National Defence Committee on Oct. 30th, 2017

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

I want to sincerely thank all of you for the work you have done and that I know you will continue to do in this area.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Go ahead, Mr. Gerretsen, for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Congratulations to all of you for the new roles that you're undertaken, and best of luck as you proceed forward on them.

Commodore, can you tell me, at a very high level, what you think the differences are, both in reality and by perception, between the military justice system and the civilian justice system?

[Cmdre Geneviève Bernatchez]

At a very high level, both systems have to respond to the requirements of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Both systems are anchored in the Canadian legal mosaic, so they're both part of that big organism. They're part of that wider fabric.

Courts martial have the same powers and the same rights, basically, as superior courts of criminal jurisdiction. There is a judge who is independent, appointed by the Minister of National Defence, based on recommendations made by—

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

It sounds very equal.

[Cmdre Geneviève Bernatchez]

There is an independent prosecution service.

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

Do you think that's the perception?

[Cmdre Geneviève Bernatchez]

No, I don't. That's what I was trying to convey with the last question. From my vantage point right now, as the new Judge Advocate General, there's a lot of education that needs to be done.

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

I heard you say that, and that was actually going to be one of my follow-up questions. When you talked about education and mentioned getting information back to us, I interpreted that to mean Parliament or the parliamentary committee. Where else do you think education is required?

[Cmdre Geneviève Bernatchez]

Within that context, technical briefings would be wonderful. I'd love to provide that in order to ensure there is a wider understanding from parliamentarians.

As far as the Canadian public is concerned, there needs to be more proactive engagement with the media on my part, the part of the director of military prosecutions, and the director of defence counsel services to ensure that the media understand what the military justice system is all about, and internally as well.

The previous question alluded to the fact there was a perception from victims that they did not have access to that system. What it says to me as the superintendent is that we also need to work in ensuring that our own constituency, the Canadian Armed Forces members, understand what their military justice system can do for them.

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

My riding is Kingston and the Islands, so I'm not that far from here. We have a base there, as I'm sure you know.

One of the problems that we've had historically is incidents occurring on the base. In Kingston, our base is really intertwined with our community. It's right in the downtown area. Especially when we've had some high-profile cases, whether it's in relation to events at RMC or individual conduct on the base, there has been a question from time to time as to why things are handled differently in military court versus civilian court.

A lot of that has to do with what people see in movies and how they perceive the differences. There is something really serious here, and I'm glad to hear you touch on it, which is specifically about how you educate the broader public. The broader public has a perception that what goes on in a military court is not as open, transparent, forthcoming, honest, and fair as it really is. I'm not trying to discredit it; I'm just talking about the perception.

You've already elaborated on that, but I'm curious if you see similar problems, although maybe not to the same degree that I do. How will you commit to helping repair those relationships?

[Cmdre Geneviève Bernatchez]

I fully agree. There needs to be transparency. There not only needs to be an appearance of transparency, but real transparency of the system, to lay it out there for people to see.

The centre of gravity for me right now is legitimacy. I want to ensure that the military justice system remains a legitimate one, because it's part of the wider Canadian legal mosaic. If that system suffers from illegitimacy, it's the wider judicial system that suffers from illegitimacy.

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

I will say that something really works. RMC students are much better behaved than Queen's students, so something is working.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

We're going to have to leave it there.

Mr. Hoback is next.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

First of all, I want to congratulate you all on your appointments. I think you should pat yourselves on the back for your careers and how well you've done. Lying ahead of you are some interesting challenges for sure.

One of the challenges I look at, as we listened to witnesses on the Ukraine study, is that we're starting to see new types of warfare, such as hybrid warfare. We're looking for different types of personnel now in our departments. How do we go about attracting those personnel and competing with the private sector, which has very unorthodox means and manners of attracting those young employees? When you are looking for cyber-specialists or engineers and programmers, how do you compete with an Amazon, which has a doggy park and all kinds of other things, and an employee may work on the staircase just as well as in the office? How do you look at bringing these types of people into not only government, but into the military side of government?

I'll start with you, Jody.

[Jody Thomas]

Thank you. It's a really interesting question and it's a topic that we have on the table constantly. It's never off the table, in fact. Bill has been with us a week, and he's probably been in three meetings already where we've talked about how we're going to attract people.

We can't compete in some ways with the Amazons. We're never going to have doggy parks and pool tables in our workspaces. As well, we have two kinds of employees to attract: we want some people in uniform and we want civilians. We're trying to make the workforce as flexible as possible, meaning you can be an IT specialist in your civilian life and also be part of the reserve cyberforce. You don't have to give up one for the other. You can serve in uniform and as a civilian.

We have created a defence team HR strategy in which we're looking at what positions absolutely have to be in uniform and what could be civilian positions, so that we focus the capped number that the chief of the defence staff has for members of the regular and reserve forces on the things that you absolutely have to be in uniform to do, situations in which he has to direct you to do something to cause an effect and you must be in uniform to do that.

For everybody else, or others, how can we transition those positions to civilian positions? We are going to job fairs. We are doing the Women in Force program right now to try and attract women into the armed forces and give them a view of what it's like. We've reopened the Collège militaire royal in Saint-Jean to ensure that there is a bilingual francophone learning institution for people who want to learn primarily in French versus in English, although cadets out of both colleges are bilingual. We're using all the traditional methods, but we're also trying to do things such as make offers on the spot if we're in a job fair at a university.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

You have the flexibility and the freedom to do that.

[Jody Thomas]

We do for the civilian side. We're compressing recruitment time on the military side.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I guess General Vance would be the one I would question on the military side about how he's going to try to compete with the Amazons in the same fashion.

Mr. Matthews, you talked a bit about procurement and the process of procurement. I've heard complaints from different people that if we gave you guys an extra $10 million tomorrow, you wouldn't be able to spend it because you wouldn't get it through the process in procurement. How are you looking to streamline that process through Treasury Board so that we actually get what's required for our military in a timely and practical fashion? I'm hearing a lot of complaints that it isn't practical because it's no longer timely and it's no longer capable of doing what we need it to do, if that's a fair complaint.

[William Matthews]

Mr. Chair, the procurement issue is a serious one for implementing this new policy. Some of the things that we need to acquire are frankly very complicated and are going to take some time. Other things are less complicated and shouldn't take as much time.

It's not a challenge we can crack by ourselves, but I'll highlight a couple of key points for you. Number one, under this plan, defence will have additional authorities to buy low-complexity, low-risk items, and that will speed things up. It's a phased growth in the authorities, so we have to prove to our cental agency colleagues and others that we're delivering. Those authorities will grow over time, which will allow more streamlined procurement.

On the broader picture in procurement, everyone agrees the process is broken. No one quite necessarily agrees on what the process is, but one of the key things happening outside of defence is that PSPC and the Treasury Board Secretariat are working on a procurement modernization effort, because it's both the directives and the policies that need to be fixed. The thing we can do inside defence to make it easier is to make our engagement with industry more streamlined. We, I think—again, I'm one week on the job—tend to get too detailed about our requirements, rather than talking about a capability we need and having that dialogue, rather than diving right down.

It is the work that goes into requirements definition that takes the time, and if you get that wrong, you end up stepping backwards. That's the key thing we can do inside the defence department.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

I'd think the process would be outside the requirements. The requirements are the requirements, but the process is something that's streamlined so that no matter what the requirement is for what you're purchasing, it can happen in a timely manner.

[William Matthews]

But it's on us to get to the requirements definition phase done faster. That will—

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

That's basically the issue.

[William Matthews]

Yes.