National Defence Committee on June 17th, 2015

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Before the general.... I don't know if he has a figure. I don't have a figure, but I would say that the context would be comparable and the cost probably comparable to Prime Minister Martin flying to Sri Lanka to visit the Canadian Armed Forces' disaster assistance response team, to Prime Minister Chrétien flying to Bosnia to visit the Canadian army deployment as part of the peacekeeping operation in Bosnia—

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

[Inaudible--Editor]...the minister's inappropriate—

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Order, please.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

—to Prime Minister Mackenzie King visiting Canadian troops deployed in Europe, to other heads of government who visit their troops in the field as a regular expression of public solidarity for the work their militaries do.

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Thank you very much for your history. I would like an answer to my question, and perhaps the Chief of Defence Staff could compare it to the cost of updating military family housing, of which I understand 41% is substandard, which is an expression of this minister's priorities.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Order, Ms. Murray. Allow the general time to respond, please.

[Gen Thomas Lawson]

Mr. Chair, all costs are tracked of course for every taxpayer dollar spent in defence purposes. Often the costs associated with a visit of members of the Government of Canada fit into regular activities. However, all costs are tracked and we will provide that to the chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you.

We move now into the second round of questions, which are five-minute segments.

Mr. Bezan, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank the minister, the generals, and the admiral for being here for another technical briefing, which again comes from the basis that we've been very open and transparent about our activities in Operation Reassurance and Operation Impact. I just want to remind Ms. Murray that when we go and show solidarity with our troops it's quite different than the $40 million the Liberals took in the ad scam, or when Prime Minister Chrétien went and visited our troops in Bosnia and couldn't even put on his helmet properly. That being the point, I'll just move on.

I want to get back to the comment and the question around the precision-guided munitions and that the minister had received information that wasn't entirely correct. General Lawson, how did it come to be that we didn't have all that information before sharing it publicly?

[Gen Thomas Lawson]

Mr. Chair, our belief and our understanding from information we had from the coalition was that the particular weapon that Canadians were carrying was only being carried by the USAF. In fact, one of the other coalition partners who was in there later indicated that they were getting that weapon, had that weapon, and that was our mistake in providing that information forward. We got that to the minister as quickly as we could. We apologize for that as well.

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

Thank you.

I want to go to Operation Reassurance. Minister, could you go into more detail as to what our troops are going to be doing in Ukraine—what type of training they're going to be providing, where they're going to be providing it—so that we have a better understanding of what's going to be happening there this summer and again later in the fall?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

With respect to Operation Reassurance specifically, we will continue through the balance of 2015 to have a company-sized force of roughly 200 infantry personnel deployed in Poland. In fact the Prime Minister and I saw some of them. They came to Warsaw to participate in some of our events during our meetings in Poland.

The current rotation are from Madam Gallant's riding the RCRs from Garrison Petawawa and they're doing a great job. I believe they're going to be rotated out next month and replaced by a company-sized formation from the Van Doos in Valcartier. We have had as you know several CF-18 Hornets that have flown a Baltic air-policing mission over the Baltic states and they were, for part of that time at least, based in Romania. They've since been repatriated back to Canada, but we've indicated at some point in the future that if there's an opening for us to participate in Baltic air policing we would be willing to give that serious consideration, and of course the forward deployment of a frigate, the HMCS Fredericton, in the Baltic as part of NATO assurance measures currently as part of Exercise BaltOps.

In addition to the Operation Reassurance mission, there will be other very important NATO joint training exercises this summer. Exercise Trident Juncture I understand will be one of the largest NATO joint training exercises in the post-Cold War period, largely occurring in southern Europe, Spain, Portugal, and Italy. I understand that we will be deploying some 1,650 personnel through all three services to Exercise Trident Juncture, which sends another important message to others in Europe who might be forces of instability.

Finally, again outside the box of Operation Reassurance there is what we are doing in Ukraine. We have a map up on the screen, and I hope the paper copy has also been distributed. You can see Yavoriv in far west central Ukraine, which is between Lviv and the Polish border. That's where we'll have our largest training operation. We'll have approximately 200 troops doing conventional combat training, initially of national guard units, starting in full force there in September. We have the smaller more discrete training operations we'll be doing down in Kamyanets-Podilsky, the IED training. We're doing MP training, not members of Parliament but military police to be clear, around Kiev, and other operations including aerial safety training, medical training, etc. All of that will be in central or western Ukraine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

That's time, Mr. Bezan.

Ms. Michaud, you have five minutes.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I know that the issue has been raised by several of my committee colleagues, but my first question is for General Lawson.

I would like some clarification about what you said yesterday. I don't want to focus on the controversial remarks, although they are quite frankly disgraceful. One thing worries me about the statement you made afterwards—which was supposed to be an apology for said comments. You said you wanted to examine very seriously the sexual misconduct issues in the Canadian Armed Forces using an action plan based on the 10 recommendations from the Deschamps report. However, there seems to be some ambivalence when it comes to the Canadian Armed Forces' willingness to implement all the recommendations from the report. That is something the NDP has been calling for since the report was published.

My mother is still actively serving in the Canadian Armed Forces, and I am worried about the safety in her work environment. I would like to know whether the Canadian Armed Forces will really adopt all the recommendations from the Deschamps report.

[Gen Thomas Lawson]

Mr. Chair, first of all I should be clear that with reference to all 10 recommendations made by Madam Deschamps, we will achieve the outcomes that she was suggesting. Two of them we have accepted immediately, and—the questioner is right—of the other eight we are absolutely committed to the outcome that Madam Deschamps is recommending. She was one person working for one short period of time. I now have a team under Lieutenant-General Christine Whitecross of 25 people working over a period and making sure that we connect how we get from where we are now to the outcome that Madam Deschamps seeks, and we will get there.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you.

I also heard the minister make a formal commitment to keeping an eye on the situation and to ensuring that outcomes will be achieved. For our part, my colleagues and I will make sure to ask the right questions and to check whether the work is being done. That is a priority for us. The Valcartier military base is in my riding. So this is a huge concern for me.

Let's come back to the topic at hand. I just mentioned the Valcartier base. As was said a little earlier, 220 military members from the Valcartier military base—mainly parachutists—will be in Poland as part of Operation Reassurance from June 28 to July 15. For the first time, in Poland, a rotation will last six months instead of three. Could you explain to us why the rotation will be longer in that specific case?

[Major-General Charles Lamarre, Designate Director of Staff, Strategic Joint Staff, Department of National Defence]

Fortunately, someone else is taking care of it!

All the rotations are based on the exercises that will take place. We make sure that soldiers have something to do when they arrive on the ground. We based it on our discussions with the allied forces we work with, whether they are Polish, American or the authorities of other countries in the region. Each rotation is based on the events that will take place, on training and on the area where Canadians can truly do something that shows what we want to accomplish in the wake of the Russian aggressions in Europe.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

I know there is currently no plan to send to Ukraine soldiers who will be deployed on that rotation. They will be in Poland and may have to travel to other Eastern European countries. I know that Ukraine is currently not in the plans. Can that change as part of the mission?

[MGen Charles Lamarre]

The answer is no, as those are two completely separate things. As part of Operation Reassurance, we have the training camp in Poland, but some countries have already interacted with our soldiers. For instance, we have sent our troops to provide training and make use of their expertise on winter warfare.

They have also done other things with other countries.

As for the individuals who will go to Ukraine, they have a very specific role, and we are really looking to send them to places where they will be able to use their expertise, either in terms of training military police or in terms of flight safety. They are two separate missions.

[Élaine Michaud, NDP, Portneuf—Jacques-Cartier, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Peter Kent]

Thank you.

Mr. Norlock, please. You have five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Through you to the witnesses, thank you for attending today.

Minister, I have two questions. The first one is that I don't really believe that Canadians have been properly advised—especially given your two portfolios—about the minority groups in Canada that you've talked about who are being targeted by ISIS, and about Canada's military mission and why it's needed.

Secondly, we're talking about military missions, but Canada's strategy and our government's initiatives have a humanitarian nature to them and a broader scope.

Could you talk about those two issues?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Sure. Before I do so, though, Mr. Chairman, if you'll indulge me I'd like to note that this may well be Mr. Norlock's last parliamentary intervention after nine years of public service here and many years before that with the Ontario police. I'd like to thank him for his service as a passionate advocate for the people of the Canadian Armed Forces in representing our air force wing at Trenton. Thank you, sir, for being a great partner for the military.

You're quite right. I think there is a humanitarian imperative for our Operation Impact in Iraq and Syria. Let's go back to last August when people were seeing Yazidis on television screens, this ancient sort of gnostic religious community who have faced waves of persecution. There are still a couple of hundred thousand of them left, and they were fleeing their ancient homes and villages in the Nineveh plains to go up to the centre of their ancient homeland in Mount Sinjar. They were literally being hunted down by Daesh, by ISIL terrorists. As soon as ISIL could grab a Yazidi woman or girl, as young as the age of eight, they were sold into sexual slavery and human trafficking operations, which is absolutely odious. There have been confirmed reports of their selling these women on a market to other places in the Middle East. Some girls as young as eight were raped multiple times a day and treated as property of war games by the ISIL or the Daesh terrorists.

Think of the Assyrian people. They're the indigenous people of the Nineveh plains of Mesopotamia. They're been around there for thousands of years, speaking Aramaic and have been Christians for 1,700 years, long before Arabic or Islam showed up in Mesopotamia. They were also being hunted down. I think I mentioned in a speech in the House that I had spoken to the leader of the Chaldean Christian church of the Assyrians who told me about how in Mosul, Daesh went into the hospitals and approached the elderly, infirm, and handicapped Assyrian Christians who could not leave and threatened them with being beheaded in their hospital beds if they did not convert to Islam on the spot.

This is what we are talking about. These are the kinds of depredations that we have. I don't think we've seen evil like this so raw since the death camps of the SS in the Nazi regime. I hope people understand that there is a profound moral obligation for us to be there, as well as a security one.

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

Thank you.

Could you talk about the government's broader scope and initiatives in the area? We talk about the military equipment, etc., but we're also doing humanitarian work in these areas.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Yes, in addition to the humanitarian protection provided by our military, we are, I believe, the sixth largest donor to overseas development assistance for internally displaced Iraqis. Many of them find themselves behind the Kurdish lines in northeastern Iraq.

I'd be happy to provide details to the committee, but when the Prime Minister and I were there, we announced additional funding. I believe we're now at over $100 million in monetary support through international agencies like the World Food Programme, UNICEF, and the UNHCR operating in Iraq, in addition to over $600 million in support as the the fifth largest donor country supporting IDPs in Syria and Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, and to some extent, Turkey.