National Defence Committee on May 13th, 2015

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

The plan since 2011, I believe, has been to maintain 68,000 regular force members and 27,000 reservists.

Mr. Chairman, we're just a wee bit under that. I think we're at 65,900 currently.

By the way, I don't know if you've noticed, but the government is frequently criticized for advertising. One of the largest elements of government advertising is Canadian Armed Forces recruitment. If you haven't seen the latest ads, I recommend that you, because they're fantastic. This is important, and of course this is not an innovation. The Department of National Defence always uses advertising for recruitment purposes. So we do need to catch up a little bit on recruitment here to maintain a steady state.

As you know, in your home province of Alberta, for example, with very high-paying jobs, a lot of the people in the military with skills in particular trades have been attracted by much higher salaries in the private sector, so perhaps there's been a somewhat higher level of attrition than has historically been the case because of labour market inflation. I think that perhaps the cooling in the energy industry may help us retain some of those folks.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you. I certainly agree with you in regard to those ads. They are very powerful ads, and it's unfortunate to hear the opposition criticize those kinds of initiatives.

I want to ask you a little bit about the measures that are in place for serving members, whether deployed in theatre or on a base here in Canada, in terms of access to mental health care. I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about the current measures in place.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes, thanks. There have been very significant improvements in recent years in mental health supports for members of the Canadian Armed Forces. As you know, I think there's just a lot more awareness and, frankly, more science and detection of diagnoses about mental illness in society generally, but also in the military. I'm pleased to say that we provide mental health care through 19 primary care clinics in 16 detachments based across Canada and Europe. We've increased the number of mental health professionals, which includes clinicians and support staff. We currently have 400 full-time mental health workers and are hiring more. For comparison, there were only 229 mental health professionals in the armed forces back in 2000, so it's a substantial increase.

Canadian forces health services also meet the demand for services through a variety of mechanisms including contracting mental health care practitioners and referring military members to mental health professionals in their local community. In 2012 we announced $11.5 million in funding for mental health services, bringing the total of mental health investment to $50 million for that fiscal year, which included hiring a psychiatrist, a psychologist, mental health nurses, social workers, addictions counsellors, etc.

I've seen some of this good work myself at CFB Petawawa, for example, Garrison Petawawa. I've seen the strong support that's being provided. Now, we can always try to do more, but I think the situation's improved considerably.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you, Minister.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you, and time's up.

Mr. Harris for five minutes, please.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, sir.

Mr. Minister, I appreciate your announcement that you have new legislation planned with respect to victims' rights. We do know, of course, that the military was excluded from the Victims Bill of Rights, which is a glaring omission. So I'm pleased that there will be an opportunity to have some proposals and an opportunity to debate the effectiveness of military justice when it comes to prosecution, particularly of sexual assault cases. I look forward to that. I know these are very late days in this particular session of Parliament, so I don't expect that to happen before we rise. Are you committed to tabling that legislation before we rise?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I don't have a date, but it's the intention of the government to table legislation in this regard. Let's sit down and talk about it. Who knows? Perhaps if we could find a magic moment of consensus we could move it quickly.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

The last point on Madame Deschamps' report is that I have a motion before this committee to invite you as well as Madame Deschamps and the Chief of the Defence Staff to come to our committee. Would you be willing to do that to talk further about the report and its implementation?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

I'd be happy to come to committee whenever the committee invites me, Mr. Chairman, whenever I'm in Ottawa. Sometimes I have urgent business elsewhere, but in principle, yes.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you. I hope that we'll be able to deal with that motion later today.

To move to another point, again and again I'm finding, regarding services that are expected to be provided to the military and military families, that there seems to be glaring gaps occurring. I want to refer you to two that come to mind as a result of recent information and recent reports.

The first one is the fact that the universal child care benefit doesn't appear to be universal when it comes to military families. I have here a letter addressed to a military family living and serving in the United States saying that the universal child care benefit that had been given is not available to that family because they're living outside of the country. The letter demands that $3,600 going back to 2012 be repaid. I wonder, how is it that these things occur and is this something that you can actually fix? This certainly seems to be problematic.

The other one is the case of Major Marcus Brauer. The government has now twice refused to pay his $88,000 home equity assistance loss that occurred when he was forced to move from the Edmonton base to Halifax, despite his having won a grievance through the grievance procedure and having the Chief of the Defence Staff at that time supporting his grievance but being unable to pay it out. Now, that seems to me to be in direct contradiction to the notion that people who serve in the military should be entitled to get the benefits that a policy suggests they should receive. Secondly, in the case of Major Brauer, the grievance procedure that we have in place doesn't seem to provide an effective remedy when a monetary payment is required, because the Chief of the Defence Staff doesn't have the authority to actually order a monetary payment.

These two things are glaring. Major Brauer has been fighting this for five years now. This case of the universal child care benefit seems another example of our military members not receiving what they should receive in government benefits.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Harris. On the first point, I'd be happy to look into that. Of course, many social benefits administered by both the federal and provincial governments apply only to residents for taxation purposes. But I will certainly look into that and commit to get back to you.

On the second matter, I'm not familiar with that case. Perhaps the Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff could respond.

[LGen Guy R. Thibault]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

On the issue that's been referred to, Major Brauer's case, one of the dimensions of the Canadian Forces that we see is the frequent moves of members of the Canadian Armed Forces. In those kinds of circumstances, finding the appropriate locations for your home is always one of our biggest challenges, and to find the right place for your children to go to school. In those moves what happens, of course, is that inevitably, over time, individuals who buy into market will find that they may not be able to sell their homes when they're being posted.

So within the protection that we have for members of the Canadian Armed Forces is a protection to offer them, in the case where they may not be able to recoup their full cost, provisions to allow a member to recoup some of that which would be involved with their overall situation in a particular sale of a home.

We can never tell somebody where they're going to buy a house or what kind of house to buy.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Vice-Chief, he won his grievance procedure. The Chief of the Defence Staff has the final say, and he said yes, you should be entitled to receive your full loss of home equity.

[LGen Guy R. Thibault]

In this particular case, if I may, the point would basically be that he's gone through the grievance procedure. He still has measures that are available to him in terms of judicial review, which is his entitlement to do, and ultimately, at this point, I would just say that the compensations and benefits we provide for members of the Canadian Armed Forces are, I think, recognized very widely as being of a very high standard. We have a very good overall compensation and benefits package for members of the forces. Ultimately, when you come to each individual circumstance, you're never going to satisfy a hundred per cent of the people a hundred per cent of the time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Time is up, Mr. Harris.

We've hit the point in the rotation with two Conservative slots. Mr. Bezan will take both.

Mr. Bezan, for 10 minutes, please.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to thank the minister and all the members from the defence team for being here today to help us go through the main estimates.

Yesterday, Minister, I had the opportunity to meet with the provost marshal along with representatives from Ukraine, from their military police. Of course, as you know, we are leading the subcommittee on the joint commission with the Ukraine and the United States and United Kingdom on training, as you mentioned earlier, Ukrainian military members.

The military police one is an interesting leadership role that we're taking amongst our coalition partners, but can you speak in general terms, and also to the specifics, on why it's important that Canada is participating in and standing with our Ukrainian friends and on the work we're doing with NATO in Operation Reassurance?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Bezan. I know this is an issue very close to your heart.

I understand we had a delegation of the Ukrainian military police in Ottawa yesterday here to learn, and, indeed, one of the specific requests that Ukraine has made of Canada in terms of capacity building is in the area of military police.

The Ukrainian military, as you know, has sadly been subject to many of their capabilities being degraded over time thanks in part to bad leadership at the political level. The previous president ended up ensuring that friends of his ended up receiving large chunks of the military budget as opposed to the actual military. This has really atrophied many of their capabilities, including in the area of military police.

But also I understand the Ukrainian troops have been incurring disproportionately high levels of fatalities as a result of combat casualties in combatting Russian and Russian-backed troops in the Donbas region, so we believe the medical first aid and medevac training that we will provide will help to reduce casualties by increasing their ability to provide critical first aid.

Similarly, the flight safety training will be very helpful to Ukrainian forces in reducing casualties, as will the training with respect to the detection and disposal of improvised explosive devices.

But the core of our training operation, which will occur in Yavoriv, in Galicia, in western Ukraine, will be general combat training that will start with units from the Ukrainian National Guard and eventually will move to units from the Ukrainian army. We'll be doing this together with the United States.

One last point. Shortly after I became minister, I announced Canada would begin providing radar satellite imagery that we obtain to Ukraine so they can better detect strategic movements across their border with Russia. This was something that President Poroshenko specifically asked of Canada when he visited us here last September. We believe that, and the non-kinetic equipment we have delivered tons of—I think you were involved personally in some of that—have been extremely well received. In fact, I've spoken to Ukrainians who say the Canadian winter gear, for example, was the most popular item available in the Ukrainian army. They gave it a nickname. They called it Kanadki. Apparently this has really helped to raise the profile of Canada-Ukraine, which I think is a wonderful expression of solidarity.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Thank you.

NATO reassurance. We are of course participating in both. We have done air policing, we've done a number of land exercises, and the HMCS Fredericton is over there right now.

Can you speak to what we're doing with NATO in bolstering our presence and participation with allies in the face of this Russian aggression?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Thank you.

Yes, Mr. Chairman, we have committed assets to NATO's Operation Reassurance since last summer, including currently the deployment of some 250 army personnel situated in Poland. They have been doing joint exercises and training in the Baltic states, in Poland and elsewhere. A number of those soldiers currently come from Garrison Petawawa.

In addition, of course, I mentioned the Baltic air policing rotation led by four Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 Hornets last autumn, as well as the deployment of the naval asset, the HMCS Fredericton, in the Black Sea. They have also been on joint exercises with other NATO countries, and I understand they will be deployed to the Baltic Sea in the near future.

In addition to all of these things, there will be some very large-scale NATO joint training exercises this summer to which we will be contributing an estimated 1,000 military personnel. That's not formally part of Operation Reassurance, but it sends the same message: a message of strength, coordination, and determination in the alliance; a message we know Mr. Putin is hearing.

In fact, when the HMCS Fredericton was last in the Black Sea, Russian military aircraft flew around it and over it to demonstrate they recognized our presence in the Black Sea. As far as I'm concerned, the message is being sent that Canada is there and we are part of the alliance.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

To continue, I want to talk a little bit about Operation Impact, the role we are playing there with the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Canadian Army using special operations forces members in Iraq, and the expansion and extension of the mission to Syria. Of course, all this is included in the main estimates. I was wondering if you could speak to the importance of our participating with coalition partners in defeating the Daesh, this terrorist jihadist [Inaudible—Editor].

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

To date, for fiscal year 2014-15, I believe we estimated $122.6-million in incremental funding for the Canadian Armed Forces Operation Impact in Iraq. As you know, the government has decided, and the House of Commons has endorsed the decision, to extend that operation for one year and to expand the RCAF air sorties into eastern Syria. In the budget, we estimate that the cost of this extension in the current fiscal year will be $360 million, which includes a 20% contingency. The largest portion of those costs is associated with munitions and aviation fuel for the six CF-18 Hornets, the two modernized RCAF Aurora surveillance aircraft, and the Polaris refuelling aircraft, which has helped to deliver tons of aviation fuel to coalition aircraft.

As you know, last week the Prime Minister and I visited the RCAF stationed in Kuwait, and we were extraordinarily impressed by the professionalism. In fact, I went out on the tarmac and saw our Hornets. I was told by our general there that, just two days prior, Canadian CF-18 pilots had led coalition aircraft from six different countries in a mission that struck, I believe, 49 targets in 19 minutes with no apparent collateral damage. That was Canadians leading that mission. Also, apparently we have been contributing in very significant ways in unpacking intelligence that we are getting from various sources, including aerial surveillance, to help with coalition targeting. I would point out that, in the last three or four days, we have seen an increased tempo in CF-18 sorties successfully hitting targets of the so-called Islamic State, demonstrating that we are continuing to make a difference there.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Thank you.

I just have—

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Very briefly.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

—a really brief question.

I appreciate that we've been getting all these technical briefings from National Defence, from you, and from the commanders who are leading the Canadian Forces. Can you talk a bit about the progress we have made since we've been there, not just from a Canadian standpoint but from the entire coalition, in the fight against ISIS?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Chairman, last September the so-called Islamic State was gaining new territory every day, new villages, towns, and cities, including Mosul, the second largest in Iraq; claiming new victims; committing genocide against the religious minorities of Iraq, the Yazidis, the Assyrian Christians, and others; and committing some 8,000 Yazidi women alone to horrific sexual slavery and human trafficking. Left unchecked, there is no doubt that ISIL would now be in control of much of Iraq, in addition to its territory in Syria.

This is strategically relevant to Canada because as long as that death cult was growing in perceived size, strength, territory, and pseudo-sovereignty, it was confirming the whole narrative of this so-called caliphate. The growth of that organization was, in other words, a magnet for radicalization and recruitment, including from countries like Canada. Every Canadian who goes and joins Daesh represents a potential security threat to us here at home, as do the radicalized individuals unable to leave this country, such as the two individuals who committed attacks last October. That is why it has been so critically important to move Daesh from the offence to the defence, from gaining territory to losing territory. This effectively proves that this is not a caliphate; it's just a band of genocidal hoodlums, and this helps to reduce the seductive power of it to recruit and radicalize.