National Defence Committee on Sept. 25th, 2018

[MGen Stephen M. Cadden]

I do the doctrine. With the establishment of the joint operations command, we've centralized. We've maintained a much more consistent and serious oversight for every single Canadian deployed overseas. The stories General Dallaire might relate about his inability to contact United Nations headquarters, he would not today have difficulty contacting Canadian headquarters or UN headquarters, because Canada helped establish a 24-7 operation centre in New York, which you'll be able to see.

We have constant contact with our soldiers overseas. We're able to provide that oversight and execute national command to make sure they're not left alone or abandoned anywhere.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Gentlemen, thank you both for your service to Canada, and for appearing in front of our committee today.

I'm going to suspend so you can get on with your day, and we can bring in our next panel.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Welcome back from our first session. I'd like to recognize and welcome Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg.

It's nice to see you again. Thank you for coming.

I'm going to give the floor to you for your opening remarks and then we'll get into our questioning. We have about an hour left, as you know.

Without delay, the floor is yours.

[Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg, President, Peace and Conflict Planners Inc., As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for inviting me to offer testimony to the committee.

It's an honour to be here with you again and to discuss this very important topic. As you may know, I am a political geographer and my expertise is in post-war reconstruction. I teach at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto as well as the Royal Military College in Kingston.

Uniquely, I am one of the only Canadian civilians to have worked for the big three: the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, the Peace Support Training Centre, as well as the U.S. Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, all of which had some focus on providing excellence in research, training and mentorship of the wider international peace operations community.

I'm often called upon by the Canadian Forces to work with them on the complex identity and culture dimensions of interventions. In essence, that's how to manage the people problems that arise in conflict environments. Why and how conflict-affected people react and respond to our interventions, also known as peacekeeping, can really come as a surprise to many of the western interveners.

It's from this theoretical and practical perspective I approach this testimony to the committee. Today I want to offer two concepts for your consideration in your study on Canada's contribution to international peacekeeping. The first is whether peacekeeping is an issue of national defence and security or an issue of national identity. The second is how peacekeeping fits into the spectrum of operations and how Maslow's hierarchy of needs can help manage expectations related to our contribution to international peacekeeping.

To begin, I will orient us to collective security and the transition going on in the international community. We know that Canada is part of a collective security web in which we commit our diplomatic, defence, development, humanitarian and private sector capabilities so that we can work shoulder to shoulder with our allies in these insecure environments around the world, not only to alleviate the suffering of populations, mostly the civilian populations, but equally so to protect Canada's sovereignty and the security of Canadians. We also know that Canada and the wider international community is going through a transition of understanding from 20th-century models for peace and security towards the emergent 21st-century trends of security.

We know that most of the literature, theory and practice related to peacekeeping refers to it as part of peace operations and that this term, peace operations, is in fact the catch-all phrase of today. After reading all of the committee meeting evidence provided by your guest witnesses this year, I want us to focus on the meaning and utility behind the words rather than the words themselves.

We also have scientific evidence that the only thing that will not change during this transition of understanding is the human behaviour induced by violent armed conflict. Scientists know for certain that conflict-affected peoples tend to act, react, reorient and behave the same way across almost all cultures, geographies, religions, social structures, economies and ideologies. In a world in transition, this is something we can count on, unfortunately.

Let's begin with a reframing discussion. In essence, what meaning do you place on peacekeeping? Is peacekeeping a policy, a security strategy, a conflict management mechanism? Is it an element of Canadian identity? Can you decide whether peacekeeping is a noun, a thing, or is it a verb, an activity? As you have obviously determined, peacekeeping can be all of these things for many reasons.

As past committee guests have provided testimony, Dag Hammarskjöld and Lester B. Pearson envisioned peacekeeping to be an activity that would result in an environment for which ceasefires and peace agreements could take hold. In addition, other invited guests have suggested that peacekeeping is dead and we need to just get over it and move on.

This is important because peacekeeping has survived as an activity of the UN because it's an effective tool in the conflict management tool box when applied in specific conflict situations. In practice and in theory, the tool box is called peace operations and peacekeeping is just one of the tools, yet the notion of peacekeeping has survived in the minds of Canadians because its meaning matters to Canadian identity as a nation.

We're told that it is part of our collective memory of Canada and if it is dead, so too is a part of Canada. People are very sensitive about this. The very notion that peacekeeping is dead can foment much hatred among the media, government and Canadian public.

If peacekeeping has multiple meanings, then we need to maintain its purpose as a meaningful part of our Canadian identity, while managing its limitations as one tool in a group of many, by including it in the spectrum of operations that have their roots in the 19th and 20th centuries and which are being discarded or newly fitted for the emergent security environments in the 21st century.

It becomes a likelihood that Canada will want to be at the heart of international discussions on devising and delivering improved ways to manage conflicts, if in fact peacekeeping is a part of our national identity, and we have experience in all its applications within the wider spectrum of operations. Perhaps then, the committee will consider that peacekeeping is a multi-faceted issue of national defence and security, as well as an issue of Canadian identity.

In other words, meaning matters in the discussion. This could help us better understand Canada's roles and responsibilities in peace operations, application and its reinvention. Where does it fit? How does peacekeeping fit into the spectrum of operations?

Did you receive a set of slides?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Apparently, we did not.

[Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg]

Great. I will just continue on and I will describe what I mean.

We need to understand where peacekeeping fits in the spectrum of operations. There is something that we use in peace and conflict studies called the "conflict bump". In effect, it is a graph that shows the escalation of conflict in a society, moving up towards a peak, and then a de-escalation of conflict, back towards peaceful outcomes for a society, a community, a region, perhaps even a nation writ large. We learn about this tool in peace and conflict studies because it allows us, in a two-dimensional way, to imagine what happens to a country when conflict escalates, or when there are trigger events that move a community into violent armed conflict. This would also apply where the international community notices elements in which diplomacy and defence, development and humanitarianism, and longer-term interactions such as peacemaking would occur in a spectrum over time.

We know now that conflict has many emergent threats and triggers yet we no longer know how to map it out in that two-dimensional format.

I do have the graph here. You can see the bump, but I don't want to refer to it if we don't have it in front of us.

The idea here is that peacekeeping can be injected once the conflict has begun to de-escalate and hostilities have been suspended to make room for the international community to intervene with that particular tool. However, other aspects of conflict and peace need to be in place for sustainable outcomes to occur and for the community itself—or the nation itself—to become responsible in its own governance structures and move forward as a peaceful community.

Before you jump to the conclusion that conflict no longer happens in that type of linear model—as once was the case between states and as we have advanced into what we call post-Westphalian concepts of armed conflict and war—consider that the best minds have not yet developed a better way to diagram conflict in two dimensions. We don't have access to three-dimensional models in our discussion today.

It's really a conversation about how we picture conflict and where the conflict mechanisms can inject and create the change that we're looking for.

One of the things I teach—especially to the Canadian Armed Forces—is what happens when we come at operations from the wrong end of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. What I mean, if you're familiar with Maslow's hierarchy—I referred to it at the beginning of my talk—is that when it comes to human behaviour, the bottom levels of the pyramid need to be addressed first. Only then can an individual begin to accommodate their other needs and wants, all the way up from basic physiological needs to self-esteem, belonging, love and then self-actualization. Some people have pictured this pyramid from a community perspective: If a community experiences conflict, especially violent armed conflict, most of their needs and wants are not met and they immediately drop to the bottom of the pyramid. It takes quite a bit of time to manage your way out of that bottom layer and into the other levels, and then to move up to self-actualization.

There is a defined order of human needs, and when satisfied in the appropriate order, human potential can be realized. When the ability to satisfy all parts of the hierarchy of needs is compromised, human satisfaction—let alone human potential—cannot be met.

People are dominated and their behaviour is organized only by unsatisfied needs. We're talking about that post-conflict environment. If hunger is satisfied, it becomes unimportant in the current dynamics of the individual. A person lacking food, safety, love and esteem would likely hunger for food above anything else. All other needs become non-existent. After the basic needs are met, other and higher needs immediately emerge, and it is these rather than psychological hungers that dominate the person. When a need or a want becomes chronic, as in hunger, it's as if the person lives only to satisfy it.

The act of intervention aims to satisfy these human needs. Instead of addressing the emotional and physical basic human needs affected during conflict, many of our late 20th and early 21st century models of intervention focused expectations on the top of the pyramid, addressing democratic liberalism, political mentorship, human rights and gender equality, and nationwide educational systems through security sector reform and economic strengthening. Yes, these actions have purpose and meaning; however, they are often mismatched with the realities on the ground.

The mismatch often offsets any real capacity to attain mission goals and to forge successes recognized in the political community. More than a little Canadian blood has been shed because of the mismatch between political aims and the efficacy of the mechanism in the conflict environment. In other words, while we set goals to achieve state self-actualization—the top of the pyramid—our interventions are in complex environments where civilians and belligerents seek only basic necessities and personal security—the bottom of the pyramid.

What will the results be if mechanisms like peacekeeping are mismatched continually against political aims and the available resources to attain the aims?

The international community—and more specifically, western states—are fixated on the top of Maslow's pyramid, and we wonder why peacekeeping does not get war-affected peoples to the top of the pyramid more quickly. Why aren't they self-actualized when we leave? Managing expectations of the efficacy of the conflict management tool is critical. If we begin with the bottom part of the pyramid, there are mechanisms in place to address issues as we move up the pyramid in a conflict-affected society, but we often skip steps, so we have to be careful about that.

Lastly, and in summary, I have three recommendations to propose to the committee.

The first one is to manage your meanings—your peacekeeping meanings that is—because meanings matter. The second is to be sure to consider which end of the pyramid you think Canada should set its sights on, and then resource the heck out of the operation. Third, place Canada at the heart of discussions to innovate the conflict management tools for the emergent security environment of the 21st century. Recall that, “We have to do good things, but we also have to do them for strategic reasons.”

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

We're going to go to our first round of questions.

MP Gerretsen, the floor is yours.

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

Thank you Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here, Ms. Meharg.

Earlier in our study, witnesses discussed the gradual decline in Canada's participation and contributions in peacekeeping throughout the world. Actually, from the data, it would look as though we've had a decay in support from the seventies. I'm trying to avoid making this a political thing and just show that it appears to be more of an issue of national priorities shifting. Would you say or would you agree with that, that there's a shift in Canadian priorities relating to security since the 1970s?

[Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg]

There's been a shift in international community priorities. It was time for the western allies to begin to mentor and train the emergent peacekeeping nations, the countries that wanted to commit their soldiers into the system and to be part of the global commons. What we have seen is a trend where Canadian contributions have declined—intentionally, perhaps—but it's part of a broader discussion in the international community and at the UN that other countries....

Let's use Bangladesh as an example, because the last testimony did bring up that topic. You can have the Bangladeshi soldiers increase their contribution in a way that's meaningful for that country and their identity within the global commons, the international community system.

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

Did other countries that weren't actively engaged in peacekeeping operations also see a similar decay, would you say?

[Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg]

I avoid the word “decay”, because....

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

Decline?

[Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg]

Possibly. There was a shift in intentionality. Canada did see its role as a mentor and to stand up other peacekeeping training centres and centres of excellence around the world, and as you're fully aware, the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre duplicated itself over a hundred times in countries around the world. UN member states have Pearsonian-type research or training centres intended to train up the newly on-boarding peacekeeping countries.

When it comes to our allies, there was a shift toward policing from providing the bulk of soldiering contributions, and then also toward mentoring and training of host nation forces and police forces.

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

In our briefing note it mentions—and you mentioned it at the beginning of your presentation—that you were a senior research associate at the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre. Amongst other functions, you trained multinational mid- to upper-level diplomats, military officials, humanitarians, and international civil servants. You conducted and evaluated seminars with international participants.

What was the purpose of the seminars you conducted with the international participants?

[Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg]

Good. I'll give you an example.

We would go down to the PKSOI at the U.S. Army War College, which is their equivalent of our Pearson centre. We would host a seminar where we would have a few international participants. We would have maybe U.S. joint command at the table. We would have USAID. We would fly down some Canadian representatives from government. We would have a very robust discussion on what, at that point in time, the new comprehensive operations were all about, what hybrid operations were all about, how you can conduct joined-up operations, the different levels and strengths of different influences around the table, and whose perspective mattered in particular aspects of an operation.

It was in order to not only build relationships amongst the actors at the table but also to become very aware of the world view and identities of those groups. When one perhaps was deployed, or one came back to Canada and was in a government department, you could more easily understand a defence world view, a development world view, or a Ghanaian policing world view. It was a way to bridge the knowing-doing gap.

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

It sounds as though there was immense value added to that. Based on what you're saying, it would appear as though it served its purpose.

[Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg]

Yes, and there's proof.

I really appreciated listening to the previous testimony. Your questions about measures of effectiveness are spot on. How do we measure whether or not our training is working? How do we measure whether or not one of those international seminars were working?

There is evidence that relationships built in advance of deployments can be called upon in theatre to advance an operation, whether it's tactically, operationally or strategically. Those are potentially iterative, whereas when somebody returns home, the relationship ends. That is, unless it's the next time you go to the field and you can say, I knew such and such an officer, or this USAID person who was in the field when I was in Afghanistan. Now you're in Mali and you can pick up the phone.

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

Why did the Pearson centre close?

[Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg]

I was on maternity leave when it closed, so I can't answer the question specifically.

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

Okay.

Would you recommend that the Canadian government look at re-establishing a centre like that? If so, what changes would you recommend?

[Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg]

I've written a report on this, which I'd be happy to share with the committee. In fact, it might be worthwhile....

While I was at the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, we went through many different transformations, but the purpose of the centre never changed. Where it was located was usually part of the transformational conversation, whether it was to be in rural Nova Scotia or if it were more apt to play a role by being closer to the nation's capital.

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

Eastern Ontario somewhere....

[Dr. Sarah Jane Meharg]

At that time, it definitely was in the Ottawa area.

Now with regard to what I would do, if there were a place for a centre of excellence, Canada would be a wonderful host for a place like that. There is little—

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Sorry, I'm going to have to be fair. MP Gerretsen will have to lobby for his riding at another point in time.

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

It wasn't about my riding.

Could you follow up with a written submission to conclude that thought?