National Defence Committee on Feb. 7th, 2019

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

That sounds good, thanks.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

Mr. Martel.

[Richard Martel, Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, CPC]

Good afternoon.

I am very interested in statistics and numbers, and I have a question for you about that.

There are cadets in the regions and all over. They are 12 to 17 years of age. Some have a real passion for service and want to join the regular or reserve forces. Others belong to the reserves during their college and university studies. They are motivated to stay involved too.

I am curious about something, and this might be a hard question to answer. Do you have statistics about how many of these young people come up from cadets? Can you tell me approximately what percentage of cadets end up joining the reserves?

[LCol (Ret'd) John Selkirk]

I cannot, because I don't think I've ever seen any percentages although, again anecdotally, many of us who were regular army said, “Oh, yes, I got interested in this when I was 12 years old as a cadet.” I know that many people who serve in the reserves and in the regular force started off in cadets. I don't know whether that has ever been tracked, I just don't know. That would be a very good question as you pursue your investigations here.

I don't know whether you're considering perhaps having as a witness someone from the cadet organization. They're a part of the whole Canadian military picture. Unfortunately, I don't think they've been given enough resources and credit over the years. We can do more with cadets, I think.

[Richard Martel]

Many develop an interest in joining the regular or reserve forces early.

Without data and statistics, it can be hard to adjust our strategy. I think it can be very hard to make progress and achieve different results without data and statistics.

[LCol (Ret'd) John Selkirk]

I agree. I think I said in my opening remarks that there's an old saying that if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

I don't think that these are areas that the department has done a particular good job in measuring, for sure. I don't have any numbers. I don't have anything I could give you that's concrete, but it is my feeling that you're absolutely correct. It's not enough. They're not doing a good job.

[Richard Martel]

For me, things that can be observed and measured give me a lot of ideas.

Do diversity targets put more pressure on reserve units when they are trying to recruit members?

[LCol (Ret'd) John Selkirk]

In a word, yes. Units are not rich in staff, so more pressure is not necessarily going to be helpful. On the other hand, we have to have goals to get to where we want to go.

[Richard Martel]

Does the army reserve have a strategy to meet diversity targets without compromising on the recruitment numbers they need to meet operational needs?

[LCol (Ret'd) John Selkirk]

I don't see that reaching our diversity goals would diminish the operational effectiveness; in fact, I think it would increase operational effectiveness. I don't think that those are mutually exclusive.

[Richard Martel]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Given the clock, we have about five minutes left and three speakers, so I'll let the next question go to Mr. Fisher.

If colleagues want to share their time, I'll leave that to them. We only have five minutes left with Mr. Selkirk.

The floor goes to Mr. Fisher.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll probably need two. I'm happy if someone wants the other three.

Thanks, John.

You talked about recruiting and you talked a bit about retention. I'm curious. What's the percentage of women you are retaining after they're recruited, and where are you trying to get to? I'm a little concerned with a lot of questions that were asked. Are you getting enough data from DND to be able to increase diversity?

[LCol (Ret'd) John Selkirk]

First of all, we don't get much from DND. Whatever I know I pick up from the net and other publicly produced things. I suppose it could be figured out from your start point of how many people were enrolled, how many are left at the end of a year, and so on. I've never seen any numbers that break retention down by gender or any other way. It's just one number that I've ever seen.

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

You work more towards trying to keep them how?

I think it's important. We need to find a way to get that information so you can assess whether you're successful with retention. Recruiting can be great. If retention is not there, we're not going to hit those goals.

[LCol (Ret'd) John Selkirk]

That's so true.

The problem is, if you don't retain the people who you've spent a lot of money to recruit, it's a waste of money. The Auditor General, in his spring 2016 report, reported that fully 50% of the recruits of the army reserve in the fiscal year before his report left before they completed their basic training. That is not a good use of resources. It's pretty inefficient. There's no breakdown by gender there. That could be done. That should be a pretty simple thing to do.

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

I think that sounds like a very important thing to do.

If you had your druthers, what type of data would you like to see collected?

[LCol (Ret'd) John Selkirk]

First of all, I think the gender data.... That's probably enough to start with anyway.

I'm surprised that Mr. Gerretsen has numbers there about.... I'm not sure how they were collected or what they say, but it would be useful for units if they could have some indication of ethnic diversity in their areas.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

We have about three and a half minutes left. If Madam Gallant would give Mr. Gerretsen a minute at the end, he would appreciate that.

I'll give you the floor, Cheryl.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

I will do my best to be quick.

Colonel, you referred to your testimony. I'd been reading over that testimony from 2016. When talking about the state of the reserves, you said that the Auditor General is the authority. I agree with you completely in that regard. The in-depth, comprehensive nature of the studies makes the Auditor General the authority on the subject they're written on, and it should be treated as such.

We're properly trying to study diversity. In that spirit, I wish, first of all, to offer my condolences on the passing of the Auditor General, Michael Ferguson, and to his family. His services were today.

I'd then like to move an amendment to my motion of January 31, 2019, by inserting the words “Office of the” prior to the words “Auditor General”. I now move:

That the Office of the Auditor General appear before the committee before March 31st, 2019 concerning the Fall 2018 Report 3 entitled – Canada’s Fighter Force – National Defence, and Report 5 entitled – Inappropriate Sexual Behaviour – Canadian Armed Forces, and that the appearance be televised.

I think it's really important to debate the motion in an open forum because traditionally what happens is the debate starts and then with the [Inaudible—Editor] majority it gets a motion to adjourn debate. Then it goes behind closed doors and nobody ever hears about it again, which is why I'm so pleased that you raised the issue of the Auditor General and his being the authority. That is why I've moved that motion.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

We actually have about a minute to discuss it, so I'll open the floor to debate.

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

Mr. Chair, I am going to recommend that, given that Mr. Selkirk has reached the end of his time, we could perhaps suspend the meeting for five minutes to say goodbye to him and then continue with committee business, if that's the wish of Ms. Gallant, for the motion she has put on the floor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

The other thing is that we have 15 minutes at the end of this meeting to discuss it, if that works.

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

Well, that's not—