Evidence of meeting #107 for National Defence in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was soldiers.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
How many students, then, would have gone through the program before they were deployed to Mali?
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
The generic training that we provide to the military should have prepared them to go. For the specific things that we did on child soldier training, for example, every member of the task force would have participated in that.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
So that's around 250. How long was that course?
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Okay, everybody would come down for one day, and you have the capacity to handle that many students in a shortened period of time.
You say you also extend training to international partners. Among the nations that we are partnered with in Mali that are stationed particularly at Gao, what member nations would have gone through that program as well?
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
They would not have. That training focused on our air task force alone. We export our training to other countries so that they will train their trainers, and they can run their own training program. There would have been no international participation on that particular serial.
The international participation is normally in Kingston at our PSTC. In this particular case, we sent some of Colonel Allain's team out to the air task force when they were in Wainwright, I think, to give them that training.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Out of the international partners that we have on the UN mission, which of those countries have taken advantage of the Canadian program where we helped train their trainers?
LCol Jacques Allain
During the last UNMEM course, we had one instructor from the U.K. for sure and one from Germany as well. I would have to look through my notes to make sure I have the others right. We had a lot of people from Latin America and a few from Africa as well.
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
We regularly work with the French army as well. My understanding is that we would not have trained any of those forces directly, although we may well have trained some of the instructors who subsequently trained them.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Okay, I appreciate that.
Bangladesh and some of those countries doing peacekeeping alongside our forces would not necessarily have benefited.
LCol Jacques Allain
We have a Bangladeshi student coming to our next serial October 1 to 26. Not in the past, but in the future we're helping them as well.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
In the conversation you're having right now with 2 Canadian Air Division about their adapting the army Peace Support Training Centre within the air force, what courses are they looking at? Particularly, how would it enable them to better deal with the environment in Mali?
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
I should probably clarify, before I pass it to Colonel Allain, that we have air force and navy personnel in the Peace Support Training Centre, so we provide this training on behalf of the entire Canadian Armed Forces. It is nestled within the army, so there's an army flavour to it.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
Normally it is army that does most of the peacekeeping missions.
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
Yes, sir, normally it would be the odd pilot, air crew or support personnel who might not be army who participate as well. What we will be doing is providing some of the contracted cultural awareness training.
The army still remains responsible for child soldier doctrine. We will provide assistance with gender advisement, and we will bring people back from the first rotation in Mali who will be the primary instructors for the air force. We're really complementing them to make sure they capture the in-theatre lessons and pass them along to others.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
When we look at the training that you provide, and with the things that may occur and what may be seen for any troops deployed, again, top of mind for Canadians is the Mali mission, and you say you do a kind of debrief when they get back.
What preparations are done from the mental health standpoint? I know a lot of it is geared towards not just road to mental readiness but peacekeeping, diplomacy and those avenues. What's happening on the side of preparation for the mental health impact?
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
We've made great strides in our mental health care for our forces and we're trying to emphasize the preparation before people deploy. Our road to mental readiness program has become quite well developed. We have several other programs in the army. We have Mission: Ready, which looks at the holistic health to try to present—
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
But there's nothing specifically geared towards peacekeeping? It's just the overall, the trauma that they might face.
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
No, sir. We have not developed anything specific to peacekeeping so far. We will be talking with the first rotation when they come back to find out if there are specific things they're seeing that we need to tailor into our programs.
Conservative
James Bezan Conservative Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB
What about the child soldier side of it? That's a whole different gamut that really hasn't been focused on in the past.
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
I have spoken with the commanding officer over there. To date, they've had no exposure to child soldiers. Most of the troops outside the wire are flying and moving around. They're not on the ground with patrols, so they have not seen that as a huge concern and they felt that the preparatory training was good so far.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
Thanks very much, Mr. Chair, and my thanks to both of you for being here to share your expertise with us this morning.
I want to get another focus. I'm going to use a personal example to make sure I understand the difference. I worked for an NGO based in the U.K. and went to Afghanistan. I went through two different pieces of negotiation training. One of them was the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre and the other one was with the British Special Forces. We talked about negotiations. It was part of both courses. I guess for me the negotiations at the Pearson peacekeeping centre was about how to get parties to the table and how to do all those kinds of things. The British Special Forces was how to get through a hostile roadblock, how to negotiate your way through those tactical things.
I'm trying to understand. When you say “tactical”, it's the operational parts of peacekeeping missions that you're doing training on. Is that correct?
