ethical challenges?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

I haven't found the ethical challenges in that sense. And for our Canadian soldiers, to be clear, we represent Canadian values, so we take that forward. And that's an expectation that I think all Canadians share, that we represent those values overseas.

The challenges have more to do with linguistics and the ability to communicate for many of the organizations, rather than ethical values. I've done two extended tours in Afghanistan and I haven't seen that kind of challenge you speak of.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

The work that you are doing, for instance, in Libya is very different from what you did in Afghanistan. Do you pick specific soldiers or specific leaders with specific skill sets to go into the different theatres that you occupy? Do you have to have different sets of skills to go into, say, Libya, versus being in Afghanistan where you encounter an insurgency, and in Libya where you do not?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

Ground troops are not committed in Libya. And I'm not in a position to speak on the influence or the nature of the decision-making for the commander of the Royal Canadian Navy or the Royal Canadian Air Force.

But if you were to step back, there is a core capability that we expect any soldier in the Canadian Army to perform. And if we were going into a particular region, we would look at the operating environment and say, “Wouldn't it be great if we had particular experts on that culture?” And we'd build that into our theatre specific mission training. As an example, if we were going into an area where Spanish or Portuguese were the language, if we had some soldiers who could speak the language, not just in terms of communicating but actually in helping to help develop your own soldiers' ability to speak Spanish--because we would start that training--we would do that as well.

So we look at the mission set that's required for any mission and determine what we need. That's not just in terms of equipment but also in terms of people. We also look at the training they need and we adapt the training, and we have done so quite rapidly. But sometimes it takes a rotation or two to get exactly where we would like to be. So we do go through a deliberate process that way.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

How am I doing for time? Two minutes? Okay.

You talked a lot about cultural training, etc., and you say that the forces go with Canadian values. Do your values always mesh with the values of some of your allies?

What I'm really trying to get at is, how do you deal with the challenges where your Canadian values may be at odds, even in a minor way, with people who come from a totally different country, who may have a different set of values? We know that this is so. I go to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, where we do hear some very different values around that table of the 57 nations, some of whom are participants in NATO.

So the question then is, when you meet those challenges, how do you deal with them? If you're making a decision, who has the ability to make that decision? Does somebody have the overarching ability to decide? Do you have to negotiate it then and there?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

I appreciate your sincerity. That is a really hypothetical question. I'll take it back into training. We try to produce a level of friction in the training environment where we're dealing with people from other cultures, and their value systems are different. I could relate my own experience in Afghanistan, but at the end of the day, we are Canadians. Some of those issues you're talking about can be so minor that you just say they're because of the individual concerned. You have personalities, even within our own country and our own value set.

When we talk about not violating fundamental Canadian values, that's a different story. We're well schooled in the law of armed conflict. We're well schooled in what Canadian moral and ethical standards are. If we're going into operations, we make sure our soldiers adhere to those.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

[Inaudible--Editor]...in fact, chain of command?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

The chain of command kicks in. With what we provide in training, for senior NCOs in particular, who are the heart and soul of the army, our sergeants are going to step in to make sure that Canadian soldiers do the right thing.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you. Your time has expired.

We'll start our five-minute round.

Mr. Chisu, you have the floor.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you very much, General, for the excellent presentation and the information you provided us.

Are the difficulties in Afghanistan for our troops a result of differences in capabilities and standard operating procedures between us and our NATO and ISAF allies? I am asking this question because you know very well there are different rules of engagement and different procedures, making it very difficult to conduct operations in that situation. We need to balance that issue, so maybe you can elaborate on that.

[MGen Steve Bowes]

Sorry, I think I'll just take a step back. From a training perspective, if we're going into an area and we know we're going to work with allies of particular nations, we make sure that our leaders are aware of the caveats those nations may be applying within that tactical environment. That way they know exactly what one nation will do or won't do in a given situation.

I will tell you that many times we tend to overestimate some of the differences between our nations. Most of the differences occur on the outside when going in. In other words, they occur more between the nations' capitals than between the men and women who are serving on the ground. The fact that you're in a hostile environment and somebody is trying to harm you has a wondrous unifying effect on your ability to focus and work together.

I have personally served, and I gave you an example before and I won't go into detail, with soldiers of other nations who have put their own lives in harm's way to protect me. That's a tremendous statement.

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

There's another question that I would ask Steve about Afghanistan, because I served there also. Afghanistan presented a whole new array of combat challenges for our forces, which they handled with great distinction and did Canada very proud. With the drawdown in Afghanistan, can you please describe for the committee some of the lessons learned on how the Canadian Forces conduct operations, as well as training, and how we can implement these lessons in future missions?

I would also like to talk about the reserve force, which has provided 25% of the troops for operations in Afghanistan. Now, when we are drawing down this operation in Afghanistan, how will the reserve force continue to be trained and ready for operations?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

Sir, absolutely.

As an example of some of the challenges and the lessons learned, we reacted very fast to an emerging improvised explosive device and suicide bomber threat. In Afghanistan during my first tour, the challenges in that environment weren't seen and evolved quite rapidly. We reacted in a way that allowed us to acquire the capability, the doctrine, and now the tactics, techniques, and procedures, that our allies are very interested in. That's an example of a hard won lesson; we lost lives. That's a capability we do not want to see pass because, if we look around the world, in just about any scenario we could go into, we could find similar threats. So that's an example of a lesson learned that we need to retain and be pretty good at. I could go toward intelligence, cultural awareness, and apply it to theatres in a different standard.

With regard to the reserve force, there's not a senior leader who would diminish the role the reserve played in sustaining our role in Afghanistan. We could not have done that mission without them. Where the regular and reserve components of the army were seven to ten years ago and where they're at today, it's phenomenal. We will not lose that either.

In the immediate missions that just went out the door, we might not have achieved the percentage of reservists that we would like. But I can tell you that in a subsequent rotation that will come of the Secteur Québec de la force terrestre, we'll have close to 25% reservists. So we're going to continue to go down that road, because of the skills they bring to the table. They are value added.

The reserve force also serves in a domestic context. In my previous job as commander of Land Force Atlantic Area in Halifax, two-thirds of the soldiers who responded on the ground to Hurricane Igor in Newfoundland were reservists, and they performed brilliantly. We can't do without them.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Okay, the time has just about expired.

Mrs. Moore, you have five minutes.

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

Mr. Chairman, my questions will be on the reserve.

Even though many reservists volunteered for missions in Afghanistan, for example, not all have been in operations overseas. How do you make sure that those can acquire the new knowledge that was learned in Afghanistan? How do you make sure that those units integrate that knowledge?

[MGen Steve Bowes]

The reserve force is a challenge, and there are a number of different ways to take that question.

In terms of the body of knowledge the reservists have learned--and many of them will come back and move on to other challenges--that is true. We're also seeing that many reservists are staying, and the body of knowledge they've acquired is relevant to a domestic operational context. Fundamentally, what they've done is to develop leadership skills that are usable across the spectrum of operations within Canada. So this is a piece that we're working hard to ingrain within the reserve community.

We're also working much harder than we have in the past recognizing there is a natural turnover in the reserve and that because of the time it takes to get a soldier to develop those skills and to learn, it's even more important now than ever that we retain those skills and work on them.

Lastly there are some areas where reservists are uniquely qualified to provide a skill set that isn't replicated in the regular force. Because they are not full-time soldiers, they have part-time careers—and full-time careers otherwise in many cases—and those skill sets translate into very usable experiences overseas. As an example, trying to build that culture within the entire framework of the reserve force is very important. Civil-military cooperation comes to mind.

I hope I answered that fully as you intended.

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

All right.

When we talk of the members of the regular forces, we talk of people working on a base. There are several regiments or units on a base and people are used to see the other units at work.

On the other hand, when we talk of the reservists, they only work with their own regiments and with people in their own trade. So, if they are in a region where there is an engineering regiment, for example, they will see things related to engineering but not things related to other trades.

You have talked about the new doctrine. We have seen the importance of working together. How do you make sure that the reserve units learn to work with other trades when they are geographically removed from them?