Evidence of meeting #116 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 million.
A video is available from Parliament.
12:45 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
We have an expert on NATO funding in our CFO, so I'll ask him to answer the question.
12:45 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister (Finance) and Chief Financial Officer, Department of National Defence
Thank you very much for your question, sir.
I'll just explain NATO funding a bit. We have three different budgets with NATO. We contribute, normally, approximately $140 million a year as part of our contribution. We are the sixth largest contributor among the 29 countries in NATO.
NATO has a different fiscal year. Their fiscal year is September to August. Our fiscal year is from April to March. It happens, once in a while, that they have invoices that we plan to spend in our fiscal year that they have delayed and that occur in the following fiscal year. This is the case with that $24 million. It was for different infrastructure projects in NATO.
The first one was what they call the NATO command structure in space and that program. They had $1.5 million there. There was also a project by Norway that was delayed a bit, and the invoice came to NATO a bit later. That was another small amount we had to pay. They also had ongoing projects for $20.5 million. All that together is that $24 million.
This year, we still have the $140 million, plus the $24 million carried forward from last year. We will profile it this year. This year, for NATO, we have $164 million.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Thank you.
Within “Strong, Secure, Engaged”, there's a program called innovation for defence excellence and security. Could you give me an update, Deputy Minister, on where we are today in this program? The supplementaries include $2.4 million for funding for the program. Can you elaborate on what that is used for and where we are in rolling out that program?
12:45 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
Thank you.
IDEaS is one of the shining stars of “Strong, Secure, Engaged”. We're very proud of it. It has taken off in a way that none of us could have imagined at its inception. We're using the money to fund the challenges that have already been announced. It's $1.6 billion dollars over 20 years. It's $2.5 million this year to fund the competitive projects.
The kinds of things we're looking at are things like improving gender diversity, a study to help us do that. The University of Waterloo is doing it. The University of Ottawa is looking at a multi-stage approach to addressing sex disparities in musculoskeletal injuries in military operators. We go from the very big to the very specific in the IDEaS program. We have an AI project on smart recruiting using deep learning.
The money requested in this year's supplementary (A)s is to fund those challenges. We put challenges out four times a year, and we're overwhelmed by the response to them. It is a huge success.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
When you get that, how do you let the success of those projects inform your future decisions?
12:50 p.m.
Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
At the ADM level, the three-star generals and admirals and the ADMs in the department put forward challenges for problems they need solved. It is either a study to help inform a next step in something, or it is a challenge to help procurement. We are doing these with very specific end goals, and it just depends on the nature of the challenge. ADM Pat Finn, in materiel, would use a challenge to help him procure so he can buy and try something. It allows us to test a product or several products and decide which one we're going to procure. Instead of saying we need a specific boot, we see which boot works.
Some of them, which are being run by the chief of military personnel, through the S and T program, are to help inform how we recruit, how we retain and how we improve living conditions for members of the armed forces. Every challenge has an end goal; it just depends on the nature of the challenge.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
Darren Fisher Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
Just following up on that, maybe I'll go to Pat for a quick second, then.
This is new. This is very new and it is groundbreaking stuff. I think this is unique, but perhaps it's not. Perhaps you know whether this is unique in the world or not. With this program, have you gone far enough yet in the rollout to be able to put this, so to say, on the street?
12:50 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Materiel, Department of National Defence
We have not gone that far yet. We're at the initial stages. The whole point is to really start at the low level and say, here is the problem. A classic one we put out recently is for gas masks and facial hair. It sounds simple, but it has actually been a problem for a long time, such that operationally we don't allow that. As the minister often talks about recruiting more people, it's about being able to do something like that. We've just started it. We've put it out. We may be some years away.
12:50 p.m.
Assistant Deputy Minister, Materiel, Department of National Defence
It is exciting.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
Thank you.
Given the time we have left, I can give the floor to MP Dzerowicz to do a quick couple of questions, maybe four or five minutes, and then she had a notice of motion she wanted to bring up. I have undertaken to allow her to do that. I'm going to give the floor to her, and then we'll need a couple of minutes, administratively, to vote.
The last question will go to you, MP Dzerowicz.
12:50 p.m.
Davenport, Lib.
Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.
I do want to give notice of motion. I'd like to read it into the record, if that's okay:
That in relation to its study on diversity in the Armed Forces and the motion adopted on Tuesday, September 18, 2018, the Committee broaden the scope of its enquiry to include no fewer than 4 meetings to study the issue of extremists and racist attitudes and beliefs within the Canadian Armed Forces, including their impact on recruitment, morale, and operational effectiveness and that the Committee report its findings to the House.
12:50 p.m.
Liberal
12:50 p.m.
Davenport, Lib.
Thank you so much.
One topic that is quite du jour is cybersecurity. It's something that I know is becoming much more part of our common discourse.
I believe that the Communications Security Establishment has asked for more funding as part of the supplementary estimates. Can you tell me what role the CSE is going to play in the Centre for Cyber Security, which was announced last month? Also, in general, how are we trying to beef up our cybersecurity operations?
12:50 p.m.
Chief, Communications Security Establishment, Department of National Defence
Thank you for your question.
As I mentioned before, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security is actually the amalgamation of all the operational expertise from across the government into a central branch. That branch actually reports inside CSE, so what used to be our IT security branch has now been augmented and will have about 750 people who are focused on being and promoting what the cyber centre can deliver for Canadians. There are many foundations that exist. We've been working on protecting Canadians' information for 70 years, but as you know, the challenges are many in terms of the technological changes that are before us, as well as the threats that are evolving.
The focus of the cyber centre will be to continue to provide advice, guidance and services to raise Canada's cybersecurity bar for Canadians, all the way through to critical infrastructure owners and operators. It will also be to raise awareness. We just finished a month-long cybersecurity awareness campaign, which included everything from being aware of what you're buying and what kinds of apps you're loading onto your phone all the way through to a fake news panel, so that people could start to appreciate a bit more how to be discriminating about the sources of information they're ingesting, whether in the democratic institution space and elections, or in their normal day-to-day business. There was one held for adults and also one for children. There's a big corporate social outreach program that is really looking at how to raise the technical quotient and the cybersecurity quotient amongst Canadians.
We do monitor all Government of Canada websites with our own sensoring system, so we're able to respond very quickly when there are incidents and events. We are also taking some of the tools that we're developing in-house, based on the expertise that we have, and putting them out there for the public. We recently released something called “Assemblyline”, which has been picked up thousands of times around the world. It's open-source software now. Banks in Europe are using it as one of their main lines of defence.
We are really working on trying to make Canada a more cybersecure, robust and resilient environment. There is a bill that is in the Senate now for second reading, Bill C-59, which would add some new authorities to CSE's mandate to allow us to take action if we see activity.
12:55 p.m.
LGen Paul Wynnyk
Could I just add a bit to that question from the military capability side?
12:55 p.m.
LGen Paul Wynnyk
Shelly has spoken about the civilian capability, but it's quite an exciting time in the Canadian Armed Forces right now. We've actually set up a cyber operator occupation, which is huge; and we're in the process of filling that right now with individuals who will work very closely with CSE. That fusion and co-operation is developing. As I said, it's a new occupation, and we're attracting a lot of talent right now.
Thank you.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Stephen Fuhr
Okay, thank you. That essentially burns up the rest of our time.
We're going to have a minute or two here to vote on the estimates.
Does anybody want...?
12:55 p.m.
Liberal