National Defence Committee on Oct. 18th, 2017

[Jill Sinclair]

Thank you for the question.

Corruption is an ongoing issue, and if any of you follow the news from Ukraine, you know that recently one of the deputy ministers of the defence department was arrested on charges of corruption. Corruption is one of the lines that permeates the “Strategic Defence Bulletin”. The Ukrainians have in place some anti-corruption offices within the defence ministry. These need to be strengthened very much. The United Kingdom is doing a lot of work focusing on this.

The United States is doing work in helping them think through how they analyze the defence budget and track dollars. At the moment, there is no way to measure, identify, or track where a dollar coming into the system gets spent and comes out the other end. There is no FTE measure, if you are familiar with that.

Some of it is basic accounting principles, but we are very conscious of the corruption piece. Again, transparency, governance, and processes to bring some habits of governance to the ministry are extremely important.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I understand that at all levels, including in the military, there's a lot of corruption. However, with this strategy going forward, who is going to police all these levels of government? Should it be an international committee? Should it be internally developed by a civilian organization? I'm not sure if we're going to succeed. The strategy is one thing, but implementing it and making it work is another.

[Jill Sinclair]

You are absolutely right, sir. It's all about the implementation.

There is a Ukrainian anti-corruption office, and indeed it was this office that actually arrested the gentleman last week.

I think it's a mater of figuring out how to more effectively bring together the international effort. You also have the International Monetary Fund, which has made the anti-corruption efforts of the Ukrainian government key in terms of releasing the funding they need. The EU is doing the same thing. There are a lot of international instruments that are focused on corruption, because it is fundamental to the legitimacy of the state. At the moment that's still a little bit under challenge, and in the minds of some, it's highly questionable.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

We all understand that to make things work we need a budget. Is there any number that has been thrown around? How much money do we need to implement a policing of this corruption? Has there been any discussion on what cost would be associated with ensuring that all levels of government are playing by the rules?

[Jill Sinclair]

I'm afraid I can't answer that. I don't know if there has been a dollar figure put on it. I think that the dollar figure is extremely important. I think the mindset and the accountability mechanisms are equally important. That would be getting back to sort of an effective parliamentary oversight, an engaged civil society that could call the government to account, not just at election time, and making sure that all of the international efforts focused on corruption—and there are many—are coherent, so that we have our arms around it in a coherent sort of way.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

How much time do I have left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You're actually just over the allotted time.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

That's good timing. I'm okay with that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

These guys probably wouldn't be.

I'm going to give the floor to Randall Garrison.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I really do appreciate your making yourself available for this today. I always ask about the diverse military, and I'm going to ask a different kind of diverse military question. Given the presence of a large Russian-speaking population in Ukraine, in terms of reforming the military, has there been attention given to making not only Ukrainian speakers but Russian speakers also welcome in the military? I ask that in the sense that, if there is eventual success in resolving the conflict, there will be a big demobilization challenge.

[Jill Sinclair]

Thank you for that question.

I don't know the detailed demographics of the Ukrainian armed forces, which do number about 250,000, but the interesting thing about Ukraine is that many Ukrainians speak Russian and it may even be their mother tongue, because of this transition period.

My understanding is that the concurrency between Russian speaking and then sort of Russian proclivity, that is, feeling more part of Russia versus part of Ukraine, is not quite aligned that way. Russian is used everywhere. It's used around all the tables that I sit at. But your broader issue is about social cohesion and inclusion going forward. There are challenges there.

I think the Ukrainian armed forces are probably much more socially cohesive than some other elements in Ukraine, but that is an issue, and that's on the minds of the most thoughtful people in Ukraine, for sure.

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

Now I'll return to my more traditional diverse questions. In terms of women serving in the military, certainly on the anecdotal observation level, we didn't see high-level women in any of the meetings we were at in the Ukrainian military. I wonder again, in terms of building a modern military going forward, if that's part of the reform.

[Jill Sinclair]

In the minds of the Canadian training mission, absolutely. Again, leading by example, so having women on our teams—women mentors, women trainers—is part of the cultural legacy. There are women within the Ukrainian military. They tend to be in the traditional services.

We all speak with the chief of the general staff and with the minister about how it actually is possible to have women doing absolutely everything. This is going to take time. They have said that they're open to this. I know that when President Poroshenko was here, he spoke about how he welcomed Canada's kind of feminist foreign policy and saw the role for women. Again, if you look at the civil society activists that made everything possible at the time of Maidan, women were present everywhere.

In the volunteer organizations, including within the defence ministry—the reform office that is staffed by volunteers embedded in the defence ministry—many, many women are sitting at the tables with the chief of the general staff saying, “This is how you have to reform your medical system; this is what you need to do as logistics.”

It's a work in progress.

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

In your opening remarks you mentioned that the Defence Reform Advisory Board is not just about reforming the military, but you spoke about the larger security sector. Can you tell us about what other areas are covered in this reform program?

[Jill Sinclair]

In the “Strategic Defence Bulletin”, the Ukrainian armed forces, ministry of defence, national guard, and the border guard are all covered. The Defence Reform Advisory Board is focusing—by definition, because we're at the invitation of the defence minister—more on the defence side of things, but a lot of these issues are cross-sectoral. The national guard works very closely with the Ukrainian armed forces, so if you're going to try to make change in the UAF you want to do it in the national guard or vice versa.

We're conscious of these other players and try to bring them into the space, but the Ukrainian armed forces is the biggest moving piece in this effort.

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

I raise that because one person—and it may just have been by chance—raised with me whether the reform efforts were actually extending to the national guard and the border guard or whether they had really started in those areas.

[Jill Sinclair]

Canada's efforts certainly include the national guard. We have been working with the national guard on their reform efforts. They are a much smaller entity. They are also newly re-created. In many ways, they are leading the reform effort, including how they engage with their non-commissioned members and how they do their procurement practices, which are much more transparent.

We're trying to say, “Well, Ukrainian armed forces, look a little bit to your own models. You're not going to look just to NATO, but look to your own model of what better can look like.”

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

When they say border guard, would that be the equivalent of customs officials? What is really meant by border guard?

[Jill Sinclair]

It's like the Canada Border Services Agency. It's customs and border control.

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

Given the concern about trafficking of arms and other kinds of trafficking going on allegedly through Ukraine, reform of the border guard would seem to be extremely important.

[Jill Sinclair]

I think it is. I can't comment on that element of things because I don't have the details, but being able to manage your borders is extremely important.

I would note that Ukraine was just made visa-free in July by the EU. They are now part of the Schengen area. Certainly, if you had been in Ukraine prior to that and then travelled after that, you would really have seen a difference in the professionalism. This is anecdotal as opposed to a professional judgment. It's just my having gone through the border controls.

Thank you.

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

Great.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Go ahead, Mr. Gerretsen.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for coming today, Ms. Sinclair.

I think that the work you're doing is quite remarkable and interesting. I think there are some real challenges there. At least that's what I saw when we were in Ukraine.

You touched on young people who were part of the volunteers and advisory group helping to advise the reform of defence in Ukraine. We saw some of that. We saw and heard from some of those people. We heard the passion and the progressive ideas that they have.

One thing we also saw was the entrenched former Soviet Union ways of running the military, which is still alive and well. We also heard about Canadians asking those former Soviet Union types, “Why don't you meet up with these people and follow some of their recommendations?” It seemed as though the response that they were getting was, “No, they don't understand. They don't know what it's about. They don't really understand defence the way we do. We've been doing this forever.”

I can't help but wonder, when you try to break down this corruption.... I asked about this of the former panel; I'm not sure if you were in the room. Is part of that entrenched upper echelon of the defence sector really genuine about their attempts to reform? Are they doing it more out of appeasement, due to the fact that the allies who are there really want it and they know they have to appease them?

[Jill Sinclair]

That's a great question and comment, which I think you partially answered yourself, but let me have a go at it.

First of all, these entrenched ways, that's the legacy system. I sometimes call it a crust. There is a crust there that needs to be poked through. The crust is there for a whole bunch of reasons. Some of those folks are staying around because they don't want the change to happen. Some of them are fearful of change. Some know nothing else, but what they're doing and there's nowhere for them to go. It gets you into things such as, “Well, how do you have retirement programs that help to ease people out?”

If you spoke to our folks in Yavoriv, they were the first to observe that you have these extraordinarily well-trained young people. You have these extraordinary people coming back from the anti-terrorist operation, the ATO, with innovative, creative, new ways of doing stuff. They come back to headquarters or to their unit and smash. They run up against a wall. How do you deal with that?

That's a senior-level political decision, to say, “Actually, we've decided that we need massive reform, so we'd like some of you to move on and there's a package for you”, or there isn't. That's been done in other countries. I know that in Hungary—