National Defence Committee on Oct. 25th, 2017

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

Then to that degree, we have 200 soldiers there who are helping to train Ukrainian soldiers. Is that not partly a response?

[Alan W. Bell]

That is a response, but when they're up against someone such as Russia, which is a highly mechanized, highly trained team 200 guys to teach basic military tactics, medical, IED identification, and everything else is not really going to stop anything.

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

What is a response that you would deem not negligible?

[Alan W. Bell]

This could be happening, I don't know. I'm not privy to what governments are doing to governments. What is the Government of Canada and what is the Government of the U.S. talking to Russia about? How are they going through that?

There has been nothing visual, so the people in the Ukraine are seeing nothing done. There are countries sending in training teams: the U.S., the U.K., and Canada. We're all contributing a bit towards it.

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

The witness who I previously mentioned also said, we should be out of there—again, I'm paraphrasing—and let Ukraine sort out its own problems. I mean it's Ukrainian soldiers who are on the conflict line. Would you agree with that?

[Alan W. Bell]

No. We have more than one and a half million Ukrainians living in this country and having one and a half million Ukrainians means one and a half million votes.

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

Okay. This may have already been asked, but the company you're president of, Globe Risk International Inc., is it doing any work in the Donbas region right now?

[Alan W. Bell]

No.

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

Are you aware of any Canadian corporations or Canadian interests in that area?

[Alan W. Bell]

No.

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

You're not, okay.

Going back to the military assistance, do you have any specific recommendations for Canada in terms of what else we should be doing from a military perspective?

[Alan W. Bell]

We need to be doing more full-spectrum warfare training, not just basic training for soldiers.

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

What does full spectrum mean to you?

[Alan W. Bell]

It involves every single thing we have in our ability. I've already discussed that as I went over what is needed, and that includes special forces, diplomatic, legal, economic, and everything else. It's the final thing. We should do everything. We either do nothing or we do something that's going to make a difference. My belief from having worked in other countries, definitely not in Europe, is that unless you go in there and you start doing something that's being recognized by the country, people will believe that you're doing virtually nothing. It's just a token. You're doing a token effort to assist.

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

Do I have any...?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You're on time to the second. Thank you for making my job easier.

The last formal question goes to Ms. Hardcastle for three minutes.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Thanks. I get last wraps, and I guess I'll pursue that same line then.

We've heard so much about how we have to expand our conceptualization of what a soldier is and what combat is. Then you talk about diplomacy, like real people talking to each other. I'm wondering what these person-to-person relationships would be like, because you said earlier in one of your testimonies that we need to deepen bilateral relations. Do you mean tangible, traditional things?

For instance, we talked about lifting the temporary visa requirement for visiting Ukrainians to Canada. Do you mean stuff like that, or are you talking about something more subtle that includes more that I don't see?

[Alan W. Bell]

The Canadian military involvement at this particular time is that we've trained 5,000 people and that is sufficient, but what have we trained 5,000 people to do? Is the training that we're giving them going to help them if Russia decides to roll over their border again somewhere else?

We need to look at.... That's what I'm saying, full spectrum. It's not just the military. It's government and everybody else being involved in it. There are a lot of things happening that we don't know about and we're not privy to, and that is the way it is. The Ukrainian government will have a checklist of what it would like to see from us, and if we don't provide the Ukrainians with what they think they require, they will go somewhere else, the U.S. or somewhere else. We have to sort of make a decision as a government on what we're going to do.

We've done a token, which is there now and working very hard and everything else, but there are lots of other considerations that we have to look at: political, economic, and all the other various different things. If we're going to protect the country from being annexed by a hostile force then we have to do a little bit more than throw 200 soldiers 18 miles away from the Polish border to train them in basics. That's all it really is, basics really. We're just going through the motions of basics.

The reason I believe we should do this is that I've been involved in Africa and in the Middle East where we've had to do this, and if we only go in there with half measures, I know what the consequences are. I've also been into Afghanistan on behalf of the Canadian government to do other work in Kandahar Province. I went in with all the promises and then halfway through, it became politically non-viable, so I was prevented from doing the other things we were going to do.

This was $65 million, one of the biggest deals that Canada put into Afghanistan before we pulled out, and while we were there, it worked. The whole thing worked, and we achieved the goals that we went in there for, but on the way down there was a lot of interference from various different areas about what we should do and what we shouldn't do. We went in there with a plan, but that plan changed depending on who was running that plan, and consequentially it was very difficult to work through armpits of bureaucracy. That's another problem, and we have to sort that out; otherwise, we just keep going round and round in circles

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Is there still time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You'll get some more time, but this particular opportunity has dried up.

[Cheryl Hardcastle, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

We have time left and very predictably I'll divide some time amongst everyone to make it fair. The Liberals, Conservatives, and NDP will get five minutes each.

Really quickly before we shift into that, the testimony that I've heard sitting here listening for a long time, and even during our visit to the Ukraine, there was a lot of gratitude for the support Canada had given. I certainly would describe that as a lot more than token. Can we do more? We're going to deliberate about what more we can do, and obviously provide recommendations to the Government of Canada, but my perception of what we were doing was very much appreciated and was making a difference. This is my perception of what I've heard from the Ukrainians throughout our journey on this discussion.

Having said that, Mr. Gerretsen, you have the floor.

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

Thank you very much. Going back to Mr. Bell, you were talking briefly recently about the low level, for a lack of a better expression, training. Is it your recommendation that we should also be doing some training and assisting with the higher levels within the military structure?

[Alan W. Bell]

If we're not training our own officers how to deal with hybrid warfare, it means the Ukrainians are probably not dealing with it either. Maybe what we have to do is to start at their high command and then work our way down through the ranks to—

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

I apologize, I'm really short on time. To that point, a lot of struggles are with the fact that the Ukrainian military still has the structure to it that comes from the former Soviet Union.