National Defence Committee on Nov. 22nd, 2016

[RAdm John Newton]

Both Admiral McDonald and I play a supporting role to the Royal Canadian Air Force in delivering this capacity to our navy, and it is a major chunk of a warship's capacity. You can't diminish how important it is.

It is the Royal Canadian Air Force, to my mind, that has to answer the generation question. Their challenges are many—delivering the competency of how to maintain the aircraft, how to fly it, and then how to operate all these advanced systems. I trust they'll do a good job, and I'll leave it to them to answer that.

We're seeing the first of the helicopter air detachments, the people and the platform, married to a warship that is out exploring the rough domain of the wintertime North Atlantic, pushing the operating envelope of that aircraft and ship to the maximum to make sure that what we take and what we are able to fly is what we had with the Sea King, which has an amazing capacity to operate in some of the world's roughest waters. It's Canadian sailors and Canadian industry and Canadian aviators that are still our leaders in landing helicopters of this size from warships in such a rough domain, whether it's the north Pacific or the north Atlantic. I trust my Royal Canadian Air Force partners will be delivering the first of these operational capabilities in 2018, because that's the date I'm working toward with my fleet, and I have a lot of integrating elements of fleet programming.

What I am seeing, if I could relate it to the Block III Aurora modernization, is nothing short of staggering. The black-box technology that is in the back of these planes and helicopters has increased the detection and ranges against submarine targets. This is a specialized radar made to generate a wide-area surveillance picture from a helicopter and network it back to the ship. I was just on board a warship. It looks like you're dealing with another warship 200 miles away, but the picture is being generated by a helicopter. The internal-processing capability to see targets where you never could see them before, whether on the surface or underwater, is amazing. I see this because I'm seeing it in the Block III Aurora. The air force is adamant that it is delivering the same or a higher level of capability than we're seeing in the Block III modernization. But I'd have to leave the delivery details to the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Art, as I talked, maybe you thought of some other aspects of the question.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Actually, I have another question....

Sorry, go ahead.

[RAdm Art McDonald]

John covered it already, but I would add that as recently as what we've done with Vancouver in New Zealand, you see the importance of your question with respect to naval readiness. Helicopters and ships at sea are vital elements of our delivering it.

I would link that back to Mr. Spengemann's question earlier. At the beginning, he was talking about the outfitting of the navy, naval readiness, and its capacity. Here again, we have a demonstration of the need for multi-purpose capability. Canada operates large helicopters, from the Sea King to the Cyclone, and that allows us to have full combat capability with respect to anti-submarine warfare, as well as in humanitarian operations, where volume and lift are significant components in themselves.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you.

Admiral McDonald, you talked a bit about our men and women and the training, recruitment, retention that goes on in our Canadian Armed Forces. You mentioned in your testimony the use of technology to reduce the time it takes to achieve competency. I know that the Canadian Armed Forces has applied DAOD 5031-1, which is prior learning assessment and recognition for the recruitment of our Canadian Armed Forces members so that they're not being trained again for competencies they already have.

Could you elaborate on some of the technologies you're using to reduce training, to get our men and women operational faster? No one wants to be retrained for something they already know. If you could talk a little about that with respect to andragogy and perhaps simulation, that would be helpful.

[RAdm Art McDonald]

Thank you, Ms. Romanado, and thank you for the service of your sons. We have a lot of work for them to do. I appreciate their service and I thank them.

Also, if I can just take a second, I want to applaud John's enthusiasm for the previous question. As our Arctic expert, he shows that Canada is a three-ocean navy, and we all share that passion for making sure we get the Arctic piece right.

I love your question with respect to prior learning assessments and getting training right. As I indicated in my testimony, that's absolutely vital to our delivery of capability and readiness and, more importantly, to retaining sailors, soldiers, airmen, and airwomen as we go forward. We're really looking at this revolution in the training system, which began in only the last two years, in terms of taking a cradle-to-grave look at each one of the trades, from the time someone begins all the way through, to ensure that we're not duplicating training. What we want to do then is find the most innovative systems for delivery.

Part of each of the major capital projects that are going to deliver over the next little while will have a significant training component delivered in there. We're now working to synchronize and are having the preliminary discussions with industry about what technologies we could take advantage of, but certainly, your navy—our navy—has always had a history of using simulation prior to going to sea, and simulation for everything from basic engineering tasks through to multi-threat warfare in large team simulators. That has been core to the production of the first-rate sailors, soldiers, airmen, and airwomen we've had up to now, and I see that only growing as we go into the future.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

We're going to have to leave it there. Thank you for the response.

Ms. Rempel, welcome. You have the floor.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The phrase that was used earlier was something to the effect of delivering service while patiently waiting for government to deliver equipment. I think that's a very fair and very polite assessment of the situation.

I'm wondering if perhaps you would like to take some time to comment on what the impact is of having to operate without a supply ship right now in terms of both Canada's sovereignty and Canada's ability to defend itself.

[RAdm John Newton]

I'll start.

As you understand, the Halifax class modernization was an exhaustive effort that took an entire class of warships, the principal combatants of the Royal Canadian Navy, not completely out of service, but.... The readiness of the fleet dropped as you put so many ships through such a short cycle of third-line maintenance dockyard work. During that period, the readiness of the entire Royal Canadian Navy declined, and it's in that window that the Protecteur fire occurred while it was providing fuel to the United States Navy because of their requirement for this deep ocean support. That fire then led to an assessment that will preserve her at 46 years. Probably it should be retired too.

The loss of the capability occurred during the bottom of the readiness period. It was not caused by the tankers themselves, but by the modernization of the Halifax class, which is a risk we took to get ready for the next 20 years just as the world is heating up in many different security domains.

But here we are. We've come out of the Halifax class modernization on time and on budget, with an incredible capability that our sailors are still finding magic in, in terms of how much innovative technology has been put into this ship.

We've had to not struggle...it wasn't a struggle to find relationships, but we had to develop relationships that add their own positive values. I spoke about how the relationships with Chile and Spain had very positive values. We're coming through that period. Patiño just went home from supporting Spartan Warrior. Into next year, the interim AOR, a lease solution to bridge to the joint support ship, which starts constructing around 2018, will deliver. This is a lease solution.

Are we struggling? No. If you didn't expect your military to take challenge and turn it into a virtue, then I think you're probably underestimating the power of the military. All challenges and all enemy activities come at you from left field, and it's the virtue of our skill to figure out solutions. I think the interim AOR is the key piece to your answer.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Sure. Sometimes, though, I think all of us around the table would like us to be able to meet your virtue with our virtue in terms of supporting you from a capacity perspective.

Prior to the last election, I had the opportunity to serve in a ministry that dealt with supply chain development. The argument that was always made to me was that the opportunity cost of building out our supply chain capacity for military procurement justified the delays that we're seeing right now, frankly. I've never been a firm believer in that particular component if it materially impacts the efficacy of your work and the broader work of the Canadian Armed Forces.

I will ask you a very simple and perhaps non-partisan question. Do you think that opportunity cost calculation is correct?

[RAdm John Newton]

Art....

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[RAdm John Newton]

You were in the force development world prior to being an operational commander.

[RAdm Art McDonald]

Thank you very much for the question.

I do think you need to place it in the context of answering the bell, as we say, for naval readiness today and naval readiness in the future. There can be no doubt, as John highlighted, that delays in delivery require us to manage something that we're capable of, for sure, but the advantage of building home-grown capacity is that we build the ability, when we're in times of crisis, to have assured response. If we're relying on others at times, then the demands of multiple nations go to a single service provider, and as a result we may not always be happy with the result that's produced.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

To be quite honest, do you think that capacity is actually being built out at home? Do you see an integrated supply chain? Do you think that end result that you're talking about there is actually something that is going to be realized?

[RAdm Art McDonald]

I think it's a work still in progress, but we've been developing some fantastic relationships. Admiral Newton has already highlighted several of them that work with the Halifax class modernization. A number of the strategic partners that we have there, how we integrate their work in support of our forces with our fleet maintenance facilities and so on—for sure we're improving our capacity on a daily basis, but it's still a work in progress.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

I'm sure in 15 seconds or less the chair will cut me off, but I have to ask: what are the gaps in terms of actually seeing that supply chain development capacity built out, and how do we fix them?

[RAdm Art McDonald]

I think, very rapidly, the biggest gap is to just ensure we do something that I think Mr. Finn, who appeared before you recently, talked about. We've been integrating both in industrial capacity and the fleet maintenance facility in-house capacity to maintain and support our ships and our maritime forces for over 40 years. We continue to need to evolve that into a modern context where industrial capacity for point delivery is phenomenal. We need to do work to ensure that we've got that synchronization just right, and that work is still ongoing.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Fisher, you have five minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Admiral Newton and Admiral McDonald, thank you very much for your perspective and your expertise.

On a personal note, I want to thank you, Admiral Newton, for your level of commitment to our community in Nova Scotia. There's rarely a time when I go to an event and you're not there. I want to thank you for your work. You worked side by side with me on renaming a public park after PO2 Craig Blake, and that was one of the highlights of my time on council.

I think Ms. Romanado touched on recruitment a little bit, and you both spoke about the problems of retention and recruitment.

Can you give me a little bit of your thoughts, Admiral Newton, and I'd welcome Admiral McDonald's comments as well, on why the struggle? Why are we struggling so hard on attracting sufficient numbers? I guess the crux of my question is does it add to a capability gap by not having sufficient numbers or not being able to retain our numbers?

[RAdm John Newton]

That gentleman up on the VDC—my colleague—in a functionally led navy has issues of recruitment and retention in his brain, but I manage, of course, retention and the forces that keep people in, just as he does, because I generate sailors and generate combat capabilities.

Our job in this equation is to make sure that the navy is a rewarding career, make sure that sailors are valued, make sure that they can work and live in an harassment-free environment, make sure that their contributions are valued, and that their mobility upward through rank and challenge is assured by fair processes. That comes down to naval readiness, because readiness is assured by motivated people who are inspired and want to own their service.

We take a beating sometimes in public perception, in the recapitalization debates. There is a negative piece that comes from that. We're not fighting, like Craig Blake, on the front lines of Afghanistan, when the credibility of the army was shown in such a positive light despite the loss of lives and the injury and all the long-term consequences of conflict of that nature. We were not at the forefront of the story of Afghanistan. However, with a modernized fleet, with our submarines operating forward, with our alliances and foreign commanders speaking of the value of our forces, I think our message and our communication is better. We are taking a number of steps to make sure that a career is manageable, that tempo isn't too high, that training occurs at the right time for a person, that people aren't posted too much, and that benefits are available to them for their deployments. We're working very hard on the retention piece.

On the recruiting side, a whole number of social and Canadian phenomena would work against us, but with reservists we have ample opportunity for speed, to make it more agile, to make the recruiting process more timely and more agile.

This subject was already started on by one of the other members of Parliament, and this is where I'll ask Art McDonald to pick up, on the recruiting piece.

[RAdm Art McDonald]

Thanks, John.

That's a great question, Mr. Fisher, and certainly one of our big concerns. As John said, our greatest issue at the admiralty is to make sure that we are able to attract and to make it a positive environment for recruiting by having relevant operations that resonate with Canadians. Certainly, that's what we've been able to do in the last little while.

In the last few years, as we've faced a recruiting challenge, we have been pushed off the visibility of Canadians' front pages with Afghanistan, and at the same time, we were doing our Halifax class modernization, a deliberate decision, but that reduced our ability to provide many options to government.

Systematically, we're trying to address that now. You've already seen, in the reports that John and I provided you today, our engagement through forward deployment to exciting opportunities around the globe that I think are capturing Canadians' attention. Then, systematically, underneath that, how do we address it? Admiral Lloyd, when he appeared before you, noted that the purview of recruiting belongs to the chief of military personnel, but we in the navy are leaning into that by helping to provide a number of tactical and operational solutions, provision of recruiters for the day, and experts who can go out there and discuss why naval careers are relevant to Canadians and a great way for someone to spend their life.

Then Admiral Newton just touched on it, but specifically with the naval reserves, we've really been leaning into that and have made great progress in the last little while to augment and increase the number of reservists we have, something that's very useful to our naval readiness, in that strategic augmentation capacity.

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

Okay, so—

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

That's your time, Mr. Fisher. I'm going to have to give the floor to Mr. Bezan.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Admiral Newton and Admiral McDonald, thank you for joining us, for the passion and enthusiasm you have for the Royal Canadian Navy, and of course for the great work you're doing in supporting all the sailors who serve under both of you.

When we last did this study on the defence of North America and looked at the Royal Canadian Navy, there was a lot of talk at that time, about four years ago, about a pivot to the Pacific. The U.S. was going to be more engaged in what was happening in the South China Sea, and we were going to support them in their operations, especially with the proliferation of submarines coming from North Korea, China, and others.

I want to ask you, Admiral McDonald, if you could give us a sense of where you're at with the Pacific fleet and how we are functioning alongside our U.S. partners, both the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard who operate along the Alaskan coastline. What is the threat level with those countries that have more submarines and more of an aggressive stance in what they're doing with China, Taiwan, and the geopolitics within the South China Sea? How is that playing out and how is it affecting your operations?