National Defence Committee on Sept. 25th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Welcome, gentlemen, this morning to the defence committee and our continued discussion about Canada's contribution to international peacekeeping.

We have, from the Department of National Defence, Major-General Stephen Cadden and Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques Allain.

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for coming. I understand you have to leave at noon, so I won't belabour the point.

General, I'll turn it over to you for your opening remarks.

[Major-General Stephen M. Cadden, Commander, Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre, Department of National Defence]

Mr. Chair, committee members, thank you very much for the opportunity to present to you today. As you mentioned, I'm here with Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques Allain. We represent really land-focused training. Colonel Allain, of course, commands the Peace Support Training Centre and I'm responsible for all doctrine and training systems within the army.

As commander of the Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre, I am responsible for all land operations training in the army and also any training for the air force and the navy, for jobs they may do that occur in the land domain, so if they're going to do something on the ground.

The functional areas for which I'm responsible include both individual and collective training, professional military education, simulation, doctrine, as well as capturing and implementation of lessons learned. Lieutenant-Colonel Allain is responsible for all of the activities and training conducted by the Peace Support Training Centre, and as such will probably be a focal point for many of your questions.

My opening remarks are intended to provide you with an overview of the Peace Support Training Centre's mandate, and we'll later answer, of course, any questions you may have, alternating as appropriate. We can elaborate as you see fit.

Certainly the release of “Strong, Secure, Engaged”, our new defence policy, has provided a new and revised effort and approach for national defence priorities and efforts. It identifies growth in both the regular and reserve forces, investment in new and emerging capabilities, and highlights the core missions that will allow Canada to contribute to international peace and security. I believe it's relevant to this committee's deliberations because the investments that are translating into the army directly flow down through to the Peace Support Training Centre.

As an important part of the Government of Canada's comprehensive approach, it's very likely that the Canadian Army will be called upon to conduct expeditionary operations outside of our country, both jointly and within a coalition context. Land forces remain decisive in achieving conflict resolution, and the Canadian Army must remain ready and capable of deploying scalable, agile and responsive land forces where and when the Government of Canada requires land power.

Ongoing Canadian involvement in support of Canadian Armed Forces operations such as assisting local security forces fighting Daesh in the Republic of Iraq and in Syria, supporting NATO's defence and deterrence measures in central and eastern Europe, military training and capacity-building operations in Ukraine, and training Nigerian Armed Forces are all testaments to the Canadian Army's ability to generate and deploy land force elements capable of the rapid, flexible and sustained response that we need.

As a part of the army, the Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre is, I hope, an adaptable and innovative training institution that is the Canadian Armed Forces' centre of excellence for land operations and training. The Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre will exploit leading-edge practices and technologies to develop cognitively dominant professional leaders and teams who are universally ready for a wide range of missions in any type of environment. We really try to put the effort on making sure we don't have an individual with a rifle on a mission. We want a cognitively dominant soldier who can think, who can respond and who can give appropriate actions on behalf of the government.

From its humble beginnings in 1996 with eight military members assigned the task of preparing officers for United Nations missions as military observers, the Peace Support Training Centre is now responsible to generate and train military experts in influence activities and to support pre-deployment training for individuals or small team missions.

Last year, as part of an army reorganization, the Peace Support Training Centre became a direct reporting unit to the Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre. The desired outcome is to streamline efforts of the training system as a whole and thereby optimize the integration of their specialized training. It also means that Lieutenant-Colonel Allain has direct access to me, as I have direct access to the army commander, if we find we don't have sufficient resources or equipment to execute his mandate.

As the lead joint inter-agency multinational training centre, the vision of the Peace Support Training Centre is to be recognized by all Canadian government departments and allies as the trainer of choice and experts in the delivery of individual readiness training. This includes individual preparation training and hazardous environment training, a United Nations military expert on mission course, security force capacity building, information operations, psychological operations, and civilian and military co-operation training and courses. Having read the biographies, I'm well aware that the members of this committee have a long and extensive background dealing with defence matters, but we'd be happy to explain any of those courses in further detail if you so desire.

The Peace Support Training Centre provides specific individual training to prepare selected members of the Canadian Armed Forces, other government departments, and foreign military personnel for full spectrum operations within the contemporary operating environment, while fulfilling our centre of excellence responsibilities. We train our soldiers and the civilians who will work with them to go into a full war-fighting environment and scale down the knowledge and training as necessary, if we're going in to a peace support operation.

As an example of centre of excellence responsibilities, the Peace Support Training Centre coordinates the delivery of cultural awareness training for the Canadian Armed Forces through the centre for intercultural training from Global Affairs Canada. Likewise, the Peace Support Training Centre is playing a key role in the ongoing requirement to prepare its members to face the reality of conducting operations where child soldiers exist. This falls under the overarching publication for vulnerable populations, of which child soldiers is a subset. The training for land forces in this area is led by the Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre.

Although the Peace Support Training Centre is a training institution, it regularly provides individual reinforcement to current missions as well as experts on assistance visits.

At this time, the Peace Support Training Centre is providing the first two rotations of gender awareness advisers to the commander of Task Force Mali. We are also enabling the Lebanese armed forces to develop their first civil-military co-operation capability.

With a staff of just under 60 personnel, the Peace Support Training Centre provides, on an annual basis, training to more than 1,000 members in the Canadian Armed Forces and up to 300 Global Affairs Canada personnel deploying into hazardous environments. The Peace Support Training Centre also provides training to 60 to 70 international officers that come to Canada to receive our world-class instruction.

The Peace Support Training Centre also represents Canada in many peacekeeping training conferences around the world.

The Peace Support Training Centre has exported our civilian-military co-operation knowledge in the past year to Mongolia and provided one instructor as part of a multinational team, which included Canadian, Dutch, Austrian, German and Swiss personnel. This team was tasked to assist the Vietnamese department of peacekeeping operations in establishing a United Nations military expert on mission course, so that it could be accredited by the United Nations and have the ability to run courses for their own military as well as those of neighbouring nations.

In concluding my remarks, I'd like to highlight that the Peace Support Training Centre has a long history of excellence in providing United Nations certified training at the tactical level, and has successfully achieved both operational and strategic impact to its domestic and international partnerships.

The Peace Support Training Centre's reputation for training excellence is renowned, and its instructors and courseware are much sought after commodities within Canada and internationally.

Since I had little time to prepare my presentation today, it is only in English, and I apologize. Lieutenant-Colonel Allain and myself are ready to answer your questions in the language of your choice.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you, General.

As a reminder to everyone, we're going to be tight on time to make sure everyone gets time to speak. If you see this, it's 30 seconds to wind down, as I have to move it on to the next person, so everyone will have an opportunity.

Mr. Robillard, you have seven minutes.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I especially want to thank this morning's witnesses. I will be asking my questions in French, of course.

What reforms are necessary to ensure the effectiveness and success of the peacekeeping architecture of the United Nations?

[MGen Stephen M. Cadden]

That is a very broad question, Mr. Robillard.

I only deal with matters pertaining to the Canadian Army. Lieutenant-Colonel Allain and myself both have experience in United Nations peace missions, especially in Haiti, in my case, and in Bosnia, in the case of Lieutenant-Colonel Allain.

The United Nations has made significant efforts in improving its command and control structures throughout the years, particularly in this century, I'd say in the last decade or so. In the missions we have participated in, we have ensured that we have clear Canadian command of any troops that go through, and clear rules of engagement to ensure that our soldiers understand what they need to do.

I believe there's a need at the United Nations level to re-enforce and ensure that all contributing countries have that same in-depth process of developing rules of engagement for a particular mission set and have clear command structures to ensure that their soldiers on the ground understand what they're able to do and how they're able to accomplish it.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you.

What factors contributed to the constant decline of Canada's contribution to peacekeeping operations since the 1990s?

[MGen Stephen M. Cadden]

The army has been ready to provide soldiers at any point for any missions in which the government calls upon us to partake. Our mandate really focuses on ensuring we are able to prepare the soldiers and have them ready for deployment.

We naturally had a huge focus on operations in Afghanistan in the recent past. That stretched our capacity in a number of ways. We really need to ensure we have the ability to conduct all the types of operations the government wants us to conduct. The army is ready to provide soldiers whenever called upon. I can't really comment on why we have not contributed more soldiers.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you.

What type and what level of resources and personnel does the United Nations need most from Canada for peacekeeping operations?

[MGen Stephen M. Cadden]

Military operations are exceedingly complex these days. On the military side, it is what we refer to as “enabling capabilities”, things that allow other elements to work. Aviation support is critical, and medical support. Any types of intelligence gathering or analysis are of a clear value. Staff, trained and non-commissioned officers, who are able to function in a United Nations military headquarters are of significant value. People who understand the ability to work amongst multiple agencies ensure that the military is one effective tool to accomplish the mission, as opposed to thinking that the military can conduct the mission by themselves.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

MP Gerretsen.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

How much time is there, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You have three minutes.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

General Cadden, welcome to the committee. I'm glad that you've returned to the nicest riding in the country, Kingston. It's nice to have you back.

I want to ask you about the Peace Support Training Centre, the newly opened one in Kingston. Can you explain in layman's terms the difference between that and something like a peacekeeping training centre?

We had General Gregory Mitchell come to the committee a while back, and he recommended that we establish an international peacekeeping training centre that's on par with the Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Centre.

What would be the difference between something like that and what is currently in Kingston?

[MGen Stephen M. Cadden]

Previous centres, and the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre in particular, dealt at a different level than what we do at the Peace Support Training Centre. We really focus on the tactical training, for troops and civilian partners and international partners who will be deploying. Something such as the previous Pearson Peacekeeping Centre dealt with education, research and capacity building, higher-level concepts that were critical for the United Nations to function but completely different from what the troop on the ground would need to look like and the knowledge he would need to have.

The centre that we have now focuses on specific skill sets for an individual. We will tailor it for a mission, if we know which mission they're going on. If not, they'll do a generic United Nations certified course, which will give them the ability to communicate and perform first aid. There will be a cultural awareness component, if there is a particular part of the country they're going to. We really try to focus in on the type of training the individual would need with regard to conduct after capture.

I think there are a number of schools and centres around the world that try to get at higher-level concepts—how we teach agencies to work together in order to solve a conflict, how we recreate all of the national institutions in a country that have been broken—as opposed to focusing, as we do, on the individual soldier skills.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

You're getting people operationally ready to go to a specific area. Whether it's RCMP officers who are going to assist in another part of the world, you're literally getting them ready to deal with what they might come into contact with when they get there.

[MGen Stephen M. Cadden]

Yes, sir.

We're preparing the individual who is going to deploy to be ready to survive and thrive in the environment, as opposed to how to run a mission or to actually accomplish a specific mission.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Would you agree with General Mitchell's suggestion that a new institution for peacekeeping training, like what was done at the Pearson centre, is something we should be looking at?

[MGen Stephen M. Cadden]

I think anything that would give the United Nations the capacity to better succeed in its mission planning and execution would be of absolute value. It might not necessarily focus on Canadian contributions and participating in the missions, but as an overall planning tool, I think it would be very valuable for the United Nations. Yes, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

MP Bezan.

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

Thanks, Chair.

General Cadden and Lieutenant-Colonel Allain, thank you for your service to Canada and for the work you are doing in Kingston in army doctrine and training.

The committee previously had a close working relationship with General Bowes when he was the commander there. He made sure that we experienced on-ground training at Wainwright, and the training centre in Kingston.

You mentioned that although you're predominantly army doctrine and training, you provide peace support training to other elements of the Canadian Armed Forces that are deploying.

In particular with the air task force and the medevac personnel who have been stationed in the Mali mission, what type of training would they have received through your organization?

[MGen Stephen M. Cadden]

For that particular task force, sir, we have provided the initial and we'll provide the follow-on gender adviser who will be there to ensure that all gender considerations are taken into effect in any sorts of plans or missions executed in theatre.

We ran the task force through the PSTC expertise on child solider awareness, so they'd be aware of what they might encounter on the ground there as we continue to evolve our doctrine and training on dealing with child soldiers. As you're aware, that's a fairly new area for us, and we're making great strides but that was really a prototype course that we're providing to that task force.

I might pass it to Jacques.

Are there any other things for that task force in particular?

[Lieutenant-Colonel Jacques Allain, Commander, Peace Support Training Centre, Department of National Defence]

If I may, we are also in the process right now with the air force of developing a training centre similar to ours. The air force is foreseeing its commitment for the next year and want to better the system that they have to train their own people, so we're assisting them. They're coming to us on a fact-finding mission, and we're going to share our process, organization and best practices to prepare soldiers before they go overseas so that they can do it within their own air force context.

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

Would that be with 2 Canadian Air Division?

[LCol Jacques Allain]

Yes, sir.