National Defence Committee on Feb. 28th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for remaining behind so that we can continue to ask some important questions concerning our military expenditures.

I'm going to yield the floor now to MP Robillard.

I'm going to give you seven minutes, Mr. Robillard, instead of five.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In December 2018, close to 40 members of our armed forces were deployed to Bahrain on Operation ARTEMIS. The department is asking for approximately $313.9 million for its many missions around the world.

The deployment to Bahrain is supposed to end in April 2019. Does the department plan to extend this mission?

[Jody Thomas, Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence]

The funding in the supplementary estimates is for Operation Artemis. You may note that we often ask for all of the funding for operations at the end of the year, and then we have a proper accounting of how much money we've spent.

As we look forward to next year, as we table the mains, we'll again have information on all of the operations, as we work with the minister on which ones we'll continue to be involved in.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you.

In January, you made a joint announcement with the Minister of Democratic Institutions and the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness highlighting the fact that our democracy and ensuring our next election is fair and free are priorities for our government. Can you tell us what the Canadian Security Establishment is doing to protect our elections?

[Shelly Bruce, Chief, Communications Security Establishment, Department of National Defence]

Thank you for your question.

The Communications Security Establishment is very well-placed to support the initiatives that were outlined in the January 30 announcement by Minister Goodale, Minister Gould and Minister Sajjan. CSE has a foreign intelligence mandate that allows us to look at foreign targets outside of Canada, to understand their motivations, intentions and capabilities, as they would pertain to or have a nexus with Canada.

We have been looking for foreign threats of all kinds, whether they're cyber-threats or more physical threats, such as terrorism. On the other hand, we also have a mandate to conduct cybersecurity and cyber-defence operations, so we've been working with Elections Canada to help bolster the security of the infrastructure that will be used to support the elections. We've also reached out and been briefing political parties to make sure that they have the best information around cybersecurity best practices and good hygiene, and we work very closely with Elections Canada as well.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Spengemann will share my time.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Thanks very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You have four minutes.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

I have a follow-up question on MINUSMA. Could you give the committee an appreciation from the department's perspective of how missions that we choose to participate in are selected, in as much or as little detail as you're able, under whatever constraints you're facing? In other words, how do we pick where to go?

[Jody Thomas]

I'll start, and the vice chief of the defence staff can certainly jump in.

All missions for the Canadian Armed Forces are an extension of foreign policy, and so, of course, we work with Global Affairs Canada to determine where the Canadian Armed Forces can be an extension of foreign policy for Canada. We respond to requests, as happened with the NATO training mission in Iraq. We are a partner in the UN, so we look at UN missions, and we receive requests from the UN as well.

We also look at where we have geographic interests to protect. For example, we participate in Op CARIBBE, the drug interdiction effort in the Caribbean. That is useful for us and protects Canadian interests more broadly. There are number of methods by which we get asked. They're all an extension of foreign policy and government will.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Are there any discussions underway that you could share with the committee?

Sorry, General. Please go ahead.

[LGen Paul Wynnyk]

I just want to add a layer on top of that. When the chief of the defence staff provides advice to government, there are a number of factors he will look at. First of all, if there's a desire to operate in a particular area, he'll look at whether we have the capability and the equipment. He'll look at what we can do there and what effect can be achieved, both tactically and strategically. That's part of his advice. He also makes an assessment of risk. That's layered on top of the points the deputy minister mentioned.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Would you begin to formulate some of those considerations proactively, or would it always be in response to either a Global Affairs request, a UN request or some combination thereof?

[LGen Paul Wynnyk]

We are constantly doing contingency planning based on what's happening around the world so that we are prepared to respond to government requests.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

If it is even right to ask you this, are you able to give some indication of what other potential missions, geographic regions or contexts Canada could deploy in, in the context of smart pledging in our commitments to the UN?

[LGen Paul Wynnyk]

Well, we don't want to get ahead of a government decision, so once again, no, I don't think it would be appropriate in this forum to publicly talk about things like that.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Fair enough. Your previous answer was helpful.

Have the UN structural reforms to reflect political and peace operations by combining the department of political affairs with the former department of peacekeeping ops given you any impetus to structurally reform the way you do business inside the Government of Canada?

[Jody Thomas]

What's interesting about the UN structural reforms is that they actually align very nicely with other Department of National Defence structure. As the deputy minister, I run the bureaucracy and the infrastructure and the support to the Canadian Armed Forces, and the chief of the defence staff runs the operations and administers the Canadian Armed Forces. It's not unlike the new structure that they've set up. Whereas previously the various arms were intertwined and confused, now it's operations one arm, administration another and policy another.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

In 15 seconds or less, is that approach supportive of the minister's vision of a whole-of-government approach?

[Jody Thomas]

I believe it is.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

MP Bezan.

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

Thanks, Chair.

I want to go back to the $2.4-billion shortfall in the budget, on vote 5. When you compare the supplementary (B)s to the defence policy, the projection was $6.6 billion. The funding is $4.2 billion. Which capital projects aren't getting done?

[Jody Thomas]

The carry-forward for vote 5 funding this year is in fact at $1.3 billion. We've had $700 million, more or less, in efficiencies, so we didn't need that money. The money that wasn't requested that we could have spent is $1.3 billion. Of that, $700 million is attributable to the Department of National Defence. Some of it is because, again, industry wasn't ready, we had supply-chain problems and any number of things.

Of the $700 million, more or less, that the Department of Defence is responsible for, about $500 million of that is for projects that are either in identification or options analysis. In ID and OA, we're still spending money, but it's vote 1 money. As we look at the capital spend, it is broader than vote 5.

When we built the defence policy, the reallocation between vote 1 and vote 5 that was set out by Treasury Board had not yet occurred, so we put all the money for ID and OA in vote 5. We're spending money in vote 1, so we have to do some rebalancing there. We have restructured the governance of the department to ensure that we're spending money, and right now we spent $563 million more in 2018-19 than in 2017-18, and we carried forward $480 million less in 2018-19 than we did in 2017-18. We are in fact spending unprecedented amounts of money.

It's not perfect. There is work still to be done, but 68% of the projects that are in SSE are in some form of implementation now, so we are working actively and pushing to move projects out and on the table.

The vice chief of the defence staff and Mr. Rochette are two of the key people in moving projects. They run a program called the PMB, which is infamous within the Department of National Defence. It is now where all projects go to get approved. If they see money is not being spent, they call the principals in to ensure that they understand what's happening with the project and to get it back on track.

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

Last year, I noticed that when the question came up, even at CANSEC, the minister actually blamed industry for not doing projects fast enough. Are you saying that is the case again this year?

[Jody Thomas]

Absolutely. We are completely transparent about what's not getting spent. In every project, or in the scope of a $6-billion budget with 333 projects, there are going to be some slowdowns by industry. There are going to be some slowdowns by us. If money isn't moving quite quickly enough because of a problem with a particular supply chain, a particular supplier, a contract or the way we've defined a project, we work with industry to try to resolve that.