National Defence Committee on Feb. 9th, 2017

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I call the meeting to order.

I would like to welcome the folks from the naval reserve to testify in front of the Standing Committee on National Defence regarding the Royal Canadian Navy, naval readiness, and the defence of North America. Thank you very much for coming. Today we have Commodore Marta Mulkins, Captain Chris Ross, and Chief Petty Officer, 1st Class, David Arsenault.

Before I give you the floor for your opening comments, I have some housekeeping for the committee.

We'll reserve 15 minutes at the end for committee business, and to keep everything orderly and on time, if anyone is speaking and they see this paper come up, they'll have about 30 seconds to wrap up before I have to yield the floor to the next speaker. I would appreciate it if people keep an eye on this piece of paper; it helps me quite a bit.

Before I yield the floor for your comments, I'd like to give the floor to Ms. Blaney, who has to give the committee a notice of motion.

Ms. Blaney, you have the floor.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you so much, Mr. Chair.

Today I would like to ask the committee members to give unanimous consent to waive the notice time for a motion and discuss the following matter at the end of today's meeting. The motion is as follows:

That the Standing Committee on National Defence undertake an urgent study on the persistence of risk of fire at CFAD Bedford which “will likely occur” and could have “catastrophic” consequences as determined by a 2015 National Defence Fire Risk Assessment; that the study include a review of fire and explosion risks at similar sites across Canada; and that the Committee report its findings and recommendations to the House.

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

That motion contained an element asking us if we want to waive the time requirement. I'm going to put that to the floor. All in favour of waiving the time requirement on that motion as proposed by Ms. Blaney?

(Motion negatived)

We'll wait the required time frame for that, then.

Commodore, thank you for coming. You have the floor.

[Commodore Marta B. Mulkins, Commander, Naval Reserve, Royal Canadian Navy, Department of National Defence]

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

We appreciate the opportunity to share with you some of the challenges and opportunities within your naval reserve, a highly dedicated and active component of the Royal Canadian Navy. I echo the previous testimony from some of my colleagues and superiors by saying it is an immense honour for the three of us before you to serve the diverse and talented team of sailors and officers of the naval reserve.

In this presentation I will speak about the reserve component of the Royal Canadian Navy, but I'll also touch upon some of the broader pan-reserve policies and initiatives affecting the naval reserve as well.

Who are we right now? The naval reserve is an organization of men and women who have been recruited and are based through 24 naval reserve divisions or units spread across the country from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Victoria, British Columbia.

The mission of the naval reserve is to recruit and train sailors and officers to be employed at sea and ashore across the Royal Canadian Navy, in the ships of the fleet out of Halifax or Victoria, in staff positions, and in intelligence and support roles.

The Naval Reserve also de facto represents the navy in communities across the entire country—as you can imagine for Canadians in cities far from the sea, Naval Reserve units are often the only reminder that they have a navy working hard on their behalf. One of our official four roles is to support the Royal Canadian Navy's strategic communications and outreach efforts.

But first and foremost, we are a seagoing service.

This cardinal principle drives all planning and informs decisions at all levels. As members of the profession of arms, we demand and deliver the same standards as our regular force counterparts. The reserve could not make a credible, relevant, or sustained contribution to the safety, security, and defence responsibilities of the navy and the Canadian Armed Forces otherwise.

Today the naval reserve is also an institution in the midst of very significant change. The reserve is just over 90 years old this year, and as you can imagine, it has had to evolve throughout its existence in accordance with the needs and resources of the day, including, as you are likely aware, surging so many sailors and officers toward the Royal Canadian Navy's Second World War effort that at peak strength of 96,000 personnel in the navy, fully 78,000 were reservists.

The current transformation is being driven by two major institutional reviews: the chief of the defence staff's 2015 directive on strengthening the primary reserves, an initiative that will expand and enhance the reserves by 2019, and the Royal Canadian Navy's establishment review of the naval reserve, which is meant to retune naval reserve structure and governance to meet the evolving requirements of the Royal Canadian Navy for the next 20-year horizon and which will also seek to meet the mandates as prescribed by the chief of the defence staff.

Most specifically, our model of employment within the Royal Canadian Navy is changing. We are moving away from the total force, niche operational role employment concept implemented some 25 years ago, which had naval reservists primarily responsible to crew the Kingston class of coastal patrol ships, to a new strategic reserve role of targeted augmentation, in which reservists will increasingly augment across the surface fleet of the Royal Canadian Navy and in support roles ashore.

This, along with the Chief of the Defence Staff’s directive, has triggered us to review our entire structure, size and governance procedures within the navy as a whole.

As commander of the naval reserve, my explicit job is to deliver trained sailors and officers to be employed at sea and ashore in these new roles, and the implicit job of the command team before you today is to ensure that we have a successful force generation process in place to reliably provide this effect to the RCN year in and year out.

Establishment review will not only prescribe the number of reservists required in each occupation and at each rank level to deliver relevant and achievable effect at sea and ashore to the RCN and the Canadian Armed Forces, but will also enable, through the broader navy, the recruitment, training, and professional development of all those sailors. It must not only deliver stable growth and reliable training, but also enable rapid surge to emerging needs through agile processes. We anticipate the final results of this report in the next few months of 2017 and intend that this will best position the naval reserve to help the RCN meet its future challenges.

From the broader reserve context, the naval reserve is the second-largest component of the Canadian Armed Forces primary reserve, with an official establishment of approximately 5,500 members. However, our current strength is closer to 3,100 right now, due to a number of factors that had led to a net decline in strength over the past several years. Establishment review will seek in part to reverse this trend, and it includes a plan to meet the chief of the defence staff's growth targets.

Despite the challenges of our current strength and transformation activities, however, we continue to send many sailors to the Canadian Atlantic, Pacific and sometimes even foreign fleets for training and for other employment at sea.

We are also expanding capabilities that support the fleet through our enhanced intelligence and logistical capabilities and the exciting new naval security team, a small-boat-based, on-water force protection team being developed within the RCN that will be crewed in large part by naval reservists.

Today as I speak, there are just under 800 naval reservists on full-time service, serving anything from two-week to three-year contracts, within the navy or the broader Canadian Armed Forces. In 2016, almost 630 naval reservists went to sea in some form, and 419 participated in a named operation.

Right now, there are 11 reservists sailing in HMCS St. John's, as that ship contributes to Operation Reassurance, operating in the Black Sea with vessels from several allied and partner nations for the next month. Several other naval reservists are currently serving around the world in Ops Foundation, Challenge, Artemis and Impact.

Some 225 more reservists are sailing in the Kingston-class fleet right now, contributing to any number of coastal and constabulary operations, including Operation Caribbe, Canada's role in the Joint Inter-agency Task Force South's operation to interdict trafficking in the Caribbean and the eastern Pacific.

Many lines of effort are under way to consistently achieve all of the above, through both force generation and subsequent employment, the key enablers being the new recruiting process we are implementing to achieve much more rapid enrolment of reservists.

We are in the process of redefining readiness definitions and requirements for naval reservists for domestic and deployed routine and contingency operations.

We are improving retention both through Canadian Armed Forces initiatives and through the RCN's specific efforts—including the need to encourage more former regular force members to transfer to the reserve upon retirement.

We are converting to new business intelligence systems in order to better track readiness and generally align the management of the naval reserve enterprise more smoothly within the Royal Canadian Navy.

In summary, the naval reserve features prominently in each of the four Es of the Royal Canadian Navy's executive plan. We contribute directly to excellence in operations at sea through our levels of crewing across the fleet and ashore. Our current work updating and sharpening our readiness levels is all underpinned by the inculcation of the Royal Canadian Navy's code of conduct and Operation Honour.

We are enabling the transition to the future fleet through our establishment review and our new recruiting system.

We are evolving the operations of the organization through the full engagement in the broader navy adoption of new business enterprise systems.

We are helping energize the institution by living up to the commander's intent of “people first, mission always” through new motivating roles across the fleet and ashore for all reservists and through increasing, rewarding local engagement in our communities across the country.

I hope that I have transmitted to you a sense of the value of the naval reserve within the broader Royal Canadian Navy. The obligation of the command team is, first and foremost, to ensure that the naval reserve remains an endeavour worthy of the time and energy of every reservist.

We welcome your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you very much for that testimony.

I'm going to give the floor over to Ms. Alleslev for seven minutes. You have the first question.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you very much for being here. There's no question that the naval reserves are a key component of our capability, and what a pleasure to have you here to tell us about them.

You mentioned that we have looked at a net decline in the number of reservists. I want to make sure that I understand. Are you having challenges in attracting as well as retaining, or just one or the other?

[Cmdre Marta B. Mulkins]

Thank you very much for the question.

It is something we have been studying very closely over the last little while in the naval reserve as well as across the Canadian Armed Forces as a whole.

With regard to the net decline in our strength that I'm referring to, over the last 10 years the trend has been, almost year to year, that there's been a different rationale or different reason triggering the net decline. In some years we deliberately reduced the recruiting input that we were seeking because we anticipated that there might not be sufficient training capacity in the given year. In other years there were simply budget declines that led us to reduce the number of recruits we would seek overall.

However, we do feel now that we're in a position where we're going to be able to reverse that trend, and it's partly through the changes in recruitment activities. I can go into more depth on that right now, but there is basically a whole-of-Canadian Armed Forces effort under way to improve recruitment across the board, for both the regular force and the reserves. That was directed a couple of years ago, in fact, by the chief.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

From that perspective, you're talking about things that were military-driven, such as budget, as reasons for having lower strengths. Do you keep records of why people leave? Do you have a sense of whether the period of retention is increasing or decreasing, and do you have some reasons for the challenge in retaining people?

[Cmdre Marta B. Mulkins]

Retention is the bookend to the recruiting piece, obviously, and we're very interested in improving our retention as well. In fact, within the reserve in the last two years we've initiated both improvements to recruitment strategies, which are starting to bear fruit, and a working group to understand retention.

Retention in the reserve is a little bit different from retention in the regular force, because we are essentially in open-ended service. Reservists, who presumably have part-time careers, do have logical points throughout their reserve careers at which they might choose to move on, logical points being, for example, completing university, embarking on a civilian career, or starting a family. These are logical gateways.

The attrition numbers as a whole, even though they're higher than for the regular force, are partly due to being a component that transfers a lot of reservists into the regular force, so our attrition numbers do not represent a complete loss. We're starting to understand, in fact, how we can recruit more people the other way, from the regular force into the reserve.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

My understanding is you're putting a little more focus now on understanding and analyzing that data over time as part of the new attract and retain program, particularly with the new change in role with the regular force navy. Is that a fair comment?

[Cmdre Marta B. Mulkins]

That is absolutely fair. Part of our analysis right now is to look historically across what the trends were and to understand future ones. We might even be able to implement....

We have exit surveys, for example, when reservists depart the institution, to understand what made them decide to leave.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Could you share with us what the plan is in terms of the three main challenges that you're facing, and how perhaps people like us could support you or provide whatever you need to be able to address those challenges?

[Cmdre Marta B. Mulkins]

Thank you for that. Certainly there are challenges for the retention for reservists. First and foremost, do they see exciting employment? Are they going to be challenged by it? Is it worth their staying in? Are they motivated? I feel very much right now, with the transformation that the new reserve is undergoing and its changed role within the broader navy, that we certainly are offering that, and along with the new skills we are offering the opportunity to see the world.

Reservists also want to ensure that they will be able to progress in their occupations. Will they have access to leadership training and career progression as well? That is in place, very much so. This is a value that they can bring back to their civilian employer, so there's definitely a benefit to that.

These are some of the factors that we want to make sure are in place and continue to be.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

What about the structure, like class A, B, C? Is that in need of maybe an update, or is it working just the way you need it to?

[Cmdre Marta B. Mulkins]

The different classes of service effectively represent the different level of service that the reservist is giving at any given point in time, from part-time service in the class A world to deployed operations or employment at sea, which is the class C, which is essentially equivalent to their regular force colleagues, with the same compensation, benefits, and the like.

Within Canadian Armed Forces military personnel generation, there is currently under way an analysis of the entire question of retention and compensation and benefits—a first principles study, I think they're calling it—which will review whether it's time to change how the terms of service work, the compensation and benefits, and exactly that type of thing. I don't have any knowledge at this time of their progress, but certainly the commander of military personnel generation is probably able to respond to that question more clearly.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You have 30 seconds for a question and a response.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

All right. I want to ask a little more about the structure and if you've seen any challenges, even anecdotally, on whether or not there might be some opportunities to improve that structure. If so, what might they be?

[Cmdre Marta B. Mulkins]

In fact, as part of the establishment review that I mentioned in my opening comments, we're examining exactly that right now. At this juncture, the mission and roles that we foresee we're going to deliver to the navy and the broader Canadian Armed Forces are being taken into account in that structural review. At this point in time, we're about to complete a structure that will meet every mission that the navy is asking us to do at this point.

[Leona Alleslev, Liberal, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

Mr. Paul-Hus is next.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome, Commodore Mulkins.

When I was in the army, I was jealous of the naval force or the reserve. At the time, as you mentioned in your presentation, your mission was really clear and it was yours, and your way of doing things was very different. However, I see that there have been major changes in the past 20 years. I don't think the changes have been very positive, given that you lost this kind of mission. Right now, you are simply providing troops to join the regular force. It seems that your mandate is exclusively to prepare the troops, to send them to Class B or on short missions with the regular force.

We know that, to keep reservists, they need stimulation on a daily basis, or they will go do something else. In the report that you are about to prepare on your transformation, have you targeted points to attract reservists? Have you thought of aspects you would like to have and that you would like the government to accept?

[Cmdre Marta B. Mulkins]

Thank you for the question.

This is exactly why the navy has re-oriented how the reserve will be employed. For the 20 years that the reserve was focused upon the Kingston-class mission, that was what we force-generated toward. It was a great mission, and thanks to that mission, the operational capability of the naval reserve today is at an extraordinarily high level.

However, over time, the force generation of individuals to go to sea for that full-time mission became difficult to sustain year in and year out. As a result of that, we see immense opportunities in the role of targeted augmentation across the fleet. That now opens up the experience of reservists beyond the coastal constabulary operations with which we've been preoccupied through the Kingston-class mission. Reservists will be part of the broader navy support to peace and security around the globe. That's why we're so pleased that so many reservists are sailing in support of Operation Reassurance today and will be deploying next year in support of the western Pacific deployment on the Pacific coast.

In addition, we are also developing some new specific team skills within the navy, such as the naval security team, the small-boat force protection team that will deploy to support protection of the fleets when they're in foreign ports. It will also be able to be used in support of the Government of Canada's capacity-building mandate with partner nations and allies around the world as well. This is an extraordinary and very motivating opportunity for naval reservists.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

There are 24 divisions spread across Canada, but we always have the impression that the navy is active either in the Atlantic or the Pacific.

What type of training do you provide to your personnel in the divisions deployed in the prairies or elsewhere?

[Cmdre Marta B. Mulkins]

Yes, that's an excellent question. It speaks exactly to how we force-generate sailors. To be very precise, in the naval reserve the job is to force-generate individual sailors trained to a certain level of readiness, while an army reserve will often train individuals for deployment and also small subunits, small teams.

The naval reserve is different in that regard. The training takes two forms in the navy. In the first form, the occupation training, every sailor or officer will be trained specifically in the skill sets required for their occupation at sea or ashore. The second component is what we call the refresher or regenerative training, and this is specifically done to mitigate and prevent the loss of skills between the periods when reservists are employed at sea. The training delivered in naval reserve units is mostly focused on that regenerative training.

On the other hand, the occupation training is delivered through the broader naval training system. Regular service people and reservists alike are all plugged into that system. The training we deliver in naval reserve units is fairly robust in that regenerative training. Quite uniformly across the country, units will have small boats and will have fairly simple desktop simulator systems to simulate bridge watchkeeping or navigation or machinery control. Some units have marine diesel trainers and that sort of thing, which is all in an effort to make sure that we have the most current skills possible.

When we need other skills that we can't deliver, such as firefighting and damage control—a core skill set required at sea—we send our sailors to the navy's firefighting damage control schools, for example.

Broadly, that is the nature of the training we conduct in the naval reserve units.

[Pierre Paul-Hus, Conservative, Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, QC]

Right now, there are about 800 reservists and the total number is 3,100. That means that 25% of your personnel are in either Class B or C.

Is that common? It seems to me that this number is high for Class B. Is it because the regular force is facing problems, and in order to make up for it, it badly needs the reserve?

In fact, how do you explain that there are so many reservists in Class B?