National Defence Committee on April 24th, 2018

[MGen (Ret'd) Lewis MacKenzie]

Five years ago.

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

Two thousand and twelvish?

Do you know why it closed?

[BGen (Ret'd) Gregory Mitchell]

Money. For many years, after it was initially set up, it received government support, but that was gradually cut back by government over several years and it was told to make it on its own, the sort of business case. However, the customers are generally countries that can't afford it. You're trying to capacity build an African country to train female policemen and so forth and that kind of thing. They don't have the money to do that. You've got to try to beat the bushes and look for money. They weren't able to do that successfully enough to keep their doors open.

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

I did have an opportunity to look at the article you authored on peace support operations and whole-of-government education and training, and the four specific recommendations that you had in there about establishing the centre: that it be fully funded, that it partner with other Canadian organizations, and that it offer enhanced education and training capabilities.

How would that differ from the peace training centre in Kingston?

[BGen (Ret'd) Gregory Mitchell]

PSTC is essentially training observers, individuals, to go out and do their business on various missions as individuals. It doesn't do a huge amount of research. It doesn't do a lot of international capacity-building, although individuals would come from different countries. It's much smaller and it's a training facility. It's not an education facility.

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

Mr. Thompson, you said at one point in your opening remarks that Canada can re-emerge as a leader on the world stage.

When did we lose that? Where are we coming back from?

[MGen (Ret'd) Denis Thompson]

We're coming back from an era when we used to.... I think today on UN operations we might have 30 people. It's a ridiculously low number. Even if we count the people who are in the MFO, who aren't counted against the UN number, that's 68, and we're not anywhere near where we used to be in terms of our participation in international security operations.

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

When you say “participation in international security operations”, are you talking about the actual military forces?

[MGen (Ret'd) Denis Thompson]

Of course, if you don't put boots on the ground and skin in the game, then no one is going to give you the time of day. You don't have any credibility. That's the issue.

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

That's fair enough. I'm just asking by way of reference back to our previous meeting, where I asked similar questions about where we were and where we are now and how we've changed. I challenged the witnesses with exact thing you just said, which is why we don't now dedicate the same resources to peacekeeping that we used to. The response I got was along the lines that peacekeeping—sorry for the term; I mean peace support—has changed quite a bit over the last number of decades and moved away from the military toward more diplomatic engagement. I'm curious about what your thoughts are on that.

[MGen (Ret'd) Denis Thompson]

Nonsense. What I would say is exactly what General Mitchell said, that peacekeeping—if you want to use the word—has transitioned from what it used to be to counter-insurgency, basically. Unless you put sufficient resources on the ground, you cannot stabilize the situation. You might be dealing with belligerents who have signed up to the agreement, but also, as General MacKenzie pointed out, you have to deal with non-state actors.

I had the Islamic State Sinai Province in my backyard in the Sinai, who wounded seven of my soldiers over the course of three years. Thankfully nobody died, largely because of all the force protection measures we took. You still have to deliver the goods in that kind of environment. If you don't put enough people on the ground, you will take causalities, as I think I pointed out when NATO intervened in Bosnia.

The international community—it isn't just about Canada—has to engage with enough resources to resolve the situation.

Carolyn McAskie—if I might say just one last thing—used to be SRSG in Burundi. I remember her saying very cogently that you either pay now or you pay more later. What we tend to do is pay more later.

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

Okay.

Just going back to your comment about re-emerging, you're defining that re-emergence as a level of engagement in terms of the number of people on the ground.

[MGen (Ret'd) Denis Thompson]

Yes. The comprehensive approach, which isn't just military, but also involves police and civilians, needs to have sufficient folks on the ground, quality density from top to bottom, from across the international community in order to make it happen. If Canada wants to play a part in that, then they've got to contribute to the international community.

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

Mr. Mitchell.

[BGen (Ret'd) Gregory Mitchell]

To go back to your initial question—why we lost leadership and how we lost it—we got involved in Afghanistan, and we were there for a lot of years doing counter-insurgency, and both the military and the government of the day were focused on a very difficult mission for a long time, and everything fell away. At that time, a lot of senior folks thought peacekeeping was just a lot of nonsense.

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

It's difficult to wrap my head around it because, if you look at the statistics.... I'm sure you agree because this is what you're saying, that over the years, we seem to have withdrawn in terms of the number of personnel we dedicate on the ground. But this is not a political thing. It's gone on over three—if you'd like to comment on this, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. It seems to be something that's been going on over the last three or four decades, under all political stripes. There seems to be this withdrawal from that.

Mr. MacKenzie, what are your thoughts?

[MGen (Ret'd) Lewis MacKenzie]

It goes way back before Afghanistan. It goes back to the mid-nineties due to the gross incompetence of the United Nations and all those nations I listed that backed off from peacekeeping because they didn't trust the UN anymore.

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

Was Canada one of those?

[MGen (Ret'd) Lewis MacKenzie]

We had 8,000 persons deployed on peacekeeping operations in 1992—Cambodia.

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

So would you say that Canada lost faith in the UN?

[MGen (Ret'd) Lewis MacKenzie]

Absolutely, along with all those other nations I mentioned, particularly the Scandinavian countries.

Very quickly, there was a lack of understanding amongst elected politicians at that time too. We mentioned the fact of NATO coming in and taking over from the UN. I wanted to throw something at my TV that night when, in statements for the record, two members from two different parties stood up, and they had it backwards. They had the UN taking over from NATO on the debate. I couldn't believe it. It was the other way around. That was the level of ignorance of elected representatives at that time in the mid-nineties. No wonder the military has a hard time figuring out where it's supposed to be going when the elected representatives giving them their task don't even understand the difference between NATO and the UN.

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

I'm out of time, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you would change that and build that confidence among elected officials.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

We'll have to circle back on that. Now we'll go to five-minute questions.

MP Rioux.

[Jean Rioux, Liberal, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

First of all, I am very impressed by your record. Thank you for appearing before the committee and sharing your expertise.

My questions follow up on those from my honourable colleague from Kingston and the Islands.

Why has Canada withdrawn from peacekeeping missions since the 1990s? You talked about the credibility of the UN, but what is your analysis, as military professionals?

[MGen (Ret'd) Lewis MacKenzie]

Well, to repeat myself somewhat, which I'm happy to do, the point is that—not to be overly dramatic about it—26 members of the Royal Canadian Regiment were going to burn to death in the back of their vehicles in Sarajevo, and I phoned the UN. It was 11 o'clock at night in New York. I needed help. I needed somebody else to get to the president, President Izetbegovic, other than just me, and I got the third person in charge of the UN peacekeeping department. At that stage, Martin Bell had told me that I had been interviewed more times on television than anybody in the history of television. It was before the O.J. Simpson trial.