National Defence Committee on April 24th, 2018

[MGen (Ret'd) Lewis MacKenzie]

I don't know. We've been uniquely unsuccessful with editorials, TV interviews, and all of that. The modern generation doesn't get its news that way. It's not the type of thing that shows up on social media, etc., and on blogs. I honestly don't know.

We've been trying to get rid of this peacekeeping myth for decades, and it hasn't happened. People are tired of military conflict after Afghanistan, and naturally the forces are having a problem with attrition, ironically because there's not enough action going around. That's not why they joined. We're all Cold War—at least I am a Cold War warrior who trained by going bang, bang, bang when I represented gunfire, because we didn't have blank ammunition, etc.

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

I'm old enough to be Cold War too.

[MGen (Ret'd) Lewis MacKenzie]

I don't know the answer to your question. I really don't.

[MGen (Ret'd) Denis Thompson]

I think you just need to keep plugging away and educating people and talking about the spectrum.

While we're talking about the spectrum, I use that word picture deliberately. Conflict prevention is $1 and at the other end of the scale it's $100. These are orders of magnitude, more expensive than blood and treasure. I'm going to give you one conflict-prevention example very quickly because, unlike General MacKenzie, I did five and a half years in the puzzle palace over here in the policy group, including a secondment to Foreign Affairs, so I think I understand how government works.

Conflict prevention: has anybody heard of the conflict between Cameroon and Nigeria? Probably not, right? There is a lot of oil in the Bakassi Peninsula and there's a real potential for conflict between those two countries. However, in 2005 there was an SRSG for west Africa. The Department of Political Affairs asked Canada to provide them with one military officer to assist them in demarking the border between Nigeria and Cameroon. That mission was successful. There was no war between Nigeria and Cameroon that I'm aware of. It's still an issue, but in large measure it has been resolved. It's a classic example of how conflict-prevention works. But nobody knows about it and nobody cares about it, and it's not in the news.

[BGen (Ret'd) Gregory Mitchell]

I'll say the same thing, and give a different example: Abia in South Sudan, between north and south Sudan, is an oil-rich area. If they had just taken the Abia commission and made a decision on what the border would be when you secede or not, there would be no problem, but they said, “Ahhhh”, and all left again, and fighting, warfare, carries on.

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

So it starts with us. Help us name the study.

[BGen (Ret'd) Gregory Mitchell]

Call it “international Operations”. I used to rail at my title over there. I was the director of peacekeeping policy, and I did everything but peacekeeping. I was doing all sorts of operations. Just call them “international operations”, not even “military operations” because, again it's a comprehensive approach that needs to be applied—and here I don't like the expression a “whole-of-government” approach—to all of these international security situations.

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

So foreign policy by other means—heavy on the international relationships.

[BGen (Ret'd) Gregory Mitchell]

That's a bit of a tongue twister.

[A hon. member]

It's too long a title.

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

Yes, obviously.

[BGen (Ret'd) Gregory Mitchell]

I would hope, and I believe that's what you're going to do, but you're just starting out on these things, and it must include Global Affairs, policing, and corrections people, and you should have judges. If you're going out, you're doing not just military and police security on the ground, but you're into nation building. You're doing all sorts of other things that are involved in peace support operations now.

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

I think you summed it up very effectively. It has to be strategic, operational, and tactical, and it has to be military, policing, and civilian. We have to look at it, not as a whole-of-government operation maybe, but whole of infrastructure, or whatever we come up with, and it's more than that.

So we have to define the spectrum of conflict and help people to understand that moving from chapter VI to chapter VII is certainly moving much closer to conflict, and that all the things we do, whether it's NATO, or UN, or whatever, have various mission-specifics along that spectrum of conflict.

Is that accurate?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

This is the white flag. I have to move on. Sorry.

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

Can I have a yes or no?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

The last one goes to MP Robillard.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

What lessons have the United Nations learned from past failures and successes in peacekeeping?

Further, how can we convince Canadians that we have learned the lessons from the peacekeeping missions in Somalia, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia and that those mistakes will not be repeated?

[MGen (Ret'd) Lewis MacKenzie]

It's a leading question, and I'm not avoiding the answer, but it depends on who's running the show. That's the problem, to pin it down.

If it is the United Nations, then we're going to have to accept the handicap of multinational representation at the command and control at New York, with the direct intervention of the Security Council who are briefed by the secretary general. He rarely, if ever, gets the response he is after, because his comments require resources that he is not going to get.

When they established the safe havens in Bosnia, I was retired at the time and indicated that 110,000 troops were required to defend the safe havens. My successor said he had heard me interviewed, and he would try it with 80,000. The secretary general went to the Security Council and requested 27,000, and six months later, 2,000 had shown up. That's the decision-making process. That hasn't changed at the United Nations.

The United Nations is us. We provide the resources, and they are not being provided except—and this is unkind, I know—by countries that want the financial remuneration for providing their soldiers to the UN.

[MGen (Ret'd) Denis Thompson]

It's worth mentioning that Canada pays, I think, almost 2% in terms of assessed contributions to peacekeeping operations. Not only should we be putting boots on the ground, but we have an interest in protecting our investment in peacekeeping operations.

[BGen (Ret'd) Gregory Mitchell]

On the one hand, I don't think Canadians really know or care, to be honest, for the most part, when you ask, “Did we learn the lessons, etc.?” I think people have very short memories. Except for the most recent thing that went on for over a decade in Afghanistan, they don't really know about these other things, unless they happen to have read Roméo Dallaire's book on Rwanda, etc.

From a moving-forward perspective, there should be no bullshit, no sugar-coating. It should be, “We're going to Mali to run counter-insurgency under a UN umbrella”, or whatever it is. It shouldn't be, “Oh, our people are safe, and they're going to be doing this.” Just be straightforward with Canadians. Take a chapter from General Hillier, who spoke openly about what to expect—casualties and so forth.

I think the important part, from a parliamentary perspective, is this: what are we trying to achieve? Why are we going to do this? Why Mali? I've never heard an explanation of why Mali over anything else. It was on the list, but why? What are our interests there? Why that one and not another one? What do we hope to accomplish? How are we going to do it, with what, and when? If you can explain those things, Canadians will say, “Okay, it makes sense to me”, or they won't. They'll argue about it.

[A voice]

Not the way they explain it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I think we're out of time.

I want to thank all three of you for your frank and valued contribution to this discussion and for your service to Canada.

With that, I'm going to adjourn the meeting.