National Defence Committee on April 26th, 2018

[Prof. Walter Dorn]

Sure. To put it in 60 seconds, I'm in favour. I think we should be doing more. We should deploy a quick-reaction force, and we're looking for a place to do that. I think that Mali corresponds with both our values and our interests. Mali is a long-standing democracy that's faced challenges, including a coup d'état. We've had long-standing partnerships with the country, including military training. We also have interests in terms of mining and other commercial interests, and we have to, as Carolyn said, de-escalate the terrorist threat in that country.

As for the risks, there have been 166 fatalities in Mali from the MINUSMA mission. The vast majority of those have been from the developing world. Roughly half have been from malicious attacks, and those are the ones we're perhaps most fearful of. The majority of those malicious attacks were against troops from the developing world.

There were helicopters in Mali provided by the Dutch and Germans, and each of them had accidents. The German Tiger helicopter crash killed two people. The Dutch Apache helicopter crash killed two people. Those were accidents; they were not from malicious attacks.

At the present time there are no known surface-to-air missile threats. They have not been used against aircraft, and, knock on wood, they won't be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Are you saying that threat is very low?

[Prof. Walter Dorn]

I'd assess the threat as moderate at this time, but unpredictable.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Mr. Spengemann is next.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

Chair, thank you very much.

Ms. McAskie, I'd like to take you back to the issue of post-conflict reconstruction. I'm going to take a moment just to frame the question. Your co-panellist Ms. Zahar talked about it in the context of Mali. I want to take you to the context of Iraq and put to you the proposition that a good factor in the emergence of ISIS was ISIS's unconstrained ability to provide public goods and services, or what was essentially perceived by the population to be public goods and services. In other words, it was replacing government. ISIS is and was a non-state actor, and I'm wondering if you could comment on the importance of post-conflict reconstruction work led by the UN, the expedience of it, and the advance planning of it. Sometimes we have to start it when conflict is still going on.

Then there's the wretched decision as to when you should withdraw militarily and devolve on to a nascent or renascent government. The Obama administration, in a very politically defensible way, decided to pull its troops back at the end of 2011. Things were stable, but then you had these decentralized governorates in Iraq that were unable to deliver the services that ISIS then provided.

How important is PCR, post-conflict reconstruction, and how do we integrate it into our thinking on peace operations?

[Carolyn McAskie]

You're absolutely right to consider peacebuilding to be something that starts right from the very beginning. My last job in the UN was as assistant secretary-general supporting the creation of the Peacebuilding Commission.

My definition of peacebuilding is that it starts long before the peace process. It continues through the peace operations and peacekeeping and on into post-conflict and on into development. You have to have an approach to everything you do that takes into account the elements we need to address in order to ensure long-term peace.

With regard to Iraq, of course the Iraq mission was so enormous that it sort of exceeded the ability of the international community to encompass all of these elements. You're absolutely right that there have been many instances in the past in which the local population, because they're cut off from government services, rely on local groups, maybe terrorist or rebel groups, to supply basic services. This is true in Palestine and Gaza. It's true in other parts of the world.

The issue here is for the international community to come together around the table. That's what the Peacebuilding Commission was supposed to provide, a place where everybody was at the table and you could define strategies for peacebuilding. Our first two clients were Burundi and Sierra Leone. We had great strategies, and then the international community didn't fund them. Then in Sierra Leone, you had the Ebola crisis. Part of the strategy was rebuilding the health sector, rebuilding the justice sector, and rebuilding the education sector. That didn't happen, and they weren't able to deal with the Ebola crisis.

[Sven Spengemann, Liberal, Mississauga—Lakeshore, ON]

To briefly follow up, how constrained are we ideologically by what's still floating around as the mantra that we don't do nation-building? Is that still an obstacle, or are we now at a point where, yes, we're doing nation-building, but we just have to do it in the right way?

[Carolyn McAskie]

I'm not sure what the current discourse is in the Security Council on nation-building. Certainly the trend has been towards fostering local elements and supporting local elements. Even in Afghanistan, a lot of the emphasis was put on supporting the new government there, and there was definitely an amount of nation-building.

My understanding is that the terminology has gone out of favour, but maybe not the concept. These countries need enormous help in reconstituting their basic public structures.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

MP Bezan is next.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. McAskie, you said we haven't done anything in Mali, but I thought we were one of the major contributors of humanitarian aid, contributing tens of millions of dollars over the last while.

[Carolyn McAskie]

No, I never said we haven't done anything; we just haven't gone in formally in a peace operation.

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

That's in a peace operation, but I think overall that Canada has been committed to helping Mali.

[Carolyn McAskie]

No, we are present. We have an aid program in Mali. We contribute to the humanitarian efforts, absolutely. I'm sorry to have misled you. That's a good clarification. Thank you.

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

Okay, I thought the way it came across.... I wanted to make sure you had a chance to correct the record.

Professor Dorn, you talked about the Airborne Regiment in Somalia and the disaster there. You kind of said that we shouldn't be sending combat troops in to do peacekeeping, but as far as I know, in relation to the Airborne Regiment, there's still the whole question around mefloquine and the way it may have had an effect on the psychotic episodes that were experienced there and the tragedy that resulted.

Also, when did we stop training our troops to be combat soldiers?

[Prof. Walter Dorn]

I don't think we've ever stopped our troops from doing combat.

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

They're always combat first. They do peacekeeping as a side job, as part of their overall training.

[Prof. Walter Dorn]

What we have lost is the training that's specifically for the UN. We do far less of it and we have far less experience.

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

I was looking at your graph, Professor, on the level of peacekeeping. It was fairly stable, although there are reduced numbers from what we experienced back in the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. Since we had Prime Minister Trudeau host the peacekeeping convention in Vancouver, the numbers have dropped dramatically. Would you characterize that as embarrassing?

[Prof. Walter Dorn]

I am personally embarrassed by that. When I go to the UN headquarters, sometimes I feel that I have to apologize. I'm very sorry, but when I was in the field speaking to UN officials, one of them said it has become kind of a joke that the Canadians are coming. We take lots of time from UN officials. We take them from the jobs in which they're trying to save people's lives and we've sent so many delegations to Africa, but we haven't deployed and we're now at a near all-time low in peacekeeping.

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

In your opening comments, you characterized that as dithering and delaying. Originally the promise was 600 peacekeepers and 150 police officers. Then it went down to 250 and six helicopters. Do you have any insight as to why there's this continued ongoing debate within the government, why this hasn't happened, and why the numbers keep changing?

[Prof. Walter Dorn]

You'd have to ask cabinet members.

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

I'm looking at whether you have any intel. I'm not getting anything from the MPs.

[Prof. Walter Dorn]

Well, one of my concerns is that we're not even at the levels that had been approved by previous governments in the current missions. We're in five missions now, and we're not even at the levels that we could have deployed at in those missions, so we're not gaining any experience. It seems to me that various levels of government could be responsible for not fully deploying our forces.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you.

[Carolyn McAskie]

May I comment?