National Defence Committee on Nov. 8th, 2018

[LGen Paul Wynnyk]

I'm not aware of anything in that regard. The money that's allocated for it is toward the key contributions of the aircraft—the Polaris, the Hercules and the Griffon; the All Source Intelligence Centre; the role 2 hospital; the engineers, the arms instructors and the special operations task force. It's to the overall mission contribution thus far.

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

Thank you, General.

When you look at Operation Unifier—General Wynnyk, you and I are very familiar with this of course, as proud Ukrainian Canadians—the Ukrainians have been asking for lethal weapons, and we have purchased some that are making their way to Ukraine.

Are there any thoughts of helping Ukraine deal with the heavy tanks that are in Donbass and the mortar fire they're encountering on a daily basis? Is there more Canada can do to provide them with the kinetic capability to defend their territory?

[LGen Paul Wynnyk]

Thus far, as you're aware, the money that's allocated to the mission is toward collective combat and leadership training—the training to actually engage in that area. As I think you're aware, we've contributed over $16 million up to this point in non-lethal military equipment, which is to be delivered by the end of March 2019.

I just spoke to the deputy minister of defence of Ukraine about two weeks ago, and I can assure you that he was extremely pleased with the training they were getting. He was saying it was having a marked impact on their struggle at this time.

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

Thanks. We are very proud of our troops who have been over there doing training that has helped save lives, for sure.

One of the things we're dealing with in Op Unifier, of course, is the Russian cyberwarfare, the misinformation campaigns and the entire hybrid war they are conducting in Donbass and Crimea. Are we providing any assistance in dealing with misinformation and cyberwarfare? What are we ourselves to learn from it, as Russia increases its activities in Donbass?

[Jody Thomas]

I think we'll ask the chief of the CSE to respond.

[Shelly Bruce]

The CSE works very closely with the Canadian military, supporting their missions abroad. We are uniquely placed, with a mandate that looks at monitoring foreign threats, as well as cybersecurity advice and guidance. In that sense, we are very much focused on looking at the risks and threats to the mission, and we provide advice and guidance to the Canadian Armed Forces.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

MP Garrison, go ahead.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

One of the items in the supplementary estimates deals with the assessment, management and remediation of contaminated sites. My question is, does this include removal of asbestos from Canadian Forces bases, and what progress is being made?

I know we've had some severe problems with asbestos in some of the older buildings at CFB Esquimalt, especially classroom buildings. I know it extends across departments, but does this item include removal of asbestos in buildings on bases, or is that covered somewhere else?

[Jody Thomas]

I believe it's covered somewhere else, but we have the ADM of infrastructure here to respond to your questions.

[Rob Chambers, Acting Assistant Deputy Minister, Infrastructure and Environment, Department of National Defence]

It does not include asbestos removal.

We have a multipronged strategy in place to deal with asbestos. Primarily, when it's stable and sealed off, we don't like to mess with it if we can help it. That's a fairly standard industry practice. We would deal with that on an as-required basis, mostly through our maintenance and repair budgets at that local level.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Budgets wouldn't be a major obstacle in dealing with asbestos, then. It would be a question of assessing specific hazards and seeing if they need remediation.

[Rob Chambers]

Yes. We always take a health and safety approach, obviously, first and foremost. Funding would not be an issue, given that, as I said, we don't like to mess with it if we don't have to.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Great, thanks.

My colleague Mr. Fisher raised the question of trucks, and he asked some of the questions that I'm going to ask about trucks. Certainly I know that people in the Canadian Forces are quite happy to have new logistics trucks being delivered, and the standard jokes will hopefully go to the past: “Is this a military parade or is this a museum parade?” Let's hope we get beyond that.

Can you tell me something about where these trucks are being produced and the state of contracts? I understand it's been phased, because there are lots of trucks needed, and I believe we're getting close to finishing a phase. Will there be new contract competitions for more trucks?

[Patrick Finn]

Thank you, sir, for the question.

For the specific trucks we're talking about, the medium support vehicle system, as you indicate, this is the last of the phases. We did a military off-the-shelf variant some years ago, fully delivered for domestic operations. This particular variant is coming out of Mack Defense, but the final work and delivery is done by a company called Prevost in Quebec. You may recognize it from buses and other things that they do.

This particular variant is an expeditionary vehicle, so we can have an armoured cab. All the vehicles have modules that go on the back, so it's fairly complex in the context of vehicles. There are many variants, from dental labs and medical labs to workshops and transportation. It's a fairly complex system. As you indicate, this is the fourth phase. We're well into delivery now—about 1,500 vehicles to come in the next 18 months or so.

We'll then move on to some other things, and there are a number of vehicles that are more traditional, such as the commercial pattern vehicles you would recognize. We bought that on an ongoing basis. In fact, there's some money in the supplementary estimates that's given to the army, navy, air force and others to do a recapitalization of vehicles. We have a fairly large undertaking with my colleagues in Infrastructure and Environment on greening commercial pattern vehicles.

The next big one will be a competition for what's called the logistics vehicle modernization. These speak much more to, again, the older trucks. Our priority has been all the combat vehicles—light armoured vehicles, tactical armoured patrol vehicles, Leopard 2s. We've now done these medium support vehicles.

Moving into the logistics vehicle modernization that we'll be undertaking, we're looking at approximately $2 billion, from heavy vehicles—you can imagine the kind of vehicles you need for moving tanks around—all the way down to some of the vehicles you'd recognize, which we've had for a very long time. As you indicate, a number of them are overdue for replacement. Through “Strong, Secure, Engaged”, we have a drumbeat now to go through the rest of those, sir.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Will they be competing for a single large contract, or will there be separate contracts for different vehicles within that range?

[Patrick Finn]

With the specific project for logistics vehicle modernization, we've looked at a couple of options and we've landed on one competition. It could beget a number of separate contracts, though, to look at a fleet of them.

We're about to enter what we call the definition phase, where we'll have more engagement with industry. In some of our other ones, where we've been quite successful, we pre-qualify a series of quite capable companies that deliver this, with the usual offset policy so the industrial and technological benefits will apply. For whatever is not done in Canada, per value, there will have to be an equivalent amount of work found here, and other work will be done as well, sir.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Would companies like General Dynamics, which is producing the LAVs for export to Saudi Arabia, be potential bidders on these kinds of contracts?

[Patrick Finn]

Really, it's up to them, I would say. We're working with the General Dynamics Land Systems. They're also doing work for us. They are updating the last of our light armoured vehicles. We've advanced a fair bit of that work through next year, some in-service support contracts. It is really up to them what they want to do, whether it's the plant in London or otherwise, but absolutely, this would be open to people who produce those types of vehicles. It would be up to them to determine what role they might want to play in this, sir.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

Will this contract be different from some of the other procurements—say, for ships, where you establish qualified bidders? Would this be a more open competition?

[Patrick Finn]

For ships, competition was done for the shipyards, which resulted in the umbrella agreements, as you know. If you look at the model we're doing for future fighters, I think the big thing is that we want to make sure we establish value for money and have partners who can really deliver this in time and at a reasonable price.

What we have done with fighters and other things, for example, is what we call an invitation to qualify. It's pretty straightforward, and we would likely do something similar. It's completely open—if you can reach the benchmark of qualification, you'd be in that pool. We do that so that we can really have a detailed dialogue with the companies that are really close in this line of work, sir.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Saanich—Sooke, BC]

It's my hope that the contracts with Saudi Arabia will be cancelled. There's a need to make sure there is work available that would replace those if we lost that. Thank you for that answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

MP Fisher, go ahead.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks, folks, for sticking around and putting up with us for another hour.

Could the deputy minister elaborate on comments made earlier regarding the Team Canada flight and the Department of National Defence's public affairs? There was a lot of back and forth when the minister was here, and I didn't really get a clear answer.

[Jody Thomas]

Thank you very much for the question. I'm pleased to answer it.

The Team Canada situation is very much regrettable, but I would like to get on the record—and I appreciate the chance to do so—that there was no attempt to mislead by my ADM of public affairs, Chris Henderson, or by the minister's spokesperson, Byrne Furlong. Information was released as it became available. Two investigations have been done, which revealed more information, and we ensured that it was released. In fact, the investigations have been made public, and the chief of the defence staff responded formally to it.

We are now doing an end-to-end review by the ADM of review services to look at just what the process is for these kinds of flights when the armed forces host or take people overseas on armed forces aircraft to take part in this kind of event. The inference that there was an attempt to mislead is unfortunate, but it is not true. As information became available, we corrected the record. We answered all the questions that were asked. The information came out in stages; there's absolutely no doubt. That's because information became....

We knew what we knew when we knew it, and we made it public.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you for that.

I think another member may have touched on the NATO money, the $24.1 million for NATO. Could you elaborate on that? Is it operational funding? Tell me exactly how that is going to be spent. As a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, I'm interested in our relationship in that regard.