National Defence Committee on Dec. 1st, 2016

[John Forster]

It doesn't explicitly.

The money is for the defence procurement strategy. Industry Canada is to set up an office to study defence analytics and for value-added propositions related to defence procurement. That was never funded previously. It was in budget 2016. That money will go to Industry to set up that shop.

Industry will be involved in doing the value proposition work related to fighter procurements, but it's not explicitly for that purpose, no.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

That's your time.

Thank you for the answer to that.

Mrs. Romanado, welcome. You have the floor for five minutes.

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

Mr. Chair, my apologies for the delay; I was running from one meeting to another.

It's a real pleasure to see you again, Minister, and to your colleagues, thank you so much for being here today.

My colleague across the way touched on one of the subjects I wanted to question regarding NSERC and SSHRC transfers.

I understand the NSERC transfer for joint research grant projects is for regular universities doing research on behalf of DND or in areas of interest. With respect to the SSHRC and NSERC transfers, I see they are for research chairs at RMC and managing research enterprise at RMC.

Can you elaborate a little on what you mean by the research enterprise at RMC and if any of this research chair money will also be flowing to the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean?

[John Forster]

We already discussed that a bit earlier, before you came—

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

My apologies.

[John Forster]

No, no, that's all right.

RMC applies to the program, to the granting councils. I don't have the list of exactly what the chairs are, but we'd be happy to provide it to you. Whether it's all in Kingston or there's a chair in Saint-Jean, I'm not sure.

[VAdm Mark Norman]

A small amount of money will go to Saint-Jean in those estimates, but the bulk of it is going to RMC, based on the program that the deputy minister described earlier.

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

Okay. Thank you.

With respect to the $6 million allocated toward funding to improve security for Canadian Armed Forces operations and personnel, we had a briefing in camera regarding security of our bases. I can't discuss what was discussed, but is this in relation to our military installations here in Canada or also abroad? Could you elaborate a little on what that is?

[VAdm Mark Norman]

I'll take that one because one of your colleagues asked the question and I misunderstood the question and the context of how it was asked. I thought it was related to Op Impact specifically but it is about an ongoing security program to make not just our physical facilities but all our security processes more robust here in Canada.

We spend approximately $23 million on an upgrade program. There are other expenses as well.

That $6 million you're seeing is specific to this subsidy process to add to those security initiatives you're referring to.

To clarify your colleague's question, it's not related to operations as I thought it was, which is why I couldn't answer his question earlier.

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

I understand that the health, well-being, and safety of our troops is of the utmost importance for this government, and I'm delighted with that.

In the funding for personnel and so on that's talked about in the supplementary (B) application, can you talk to us a bit about the importance of increasing that support to our military personnel in terms of their health and well-being?

[Harjit S. Sajjan, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

This one aspect has been very important for me, for the chief of the defence staff, and for all of us, because I've always said that we end up talking about capabilities, ships, and purchasing things, but our number one capability is our troops, investing in them and making sure that we continue to evolve. We can't just take one strategy and say that we have it. We have to have a structure in place that continually learns to evolve and that we can continually change, and we are doing that now.

A lot of these detailed answers will come out of the defence policy review, which I know all of you had a hand in, but regardless of what's going to be decided, that is going to be a key component moving forward. We're not just talking about next year. We're trying to talk about what type of support our personnel need all the way through into the future.

Another aspect we're going to be addressing is the family. What we find is that for somebody to be effective at work, the family needs to be doing extremely well. One aspect of things is that for the regular forces member who has to get posted regularly, losing a doctor is not easy. It's difficult to find a new doctor, so we're looking at programs to look after these things.

I'm going to be having discussions with the Canadian Forces liaison council on how, with the great business network we have, they can assist with providing companies that are out there to ease the burden of finding new jobs when people are posted. This is going to be a significant focus for us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

That's your time, Ms. Romanado.

A three-minute question goes to Mr. Garrison.

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

I'm going to ask again about something that I don't find in the supplementary estimates, which is about additional funding for training. The Auditor General's report pointed out that part of the problem for retention in the Canadian Forces was the delay in training.

I want to ask very specifically about peacekeeping training. Despite my Conservative colleague's lack of confidence in UN peacekeeping operations, I know that some have been very successful. Certainly UNAMET in East Timor was a very successful mission, so while there is a mixed record, there are great successes out there.

My concern is that under the Conservatives, peacekeeping training was cut back and was allowed to wither. There was the elimination of the Pearson peacekeeping centre. My concern is about wherever we're going in Africa where we're peacekeeping, it would take the same preparation. Is the training being done? Why is there nothing in these supplementary estimates to promote further peacekeeping training for these upcoming operations?

[Harjit S. Sajjan, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

When we look at peacekeeping operations, we're going to be looking into the future. Part of this is going to be on the decision we make for peacekeeping operations. Discussions are ongoing with our allies. Canada is going to be hosting the next peacekeeping summit. The training aspect of things is not just about opening up the centre, or sending a few people here, we need a comprehensive approach to looking at things. We need to look at the challenges. There are challenges within the UN. There are significant challenges, which they recognize, as to how we assist in bringing new, innovative ways of peacekeeping, because today's peacekeeping is not the peacekeeping of the past.

We need to look at how to bring a whole-of-government strategy. The military looks at sending peacekeeping troops and how the training is done. How do we integrate a whole-of-government strategy? What does it look like, and how do we demonstrate that, as a nation? How do we bring other nations together into this?

There is going to be a comprehensive approach that we're going to be putting forward, but we want to evolve it into something that's far more than just looking at training peacekeeping troops or having our training centre in Kingston. We are going to be looking at the wide aspect of how to move forward capacity building to troop contribution training, and how to integrate some of the development work properly into the areas that we do select.

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

I appreciate the high-flying answer, but my concern is that we're going to ask Canadian Forces members to do difficult and dangerous jobs, and we have to make sure they have both the equipment and the training they need to do those jobs, so I'm disappointed we are not moving on the training at this point. Waiting for a larger strategy wouldn't really affect the training you would do—

[Harjit S. Sajjan, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

When we make the decision on where we're going, that's when the detailed planning starts for the type of training that needs to be done and the type of equipment that's needed to make sure we meet the necessary requirements. That will be decision dependent, as well. A lot of work has been done on that, but I don't want to get ahead of myself before we make a decision.

Vice-Admiral, do you want to talk to some of the aspects of it?

[VAdm Mark Norman]

Again, not unlike your previous question, sir, the training that you're referring to is happening inside the line organizations that deliver training today. It will be supplemented and modified, as required, based on the specifics of the missions as that operational planning and those government decisions unfold, but we are continuing to do that type of thing. In particular, the army has an ongoing component of their routine training that includes many of the traditional elements of peacekeeping operations as you would have understood them in the question.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Minister, I'm sensitive to your time commitments, so I'm going to suspend for a couple of minutes to let you leave, and we can resume with the officials.

Thank you for coming today.

[Harjit S. Sajjan, Liberal, Vancouver South, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Welcome back. We have a quorum, so I'd like to get started with the remaining time we have left.

We can start a round as we did before. We'll run out of time or I can reduce the questions to five minutes. I know there wasn't a will to do that last time, but I'd ask if we could do it this time. It's up to the committee.

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Okay. We'll resume in the same order with five minutes. Again, everyone, try to keep it to supplementary estimates (B). Link it back to supplementary estimates (B). That's why we're here. For people who have questions off topic, there's question period and other formats that we can discuss. I would ask everyone to keep that in mind as they formulate their questions.

Starting off with a five-minute period for questions is Mr. Spengemann.

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

Gentlemen and madam, I'd like to take you back to Operation Impact. At the moment, the mission has been extended until March 31, 2017. What are the factors that are currently at play that would dictate or drive further extensions? What would be the associated funding requirements, some of which may be reflected already in the supplementaries but others that may be new? Are there a lot of unknowns? Is there planning for post-Daesh, and if so, what capabilities, as we see them currently reflected and funded in the supplementary estimates, could be applied in the next phase of Operation Impact that are not already being applied?

[VAdm Mark Norman]

The deputy minister and I will tag-team the answer. I'll speak to the evolution of the mission and the potential requirements going forward.

In the last round, the minister spoke to the nature of the mission. Clearly, as the situation in Iraq, particularly in the context of Mosul, the liberation thereof, evolves and we get a better sense of what the emerging needs are of the Iraqi security forces themselves, we'll have to look at the nature of our current contribution to the coalition, and the number of options related to how we either reinforce certain things that we're doing or potentially shift forces or shift the focus.

As it relates to any specifics, it really is too early to tell. It is such a dynamic and fluid situation on the ground that it would be premature of us to be speculating as to what we may or may not do.

Ultimately, as the current mandate comes to its end, we have to come back to government and provide advice as to how we would or would not want to extend the mission, and what that extension may or may not look like in the context of how the operational situation is evolving. Then, as it relates to the costing of that, that would be another step in the process.