National Defence Committee on March 20th, 2018

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

I know, but instead of just setting out the context let's get down to some of the details, because according to David Perry and others there's $2 billion in unspent money here. I see in the budget there's only $1 billion, $900 million, that's actually getting carried forward. There's over $1 billion worth of money here that isn't being allocated. Again, what's not getting funded out of “Strong, Secure, Engaged”?

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

Everything in “Strong, Secure, Engaged” is fully funded. What you see here is certain projects, and if they're not mature enough to move them forward we can't just spend money on projects that haven't matured. These projects will move forward. The timing just hasn't been done. I know where you're trying to go with this and the points you are making as well, but I can assure you that for “Strong, Secure, Engaged” all the projects are fully funded.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Okay, so let's have more talk about those projects—

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

As we have more people to manage those projects, we will be able to improve our time.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

We as a committee here want to know what's funded because the budget was almost mute on national defence. There is no section on it at all. According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer—and he looked at this and noted it for parliamentarians—nowhere in the 2018 budget did the government provide a detailed and current reconciliation between the “Strong, Secure, Engaged” framework and the budget forecast.

He says that National Defence isn't giving the reconciliation, and parliamentarians have no idea how taxpayer dollars are being used.

Where's the transparency here, Minister? We want to know what the plan is. You have a 20-year plan. We haven't seen it. Will you table that plan?

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

In fact, actually the plan that we've.... For example, on what you've been stating that it's not in the budget, this is one of the reasons why when we did SSE we did it independently, and we have fully funded the defence policy as a government. It's been outlined in the fiscal framework. We will be outlining...in terms of our plan, and it will come out in due course in the mains as well what our plan will be for SSE.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Minister, you said yourself that you want to make sure that you and the government can be held accountable by Canadians, by parliamentarians. But If we can't see the plan.... You say it's fully costed, but we can't see the plan. Will you give us the plan on how you're going to actually carry out the defence strategy “Strong, Secure, Engaged”? How are you going to spend the money over the next 20 years? How you will use the taxpayers' money, and ultimately how can we help you do a better job on making those expenses?

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

That will be coming out in the main estimates. On the defence investment plan, we're looking at launching that in May of this year.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

The Parliamentary Budget Officer asked for the 20-year plan. You gave it to him after much duress. Will you be giving the same information that you gave to the Parliamentary Budget Officer to this committee so that we can analyze it?

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

In our defence policy, I committed to outlining the defence investment plan, and we are going to be communicating the defence investment plan in May 2018. One thing I can assure you is that this is going to be done. Keep in mind, the defence policy was just put into place last year. It takes time for the department to be able to put this plan together. If you just make quick, knee-jerk reaction decisions, this is where you mess things up.

I want to make sure that if we have a plan, number one, it's also going to work and it has the flexibility to move forward, so that we can actually spend the money and move projects forward. It's all about recruiting the right people to get this done. A lot of work needs to be done to fill those gaps that were left.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Minister, I wanted to just ask one final question before I run out of time here and it's on the replacement of our CF-18s.

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

Yes.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

You're always talking about capability gaps. One of the concerns that I have brought to light is that we have a huge shortfall right now in the number of fighter pilots in the Canadian Armed Forces. It's pushing upwards to 70 pilots who have left with no replacements coming on stream to fill that type of attrition.

Is that the capability gap that we have now?

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

We identified the need to have more pilots. For example, from your commitment for 65 aircraft, we've gone to 88. We're going to need more pilots. Even last year, before the defence policy came out, we knew we were going to need more pilots and directed the air force to start recruiting.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

I'm going to have to leave it there.

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

Not just the pilots, we have to make there are the maintenance folks as well. This is something that we're seized with.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm going to leave it there.

MP Garrison.

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

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Minister, for being here today.

I want to focus on estimates, but before I do, I want to make one remark regarding the Mali peacekeeping mission, which you've mentioned, and that is, of course, that the New Democrats welcome a recommitment to peacekeeping internationally. Even if the promise doesn't seem to be exactly what it was before, we believe there's a role for Canada in supporting efforts for peace and stability in Mali, and we hope there will be an agreement among the parties for further debate in the House.

Let me turn to more estimates-related questions. You probably have guessed that the first thing I'll ask you about is the last thing I asked you about when you were here the last time, and that's the Phoenix pay system. I know you're not the minister responsible for the system, but as the defence minister, in terms of all your civilian employees we're still seeing very severe problems in morale, recruitment, and retention as a result of the pay problems. I asked you at the end of November, and you promised to fix the cases for three individuals. They were fairly egregious. That finally did happen, but it took months. Despite your good intentions, it took months to do that.

After I asked you about it in the House of Commons, Minister Qualtrough's office approached me and said to give them our worst cases. We gave them 14 cases on February 2. Nothing has happened on any of those cases.

My question for you as the minister is, what is it that you can do as the minister to help out the civilian employees of DND—in my riding, literally hundreds of them—who are still suffering from incorrect pay? There are impacts on their child benefits and impacts on their tax systems. What are you, as minister, able to do to assist them with these problems?

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

First of all, I completely agree with you that this is unacceptable and that we have a lot more work to do on this. Every department is affected.

We do have a significant number of employees, and we will go at this case by case. For some of the names, I'll have the deputy minister answer, because we actually have addressed them.

There's one thing I'll ask of you. Bringing it up in the House is not a problem. If you want to do that, it's your prerogative, but please email me directly so I'll have access to that, or send it to me in the quickest way possible. I can assure you that I will have those names given directly to the deputy minister so that we can address it. I know that he works on this on a regular basis. I get a weekly update on this.

Jody.

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

I'm sorry, but I'm going to cut off the deputy minister. Can I just say that with the band-aid approach here you can't fix this egregious case by egregious case? They continue to pile up. It's not that there are no new cases. I appreciate your offer, and we will take you up on every one of those. You will be surprised at how many hundreds we have to give you.

I want to turn now to another outstanding issue here at committee, which we've asked you about before. There was a unanimous motion in this committee to ask you to allow the military ombudsman to revise the service records for LGBTQ service people who were dismissed with less than honourable discharges.

Before the apology, I was given an indication that we had to wait for the apology in the House of Commons. We had the apology last November. Can you tell us when you as minister will authorize the military ombudsman to revise those records? What other process do you see? We're now almost six months beyond the apology and there's still no progress on revising those service records.

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

One thing I can assure you of is that we are committed to this, and I will get you a much more thorough update on this. We did want to get the apology done. I think you can agree on how sincere it actually was; you wouldn't doubt me on that. I will get back to you with a more thorough answer on this, but the process itself, I can assure you, is being worked on.

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

With respect, Mr. Minister, six months after the apology I would hope that we're somewhere closer to actually getting this process under way than you seem to indicate. I'm not asking for a progress report. I'm asking when the process will start.

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

I'll turn to Jody.

[Jody Thomas]

The process is under way to look at every record of every person affected by the LGBTQ2 apology. It is a case-by-case review of their records through our privacy process. It then moves on to the second stage, where we're looking at service records and how to compensate people through the class action suit. It's a very onerous and lengthy process that we have to get right, but it has begun.

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

I would argue that there's certainly no need to wait for the class action lawsuit to revise the service records. It's the failure to revise service records that denies people certain veterans' benefits. More important, it denies them recognition for their important service to the country, and it actually in many cases excludes them from participating in the military community through things like the Legion. There's an urgency here that's separate from the compensation.