National Defence Committee on Feb. 28th, 2019

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

I want to go back to the contracts and to SNC-Lavalin, which has contracts under vote 5. In the event that the company becomes bankrupt or shuts down, it has a lot of different contracts—drawings of buildings, designs of ships. It has done a lot of engineering work for National Defence over the years. A lot of that is classified. How do you secure those documents?

[Jody Thomas]

I'll certainly ask Pat to get into it, but the point that needs to be made first and foremost is that we own the material. We have contracts where, if there's a default on any contract, we have methodology for obtaining our material. I'll ask Pat to get into detail with you.

[Patrick Finn, Assistant Deputy Minister, Materiel, Department of National Defence]

The major contracts we have with SNC-Lavalin on the equipment side speak to the minor warships and auxiliary vessels. We hold the intellectual property, the drawings and everything. It is recompeted periodically. We would do that as a matter of routine, to ensure that in the execution of any contract of this nature, irrespective of the circumstances in which the contract is terminated, we hold the material. We hold all of that.

Another long contract they have deals with camp support, and the same sort of approach applies to that as well. We hold the material for both of those large contracts. Pretty much everything they have is unclassified. Anything that's classified within that work, we hold and retain. All of that intellectual property is within our possession.

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

If that's—

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm going to have to hold it there. I let it run over because the committee wanted to hear the answer to that. I'm going to have to move on to MP Garrison.

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

Bear with me a minute here. One of the goals of the Canadian Armed Forces is to be more diverse. We've targeted recruitment of additional indigenous people. I'm going to tie that to reserves. We're trying to grow the reserves, and that's one of the ways we can sometimes get people into the Canadian Armed Forces.

When you look at the location of reserve units throughout the country, you find they're mostly in downtown areas. I'm not really exaggerating here. If you look for northern locations of reserve units, you get Yellowknife and Prince Albert, which is almost northern, in Saskatchewan. You get Rouyn, in Quebec. You don't really find any of the reserve units in northern and remote areas, where there are a lot of indigenous people who might be very interested in joining the reserves.

I wonder if any consideration has been given, in the expansion of the reserves, to creating some new units in locations that would tap new populations and help the diversity.

[LGen Paul Wynnyk]

It's a very good question, and I have a bit of background in this area in my former job as the army commander.

We have a number of indigenous development programs. You may be familiar with the Bold Eagle program We're setting up similar programs in all four army divisions. There is one called Raven, with the Royal Canadian Navy, as well. We've done a good job over the years of putting people through these programs, but not necessarily putting emphasis on their joining the reserves. The feedback we've gotten from elders and parents in particular is how valuable these programs are and how the participants would like to join the reserves.

We've looked at where we've drawn these people from. The Bold Eagle program in Wainwright is an example. We get about 1,000 applicants. We can take about 150. We're doing a much better job now of aligning those applicants from places where there are reserve units, capitalizing on the training we're providing and giving them the opportunity to carry on. I will say, particularly.... We can use any area as an example, but I'll focus on Bold Eagle in the west. We do have a lot of reserve units where there are heavy indigenous populations. You mentioned Prince Albert, and the B company of the North Saskatchewan Regiment. Saskatoon.... We just recently set up a company of the Rocky Mountain Rangers in Prince Albert.

We're very much drawing the majority of applicants from about a 50- or 60-kilometre radius in these areas. Last year alone, we saw a significant uptake. Previous statistics will show maybe 3% to 5% will carry on and join the reserves. Last year was significantly higher. I don't have that statistic, but we're very much following that model.

I might add, once again, that we're setting up similar programs in Quebec and Ontario this year. The four army divisions, and the navy, will have this.

There's a lot of good work under way. To get back to your question, there's no work under way to relocate units. I don't think we have to at this point.

[Jody Thomas]

I'd add, as well, that the chief of defence staff and I have been speaking with the deputy minister responsible for youth, as well as our colleagues, indigenous leaders and Senator Sinclair about the youth bubble and how we can be of assistance more broadly in some inner cities, where I think there is also a need. With new Canadians, for example, there is a huge opportunity for youth employment—people who hadn't previously considered the Canadian Armed Forces—but also with indigenous youth. I think there's a real opportunity and we're working on that now. We don't have any plans yet. We're still at the conceptual stage.

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

Certainly, there's no doubt.... I'm from Esquimalt. I know that the Raven program is extremely successful, and we've learned about Bold Eagle, but they're underfunded, I would say. When you look at the number of applicants.... We're trying to achieve diversity. We're not actually taking the people in who are knocking on the door. Is there an increase in this budget for programs like that, which help us increase diversity?

[Jody Thomas]

There's money in the budget for full-time summer employment for reservists. Certainly, diversity would be an aspect of the recruiting into the reserves broadly. The other programs that we discussed are still very much at the conceptual stage.

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

I'm trying not to be impolite, but that's an answer saying that ongoing efforts being funded but there really isn't any expansion of funding for things like Bold Eagle and Raven.

[LGen Paul Wynnyk]

No, we actually are, and the deputy minister is funding it—not out of this, but out of next year's budget, which is what we are talking about. Those two additional programs in Ontario and Quebec are quite significant.

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

Then there is money in the coming budget for those?

[LGen Paul Wynnyk]

Yes, but the limiting factor as we go forward will be instructors, broadly speaking. We're putting much emphasis on increasing the size of the reserves, as you're aware, with particular emphasis on getting the numbers of indigenous recruits up.

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

Okay, I think that's good news.

I want to switch channels very quickly here. I'd love to talk about fighter jets—though being from a navy town, that obviously does not get me lots of support at home. Some of our allies have run competitions and have selected jets and are already taking delivery in the time we're still not doing a competition. What I've learned in discussion with people is that we have another constraint coming up here—and we heard this certainly in Mali—that being pilots and the training and retention of pilots, both for fighters and helicopters. I'd like to know if there are any measures being contemplated for helping us in that regard.

We've got terrible competition from the private sector, so how are we going to train and retain the pilots, fighter pilots and helicopter pilots, who we need in the face of that competition from the private sector?

[LGen Paul Wynnyk]

You're absolutely right. This is not a problem that's unique to Canada. There's a lot of pressure on the Five Eyes countries, and we're benchmarking. The big draws are the civilian airlines as they increase substantially. We're studying that right now, and there are a number of things, some of them fairly obvious.

I know, Mr. Chair, you were a pilot. Pilots actually like to fly. They don't join to do staff work.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[LGen Paul Wynnyk]

As we're going forward, we have a number of pilots who are assigned to staff jobs, so we're looking to be more innovative with our allies, sort of saying, maybe there's a career stream where you will not necessarily progress in rank, but will get to fly more.

We're reaching out to retired individuals from the Canadian Forces and seeing if they'd like to join as well, and particularly making it more flexible for pilots who have retired to go into the reserves to perhaps look at ways of getting into Cold Lake or Bagotville, or wherever we need to fly them, and potential bonuses. There are a number of things that are being looked at right now.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'll now yield the floor to MP Dzerowicz.

[Julie Dzerowicz]

I have a couple of questions. How has our feminist international assistance policy impacted National Defence spending priorities? I know that we spent money on the Elsie initiative. I know that we probably spent money around NATO and gender equity. We probably are funding female police officer training abroad. If you could give me a little bit more of an understanding of that, I'd be grateful.

[Jody Thomas]

Certainly, we're very proud of the role that we play in the women, peace and security initiative, and the fact that we are meeting the gender targets for women in UN deployments, for example. You spoke yourself about the importance of the women who you met in Mali.

The programs you mentioned are actually managed by GAC rather than by us. We certainly work hand in hand with them in developing them. We provide trainers when they have decided we're going into a country, and provide trainers for certain initiatives if they're Canadian Armed Forces related, but those are GAC's programs more than ours.

[Julie Dzerowicz]

Okay, so it's less spending on our side. It's more GAC.

Then I know that every budget has to go through a GBA+ assessment. How has that affected the National Defence budget and priorities?

[Jody Thomas]

We're very proud of the work we're doing on GBA+. We've built an extraordinary team. It's the most powerful team in many ways in the department. They meet with the vice chief of the defence staff and every L1, meaning ADMs or three-star directors who report to the CDS or me, who are putting in budget submissions to ensure that there is a thorough GBA perspective on everything they're doing. We worked very hard on the gender part of it, and we are now moving to the plus, which is indigenous people and diversity and other ways of looking at people, programs, procurement, and policies within the Canadian Armed Forces. It has infiltrated everything we do.

[Julie Dzerowicz]

Can you give me an example, so that I can understand what that assessment is? Give me one example so that I can absorb it.