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.
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
Yes, sir. It's what the individual soldier needs to know in the country to survive and thrive.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
One of the things you did say was that one of the needs for the UN is people who can serve in headquarters. Does your training course prepare people to serve in UN headquarters operational positions?
LCol Jacques Allain
Yes, sir. We actually have a course on military experts on mission. It's 20 days, but that's to serve as a full-blown observer into a mission. We have a five-day package as well that we tailor to small missions that are going to have contact with the UN. It's essentially a UN 101 type of course. Similarly, we can tailor that to staff officers who will be working with the UN, but not as military observers per se.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
You are doing some of that other level of training as part of your course in military experts on mission?
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
For that particular credit course, yes, we are. Certainly, the army currently runs the army operations course, which the air force participates in. It teaches captains how to function as effective staff officers in preparation for promotion to major. All of our major allies have similar courses and that level of staff training is what really allows a headquarters to function effectively.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
In normal peacekeeping missions for Canada, there are always both civilian police, and other civilians are part of the missions. Do you do any of the training for those who are on mission, or is yours exclusively for those who are in the Canadian Forces?
LCol Jacques Allain
No, we don't train specifically civilian police. However, we are facilitating right now a civilian police course. Through our contacts with the permanent mission to the United Nations, we were able to offer our facilities to the UN training department to run a train-the-trainer course, which is essentially for civilian police. It's about how police can go into a different country and start building capacity in the police force of the host nation. We're facilitating that. We're not giving the training.
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
We run hazardous environment training for Government of Canada members, primarily GAC members who are deploying to dangerous theatres.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
When you say you're co-operating with the air force, I'm trying to get a sense of what you're saying. You're doing the training for the whole Canadian Forces, but now the air force is building a separate capacity.
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
The Peace Support Training Centre started as a centre for niche capabilities, and we would send ones or twos off to missions. We grew the mandate of our mission so they're assisting with our training mandate overall. When I went to Afghanistan, for example, because I was deployed in a headquarters, I didn't train with the Canadian unit. I went to the Peace Support Training Centre.
The air task force is one of the larger air force missions we've deployed in a while, with non-ground headquarters leading the mission. The air force realizes that they're stepping up and taking the lead, and they'd like to do their own training. We're facilitating that to make sure we can assist them and provide whatever expertise they need, but we are the fallback if they would rather have us conduct training for them.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
Do you see any advantages for missions with mixed personnel in having common training? Is there a danger in developing too much of a niche approach to the training?
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
In my personal experience, when I was in Haiti I worked very closely with Canadian police officers: RCMP, provincial, municipal and whatnot. Our jobs, roles and mandates were significantly different. There's certainly an element of commonality, but we can't equate it to the same training as required by each element. A soldier who is going out to patrol in Cité Soleil would have a completely different approach from a police officer who is out there helping to train and mentor the Haitian police force, for example. There are elements of commonality, but I don't think we'll ever be able to have a single centre to conduct the training.
NDP
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
When the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre was in existence, one of the things that it cited as one of its own virtues was that courses brought police, military and civilians into the same training courses. I'm just wondering if there are any opportunities, given the demise of that centre, for that to happen on a regular basis.
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
We currently conduct regular domestic operations exercises, and at the provincial level we're getting better about integrating all first responders and bringing them together, along with, in some cases, municipal and provincial political figures. We're doing that here at home, domestically. Internationally, it's still quite difficult. The Canadian Army and the armed forces have a mandate to train, so we like to have as many exercises as possible, to prepare. Other agencies tend to have full-time occupations that fill their time and they can't free up someone for a three-week exercise on what might happen. There's definitely a use here, but it's very difficult to get our partners to dedicate people—on salary and on time—to participate in this sort of training unless they're already committed to a mission.
Randall Garrison NDP Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC
It sounds like there is a bit of a gap left with the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre not in existence because it provided those kind of short-term, two- and three-week courses, where people could come together in that common capacity.
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
I think there is, but my understanding is that we were primarily training a lot of international students. There would be value in training a Canadian military member on how to work with a Ghanaian police officer, but it is a bit esoteric and abstract unless you have a particular mission knowing you're going to work together.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Mr. Chair, thank you very much.
Thank you both for being with us. Thank you for your service and your expertise.
I wanted to start with a couple of big picture questions and then zoom in. In your appreciation, what is “new” when we talk about the new peace operations, the new peace support and the new peacekeeping? You both have extensive and distinguished careers. You've been in Haiti and Bosnia. If you look back to the peacekeeping of the 1960s and look at the last few decades in comparison, what does the new peacekeeping—or peace operations—look like? What distinguishes it?
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
It's been a huge shift, as you know, over 75 years. To talk about where we're going, we've gone from missions where we have a mandate to maintain peace, to missions where there may not be an element of peace to maintain. We're going more and more into countries where most of the national institutions have broken down and we cannot augment or necessarily rely on them to perform a mandate. Quite often we're sending troops—or the United Nations is sending troops—to places where they have to establish an institution, build it up from scratch, assist it, mentor it and then gradually transfer over.
I think that is a significantly different aspect—which requires much more nuanced training for people who are participating in the mission—from the simplistic aspect of standing there between two different warring parties and preventing them from going at it.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
Is the term “nation building” a fair term, if we bracket the political discussion about sovereignty? Practically and tactically, are we rebuilding nations when we're involved in this kind of work?
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
It's rebuilding absolutely, because we generally tend not to go into places and try to impose something. The rebuilding of institutions is absolutely a core mandate of every mission that I've seen for the United Nations, and many of our military allies, going into in the past.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
What would be the key attributes of a member of the Canadian Armed Forces who's involved in peace operations? What characteristics would she have if she's at the top of her game?
MGen Stephen M. Cadden
I think she would come in with the advantage of a perceived neutrality between warring partners—in a lot of cases, but not exclusively. I think she'll come in with the respect for civilian institutions and the dominance of the civilian parts of the population, as opposed to a predominantly militaristic authoritarian structure. We would have trained her in how to function effectively as a staff officer, or to be a leader as a non-commissioned member.
She would be given at least the familiarization, if not extensive training, in the use of technology; the importance of understanding the population; the importance of reaching out to disenfranchised members of the population, such as the female population, child soldiers, minorities; as well as an understanding of how to communicate effectively. She would back it up with a level of fitness, mental toughness and regard for law that would allow her to enforce any regulations ruthlessly but appropriately.
Liberal
Sven Spengemann Liberal Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON
That is extremely helpful. Thank you for that last part of the testimony.
This is an anecdotal question. I've spent time in a political mission with the UN and observed that American reservists were said to be, and actually seemed to have been, extremely effective in this kind of work, especially the work that includes civilian components because they spend most of their time in civilian life. They are dentists, engineers, doctors, lawyers, and then get deployed. Is that something that's on your radar as well as a potential qualification?
Would reserve forces in the Canadian Forces be particularly suited, potentially, to go through the training that you're providing?
