National Defence Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the defence committee.

I'd like to welcome our guests, Rear-Admiral John Newton, commander of MARLANT and Joint Task Force Atlantic, and Rear-Admiral Art McDonald, commander of MARPAC.

Thanks to both of you for joining us today on our study of Royal Canadian Navy naval readiness and the defence of North America.

You both have time for some comments this morning. I understand that Rear-Admiral John Newton will be leading off.

Sir, you have the floor.

[Rear-Admiral John Newton, Commander, Maritime Forces Atlantic and Joint Task Force Atlantic, Royal Canadian Navy, Department of National Defence]

Thank you, Mr. President and honourable members of Parliament.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the readiness of the Royal Canadian Navy.

I am honoured to serve the 3,000 sailors of the Canadian Atlantic fleet and several thousand defence workers who ensure that our warships are combat ready. My primary task is to help them generate the readiness of the Atlantic fleet and plan and execute the fleet schedule. I'm privileged to be able to work with inspired Canadians every day who are focused on excelling. They are living a chapter in the history of our storied navy, which has played an indispensable role in the defence of Canada. They know from reading their ship schedules that Canada's national interests will soon lead them to exciting global destinations.

Thus, it is very pleasing for me to see in photographs recently the sailors of HMCS Charlottetown at the pyramids. Importantly, I know that behind the scenes this visit enabled Global Affairs Canada's mission in Egypt. Similarly, I recently saw pictures of sailors from HMCS Vancouver in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and I know again that, behind the scenes, visiting Vietnam highlighted that Canada seeks mutually beneficial relations in a strategic maritime region.

When Windsor, our submarine, recently returned from patrol, a fixture on the bow of the submarine was painted blue. In the traditions of our service, blue denotes that the submarine had been sailing north of the Arctic Circle, providing reassuring support along NATO's northern flank.

Next week, sailors of the Royal Canadian Navy, Canadian ambassadors, will be visiting cities like Cartagena and Veracruz, because today they're in Cuba and they will continue that regional engagement.

This is indeed exciting service for young Canadians seeking to make a difference. It all speaks to a navy that has created and is sustaining a high level of readiness.

I'm always amazed at how naval readiness is facilitated by motivated sailors who actively join in making their ship the best in the fleet. One of my most enjoyable duties is to preside over honours and awards ceremonies. Hearing the citations, I am reassured that Canadian sailors have a strong sense of ownership in achieving excellence at sea. Aboard ships and in schoolhouses, I witness how they work to transfer to the next generation their experiences from operations.

The older generation has served in tough campaigns: the vanguard of the government response to the crisis in the Persian Gulf, wars in the former Yugoslavia and in Libya, and in the uncertainty following 9/11. They've also gone to the Arctic, and they're delivering humanitarian aid around the world.

A navy at sea, forward with allies, is a powerful option for government, and in turn builds readiness. Just this week, HMCS Vancouver went from patrol in the western Pacific to disaster relief duties in the hours following the earthquakes in New Zealand. I had every confidence that Vancouver was prepared for this kind of work. I was confident in Windsor, our submarine, when it was called to patrol off Norway's northern coast by the NATO maritime commander, following the submarine's work in Dynamic Mongoose, a major exercise of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Canadians should be proud that there are few navies that can claim to be so globally deployable and versatile as the Royal Canadian Navy. Yes, we have challenges, and it was sad to bid farewell to our fleet replenishment ship very recently. Preserver and her sister ship Protecteur literally led our navy to global operational success for 46 years. The Queenston class cannot come soon enough.

I'm also very proud of the crew of HMCS Athabaskan. They played a key role in sustaining operational output of the fleet during the Halifax class modernization.

Regrettably, the retirement of the Iroquois class destroyer has left the task group without a powerful air defence umbrella. Thus, I take to heart that the Canadian surface combatant request for proposals is in the hands of industry.

As part of the strategy thrust called “evolving the business of the business”, MARLANT has other roles to contribute to readiness. To encourage effectiveness and efficiency and facilitate optimal staff output from our personnel, each senior commander of our navy has been given functional authority in one of the three principal pillars of naval readiness. By way of background, the pillars are the material readiness of our ships, the readiness of individual sailors, and the operational readiness of our forces.

Specifically, my command has been assigned responsibilities in the operational readiness pillar. Thus, I exert pan-navy leadership over the policies that lay out exactly how each ship and capability will be developed to its ordered state of readiness.

We devise the activity cycle of a typical warship, including the periods given to heavy maintenance, upgrades, crew building, training, trials, and finally, operations. This is a complex blending of matériel and personnel resources, fiscal capacity, time, commitments to missions, assignment to national task groups, reserves for arisings, and inevitable rest and recovery following operations.

This functional task also includes the periodic review of each warfare competency in order to guard against skill fade. We have already reviewed mine warfare, anti-submarine warfare, and above-water warfare. Exercise CUTLASS FURY was conceived to enhance anti-submarine warfare expertise, not just in our navy but with our allies. Strong international participation highlighted the degree to which your navy has the confidence of our closest allies to address this very perishable skill set across our alliance and partnerships.

X-Ship is an expression of innovation in your navy. X-Ship, or HMCS Montréal, is exploring new manning concepts and procedures as well as new technologies, which are all key aspects of naval readiness.

The second task assigned to my pan-navy leadership is what's called “collective training”. While individual training develops a competent sailor, collective training builds sailors into effective fighting forces. Collective training has both a training and a validation function. Validation assures the commander of the navy that the standards are established for safe and effective operations. It is our key risk management tool.

HMCS St John's, operating with international ships, submarines, and aircraft, today is being validated to this very high standard. This is the last step in the preparations of St John's to relieve HMCS Charlottetown on the NATO reassurance mission, and doing this step is very important to the readiness equation.

MARLANT has also been assigned the task of being the national maritime component commander. In this role, I provide naval advice to Canada's senior operational commander for all Canadian warships on operations. The maritime component commander communicates with ships and alliance commanders to help formulate the employment of the asset, including operational tasks, port visits, rules of engagement, repairs, and sustainment.

Presently the maritime component commander has five ships on his radar. Charlottetown is operating in the Mediterranean at high readiness, assigned to the NATO standing maritime group 2. Vancouver has just finished the relief operations in the earthquake scenario in New Zealand and has started the long Pacific voyage home, supporting Global Affairs Canada along the route. Last week I was pleased to see Brandon, one of our patrol ships in the Mediterranean, getting credit for a very difficult drug bust off Guatemala.

The maritime component commander thus monitors and sustains readiness during the course of a deployment, readiness being a dynamic condition that fluctuates with changes in the crew and the status of machinery and systems.

The maritime component commander has another important task. Surveillance of the undersea domain is a complex, sustained, highly classified, multinational effort. Ships, helicopters, patrol aviation, and submarines all contribute to undersea surveillance. Our ability to respond to a threat depends on relationships, shared intelligence, a common picture, interoperability, and common tactics. Readiness flows accordingly.

This concludes my short introduction to naval readiness. I look forward to answering your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you, Admiral Newton.

Admiral McDonald, you have the floor.

[Rear-Admiral Art McDonald, Commander, Maritime Forces Pacific and Joint Task Force Pacific, Royal Canadian Navy, Department of National Defence]

Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity to discuss fleet readiness. It's an honour to be appearing before you this morning, just as it is my incredible honour to lead and serve the men and women—regular force, reservist, and civilian members—of Canada's Pacific maritime force: my shipmates.

If I may be so bold, your inquiry into what the commander RCN calls the core currency of the RCN could not be better timed given what recent Vimy Award winner Dr. James Boutilier so brilliantly articulated:

...we are in the midst of a new oceanic era. Not since the great age of exploration in the 16th century have oceans played such an important role in global affairs. Unprecedented levels of commerce move across the world’s oceans, great power politics are being played out at sea, and oceans are central to the health of the global organism in an age of dramatic climate change. Moreover, we are in the process, for the first time in human history, of acquiring a new Ocean—the Arctic.

Indeed, as the 52nd admiral to command Pacific naval forces from Victoria, I remain as seized with this measure of our mettle as any of my predecessors.

While today's RCN is a navy characterized as much by progress as it once was by tradition, despite significant and enduring transformation, we remain steadfastly committed to affording maximum optionality to government: what we call naval readiness. How? By being a rapidly deployable, combat-capable “force of first resort” capable of producing technology-enabled, people-delivered naval outcomes from the sea, in home waters with other government departments, and on far-distant shores in the world with friends and allies.

In consideration of our current readiness, this week's front pages and the Twitterverse are replete with demonstrations of the strength of our naval currency.

As you will be aware, HMCS Vancouver has just completed a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mission with allies on New Zealand's south island. What's not appreciated, however, is that Vancouver re-rolled within hours of the New Zealand request for assistance by transitioning rapidly from a force generation mission—that is to say, a preparing mission while deployed overseas, what we call a “generate forward” deployment—to a force employment, a “doing” mission. This is representative of the readiness of our ships at sea.

In Vancouver's case, this readiness was developed and sustained through an in-year sailing tempo of around 270 days away from home port, operating first in the eastern Pacific off the south and central American coasts, and then, following Exercise Rim of the Pacific exercises in the central Pacific, now in Southeast Asian and Oceania neighbourhoods, where she has visited and exercised with Vietnam, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. She has crossed the equator eight times in a year.

Having visited HMCS Vancouver only days before her disaster relief mission, I can assure you that she is a capable ship with an engaged, enthusiastic ship's company, adeptly led by a solid, experienced command team. Her success in New Zealand is presupposed.

Meanwhile, Her Majesty's Canadian ships Edmonton, Kingston, and Brandon are one month into a two-month regional security capability, capacity-building, and counter-narcotics deployment off the central American coast while participating in Operation CARIBBE. Here the ships have proven RCN readiness once again, with Brandon, operating in concert with the U.S. coast guard, seizing 1.3 tonnes of cocaine with a street value of $500 million in international waters off the Pacific coast of Central America. This has contributed to the haul of more than 5,000 kilograms of illegal drugs seized by the RCN already this year alone.

Beyond this past week's headlines, this has been a typically busy year for the Pacific fleet.

It includes the conclusion of HMCS Winnipeg's 250-day Operation Reassurance deployment, Canada's support to NATO assurance measures in eastern Europe; and four-ship participation and key leadership positions in Exercise Rim of the Pacific, or RIMPAC, the world's largest international maritime exercise.

Moreover, work is now ongoing in Esquimalt to prepare ships and crews for the coming year's program, which will include the dispatch of a two-frigate “generate forward” six-month Indo-Asia Pacific presence mission, as well as seeing HMCS Chicoutimi relieving the 200-days-at-sea HMCS Windsor as the workhorse of the Canadian submarine force. Here I can only say that I anticipate Chicoutimi will have a Windsor-like sea-day count and program next year.

Closer to home, meanwhile, the navy, in concert with our colleagues from other government departments, systematically surveils our coast and tracks about 2,000 ships daily via a system of systems coordinated through our maritime security operations centre, a navy-hosted, multi-department enterprise that ensures our waters are being used lawfully or initiates federal fleet response when they aren't.

Having considered the current outputs of naval readiness, I would suggest that additional functional elements of naval readiness also warrant consideration. To do so, one need consider that whereas Rear-Admiral Newton has specific pan-navy responsibilities for readiness and force employment, I have, as assistant chief of naval staff personnel and training, specific responsibilities for individual training, personnel policy, and the naval reserve. Given these functional responsibilities, it's not only the tangible or current readiness outputs I've described that have the attention of my team but also the sustainability and efficacy of our future readiness.

Considering our force is approximately 14,000 regular and reserve force, and has approximately 10% undergoing individual training packages on any given day, clearly the efficacy and effectiveness of our individual training system is key to our readiness capacity. This is the responsibility of my naval training system.

The naval training system was recently reviewed and is currently undergoing its largest revitalization in more than 25 years. That revitalization will lead to significant changes in scope and structure to meet both future navy requirements and the expectations of a new generation of sailors.

The future naval training system strategy recognizes that the expectations of learning today are vastly different from what they were 20 years ago and that the tools available to conduct learning are increasingly a mixture of residential and virtual. Using the best practices of civilian training education institutions and industry partners, the future training strategy provides a plan to modernize, retrofit, and sustain the naval training system. It advocates the increased use of technology-enabled learning to reduce the time it takes to achieve competency. It calls for the alignment of regular and reserve force training and it implements a refreshed training delivery strategy that leverages the Defence Learning Network and self-paced learning to deliver training at the point of need.

These activities will allow technical and operational training to be completed in less time via a more interactive and immersive approach, negate the need for extended time away from home to learn, and reduce the long apprenticeships at sea that otherwise bleed resources away from the overall mission. The results are training times already seeing reductions by as much as 30%, enabling us to get sailors readied and employed faster, with a commensurate boost in enthusiasm and morale.

Additionally, I need note that the navy's commitment to ensuring sailors serve as ambassadors is being reinforced with the development and delivery of a “leadership, respect, and honour” program, an initiative that responds to the concerns expressed in the Deschamps report, that carries out the orders of the chief of the defence staff for Operation Honour, that ensures all sailors understand and model the behaviours expected of them by the new RCN code of conduct, and that reinforces the values and advantages of the naval divisional system. Addressing these aspects of deportment and behaviour addresses what are known to be significant impediments to readiness while boosting unit morale and lending credibility to the Canadian and Canadian Armed Forces brands. Effective training is a key enabler of operational readiness. It's indeed a force multiplier.

Moving finally to the consideration of our naval reserves, I need note that naval readiness, like that of our sister services, is well bolstered and made more sustainable through effective integration of strategic reserve augmentation. Conversely, as the past two decades of RCN employment of a permanent full-time reserve in a dedicated class with a dedicated mission has revealed, such an arrangement is simply unsustainable. For these reasons, the RCN has now embraced the “one navy” concept, by which no standing missions are uniquely allocated to the naval reserve, and nor are naval reserves employed uniquely in a single class. Instead, embracing the concept of augmentation, citizen sailors are being employed across the fleet, in all classes, with a target of 5% of the crew, which is approximately 10 sailors in a frigate, exactly the number of naval reservists in Vancouver conducting operations in New Zealand last week.

Moreover, our naval reserves are now energized with a new, non-standing force protection and maritime capacity-building capability that is well suited to the strategic reserve construct.

Ladies and gentlemen, having considered the functional elements of my mandate as they relate to the generation of readiness, I'm reminded that our people are, as they've always been, our centre of gravity. For this reason the admiralty has seized upon a common philosophy of “people first, mission always”, which challenges us to do more than ever to champion, celebrate, and enable our sailors as a means of attracting, empowering, and retaining them.

In this context, I'm particularly proud that the west coast has always been at the forefront of the social and institutional issues that matter to Canadians—from listening to and working with our first nations, to celebrating the first same-sex kiss on a deployer's return to port, to tackling conduct issues head-on, and to dealing with substance dependencies with both the firm hand and compassion appropriate to what I consider to be one of the nation's best employers.

In conclusion, readiness, as both an outcome and a process, remains as important and complex as ever. It has the complete attention of the admiralty as well as our potential adversaries and our friends and allies. In a new oceanic age, our readiness may never have been more important. Certainly it will be critical to our success in the large Indo-Asia Pacific estate where presence is the price of relevance.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for the opportunity to make remarks. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you both for your opening remarks.

We'll move to formal questioning.

Mr. Spengemann, you have the floor for seven minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Admiral Newton and Admiral McDonald, thank you very much for being here, for your service to our nation, and for your testimony. Through you, also, my thanks to the 14,000 women and men who serve proudly in the uniform of the Royal Canadian Navy each and every day.

I want to pick up on the concept you described of the new oceanic era, and ask a question about which this committee so far, in its study, has not heard a whole lot, if anything. That's the work on economic sanctions, enforcing economic sanctions against a UN member state, most likely in a coalition context, whether it's economic sanctions, military embargoes, or quarantines. What's that work all about? What do the women and men who serve do on a mission that is engaged in enforcing economic sanctions? What kind of equipment and what kinds of vessels do they use? Also, how do you see the environment changing or having changed, let's say, over the last decade with respect to this kind of work perhaps being more prominent now, and in the future maybe becoming even more prominent?

I'd like to hear from both of you, if that's possible.

[RAdm John Newton]

Thank you, sir, for a great question.

In my career I've certainly had the reward but the great challenge of participating in an economic embargo of a state that was at war. The war in the former Yugoslavia implicated NATO in a maritime interdiction operation, in an embargo of munitions and fuels that were literally fuelling a war. NATO's role in Operation Sharp Guard was led by Admiral Greg Maddison, who went on to be commander of the Royal Canadian Navy. That operation became one of the hallmarks of our navy's versatility and utility on the international scene. That embargo, that sanctioning of a state, was very effective in reducing the nature of the conflict. It was a key contributor that eventually led to the peaceful resolution.

Maritime interdiction operations are all about sanctioning a country in one way or another. It demands a picture of the oceanic area. It demands a knowledge of the pattern of life in that region: where vessels are trading; what kinds of legitimate industries, like fisheries or small ship trade, are going on; what the military presence is of the belligerent nations. It demands a very strong sense of resolve by the participating nations, because they are now impacting, very seriously, the ability of the belligerents to wage the war that they're involved in. You go into such an operation with your gun shields up and your readiness to defend your ship. You are tested every day because of the nature of bringing a peaceful resolution or attempting to bring to bear a kind of peaceful resolution to a conflict scenario.

It is dangerous. In my career, having deployed to the Gulf and to Haiti, I mark the maritime interdiction embargoing-type operation as one of the most dangerous I've ever participated in.

I'll stop with that and let my colleague give you a piece of the answer.

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

That's great. Thank you, Admiral.

Can one or both of you comment a bit on the classes of vessels that are involved in this kind of work and whether we are ready to take on a potentially greater role in this effort?

[RAdm Art McDonald]

Admiral Newton, if you're happy, I'll just pick up on the second part of the question as I go on.

Thank you for the opportunity to add on to the framework that Admiral Newton has already established. Casting economic sanctions in terms of what we would call, at sea, maritime interdiction—economic sanctions are just one of the potential political outcomes that could come out of maritime interdiction—Admiral Newton has reviewed that Canada, particularly since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, has been significantly engaged in maritime interdiction operations, some of them economic sanctions, some of them humanitarian.

I myself was involved in humanitarian operations, as part of a UN mandate, against Iraq in the days of Saddam Hussein's power. Thereafter, less than a decade on, I was engaged in maritime interdiction operations again, leadership interdiction operations against the Taliban as we were conducting our operations in Afghanistan.

Maritime interdiction is a routine mission profile for the Canadian navy and for our allies. We are well equipped for this kind of mission, because we have warships with broad, multi-purpose combat capability, allowing us to engage in a full spectrum of operations. Sanctions operations are full-spectrum operations. You need to be able to go and interact at a very low level with mariners, conduct boarding operations, in which Canada is one of the leading capable nations in the world, and ensure that you have full awareness of what is being passed on the sea and how. As Admiral Newton highlighted, that will not always be well received by nations that are under sanctions, so you need to be well prepared to defend yourself in what could be a rapidly escalating circumstance. Therefore, the Canadian navy, like our allies, has always insisted that we place very capable but multi-purpose ships when in harm's way conducting these kinds of important operations.

I should add as well, if I can, that working with allies is very important in this regard, not only to maintain and build the pattern of life in potential areas of operations. Sanctions are rarely something that a single country does alone, so developing a multinational capability is critical, and something that Canada obviously is always invested in.

Thank you.

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

Thank you very much, Admiral.

In the remaining minute, let me broach a subject that I think many of us are interested in and hopefully some of my colleagues will pick up on. That's the issue of our submarine program. This committee received testimony to the effect that if we want to defend effectively against submarines, we need submarines. We look to Australia as a nation that's smaller than ours, has a smaller coastline, and is now aggressively pursuing an expanded submarine program.

Very briefly, can you just give us some opening thoughts on this issue?

[RAdm John Newton]

Perhaps I can start.

Submarines are an incredible force-multiplying capability in any navy, for any country. One submarine equals 30 submarines as far as the adversary is concerned. The inability to detect the presence of a submarine in your oceanic areas of interest, and the amount of resources that must be diverted to tend to that submarine...because the weapons system is so lethal when it comes from a submarine.

In this regard, Canada has one of the most modern submarines in the world, at the top tier of submarining in the global naval powers. Some of the most inspired and experienced crew is with a bow sonar system upgrade of the Virginia class submarine and the Mark 48 weapons system, which is the most lethal submarine weapons system on the planet. The uncertainty of where the vessel is, what the nature of its mission is, its ability to remain stealthily deployed—these all demand many resources from an adversary to detect, localize, and track, and all the while the submarine is going about its very specific mission.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

We'll have to leave the submarine discussion there. I'm sure it will come up again.

Mr. Aboultaif.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you very much.

Rear-Admirals Newton and McDonald, first and foremost, thank you very much for appearing in front of the committee and for your service to our country and to the world.

Our RCN has been everywhere, from Egypt to Vietnam to Singapore. We are all over the world. Our mission has such a diversity of challenges and complications that run from place to place to place.

Rear-Admiral Newton, you have served under NATO and under the UN. The missions are different based on the lead-in of the mission. Were there any differences between the two missions, and if so, can you please explain and elaborate on this topic?

[RAdm John Newton]

Thank you very much, sir, for the question.

Yes, we serve both on NATO and within United Nation frameworks. Coalitions themselves will seek international frameworks to operate. Even nationally we will seek an international framework, and we'll operate within international norms, and to international law, and the law of armed conflict in the Geneva Conventions. All these are expressions of a professional military force of a western, democratic, rules-based country seeking legitimacy in its mission. The NATO alliance represents both a political and a military command and control structure, but it too seeks legitimacy under the law of armed conflict and under the United Nations Security Council resolutions. The UN is very much a foundational platform upon which to build legitimacy. From that, the alliances, or the coalitions, build their command and control, always linking legitimacy, mission, and task to the UN Security Council resolutions, which highlight whatever the security or the humanitarian need is in a particular conflict scenario.

The United Nations does have military peace support and peacekeeping-type operations around the world. Personally, I have not participated in any direct UN-style missions like the peacekeeping in Rwanda and General Dallaire's experience, but there are specific peace support and peacekeeping operations. In my own experience in modern times, I think that because of the grave security situation in most conflict scenarios today, because of how threat scenarios have escalated to very high levels of risk to our personnel and to our capabilities, we have sought traditionally the more coherent command and control structures of NATO so that we can assure our safety as we go for the mission outcome.

I'll leave it at that, sir.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you.

Rear-Admiral McDonald, you said something in your speech about the seizing of 1.3 tonnes of cocaine. This is one of the diverse missions that we are doing around the world. Your comment prompts me to ask a question about marijuana. The Liberal government made an election promise to legalize recreational marijuana. At some point, I guess, that will either interfere with or somehow come up in your mission in fighting or preventing those smugglers from coming our way, or even in our war against drugs in general.

If marijuana were to be legalized in Canada, would it have any effect on your operations in general?

[RAdm Art McDonald]

Thank you, sir, for the question.

As I indicated in my remarks, the Operation CARIBBE mission is a regional capacity-building mission meant to reinforce structures and capability for an international group in our western hemisphere. A significant portion of the work is counter-narcotics. If there were a change to the law in Canada, I would not anticipate any significant change to the employment of our work down there because of the regional capacity-building and the need to control whatever are determined to be illegal drugs in Canada. However, I imagine that there would be moderate changes with respect to the behind end-policy support around what would happen from a Canadian perspective following up the takedowns of narcotics at sea.

[RAdm John Newton]

Could I just elaborate, sir?

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Yes, please go ahead.

[RAdm John Newton]

The counter-drug mission of the joint inter-agency task force south is, as he said, a partnership endeavour of 14 regional states in the Caribbean. So not only are we taking drugs off the streets of Canada—that's an easy way to express the outcome of taking tonnes of cocaine out of the narco-trafficking system—but we are actually disarming, to some degree, transnational organized crime. It is not in the government's platform to be aiding and abetting transnational organized crime. Our effort is to take money out of the destabilization of foreign states. This is the money of volumes that corrupt police forces and governments in the 14 regional states of the Caribbean basin, states that are fragile because of the scale of this narco war.

Finally, I would say that it's not just about drugs. The routes that drugs are moving on are the same routes that illicit trade can occur on, whether it's in arms, money, or the smuggling of human cargos. These routes can even be terrorist vectors for entering countries on the North American continent, including Canada. So it's a broader mandate that I don't think links easily back to the marijuana debate in Canada.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

The main question, beyond policies, which Rear-Admiral McDonald mentioned, is whether you seek extra financial resources if there's a change in the operation. What would you be looking for to be able to perform well in serving within the new atmosphere and the new environment that would be created?

[RAdm John Newton]

I have a mandate to generate the readiness of naval forces, and at the same time I have a mandate to employ those naval forces in operations on behalf of the commander of the Canadian Joint Operations Command. I am given resources to execute this operational mission on every case that a ship is deployed south. While on the one hand I get operational effect by being involved in drug seizures and interrupting the trafficking, as I've just expressed, I get paid the money required for the sea days, the fuel costs, and the port visit costs for that deployment. We get money on a case-by-case basis, just like every mission that the Canadian government signs a ministerial order for.

At the same time, your navy has given you regional engagement with the 14 partner states. That's why HMCS Fredericton, in the Caribbean basin, is working with Colombia bilaterally on things beyond just the drug mandate. We're working in Jamaica to professionalize all the Caribbean island states in seamanship, navigation, maritime interdiction operations, and how to make jetties safe and dive underneath ships to look for illicit cargo. We are down there on the backside of the drug mission enabling these foreign states. The navy pays for that component of this sort of engagement, because that's what your navy does on a day-by-day basis.

[Ziad Aboultaif, Conservative, Edmonton Manning, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

Mr. Garrison, you have the floor.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to both of our witnesses for being here today.

I want to talk about an issue that I've been focusing on in this study, and that's the undercapitalization of the Canadian military in general and the navy in particular. What we've seen from the last two governments has brought us to a position where we have capability gaps emerging. We have the retirement of ships before their replacements are available. My concern extends to the expressed support from all parties for a shipbuilding strategy, where the number of ships and the capabilities to go in those hulls seem to be slipping and where the timetables for delivering those ships are becoming a great concern, I think, for keeping our capabilities.

I want to start by talking about supply ships, because they're not, I guess, the drama queens of our navy, but we're not able to operate on all of these international missions without them. We ended up retiring the ships early due to a fire on one of the ships. However, we had an announcement in 2006 that the government intended to buy three supply ships, and then in the shipbuilding strategy we have two supply ships. I'm concerned, as I've said before, that the shipbuilding strategy has become a ceiling when originally it was a floor. People tend to say that we have two main coasts so we just need two ships, but obviously ships need to have time to be refit. They're out of service a certain amount of time. You can't really do this without three ships.

I guess I'll start on the west coast, because that's where I'm from.

Admiral McDonald, can you talk about what capability gaps this lack of supply ships is producing and how we're going to deal with that?

[RAdm Art McDonald]

It's good to see you by video teleconference. I look forward to seeing you on the coast again soon.

It's an excellent question. Of course, it is a recognized capability gap for us not to have the sustainment capability of a replenishment ship. That is not catastrophic in itself; it just makes the employment of our forces significantly less efficient. It requires additional planning factors, for example, just to travel across the Pacific and add in a port visit to gain fuel for our ships. One or two times adds between four and eight days, which takes us away from time on station to do whatever our mission is, be it economic sanctions, interdiction, working with allies, etc.

Indeed, the requirement that has been expressed was for three replenishment ships. We are pursuing two, with an option for a third, to provide us with that kind of flexibility. However, I note that we had been operating two for essentially my entire time in the service, and two had provided us with a significantly enhanced capability over what we have now, which is none.

I think I'll leave my comments there and turn it over to Admiral Newton.