National Defence Committee on April 26th, 2018

[Prof. Walter Dorn]

I think you're going to be happy with the answer. Kingston is actually a good area because—

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

Oh, good.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Objection, Mr. Chair. He's leading the witness.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Prof. Walter Dorn]

—it's close enough to Ottawa but far enough away. It already has the Peace Support Training Centre. There are facilities, for instance, in Fort Frontenac that could be used. I've taught there at the Command and Staff College for the army. You need to be fairly close to an airport. One of the problems with the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre in Cornwallis was that it took almost three hours to get from the airport to the centre.

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

Does CANADEM have the same feeling?

[Prof. Walter Dorn]

Yes, they're also in favour of that location.

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

I just want to go to—

Sure, go ahead, Ms. McAskie.

[Carolyn McAskie]

I would just say that I might have a slight disagreement with Walter on the location of it.

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

That's good; I don't need to hear it.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Carolyn McAskie]

We moved from Cornwallis to Ottawa because we needed the Ottawa connection.

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

Okay, thank you.

Going back to these graphs that you had, you show that in 2006 we suddenly dropped in terms of our personnel. Why? I know it's really easy, because we have the prime ministers up there to blame, Harper specifically, but is there an underlying reason? Did peace support and peacekeeping change a lot, or did the way that we do these missions change? Did they turn more diplomatic and less “boots on the ground”?

[Prof. Walter Dorn]

No. The peace operations of the UN stayed the same. What changed was Canada's engagement in Afghanistan. When we were moving into Kandahar, we had 200 logisticians in UNDOF, the UN Disengagement Observer Force, in the Golan Heights of Syria, and we needed those logisticians for other operations.

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

Okay. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

You can have the last formal question, MP Garrison.

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

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair.

Of course, on the location of the centre, I'm not going to suggest Esquimalt.

I think one of the things that have been important about our contributions, which we've heard repeatedly, is that Canada has that bilingual and bicultural aspect.

[Carolyn McAskie]

Very much so.

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

I was going to ask Ms. McAskie about the importance of that aspect of our contributions.

[Carolyn McAskie]

I think I can tell you right away that out of my international civilians in Burundi, the largest number were Senegalese and the second-highest number were Canadians. These were Canadian individuals who'd worked their way up through the UN or who had sought positions in that mission particularly.

I should add here that having been an assistant deputy minister in the Government of Canada before joining the United Nations, I will say that my seniors in the United Nations, when I was appointed to Burundi, assumed that there would be support from Canada for the mission. I made several trips to Ottawa and talked to the defence department. I talked to Global Affairs—whatever it was called at the time, I forget—and CIDA, where I knew people personally and where I was able to explain what was going on and to ask for assistance.

I'll tell you what I got: zero. I didn't get a single staff officer. I didn't get a single penny or an increase in development, and I didn't get any more political support except from the odd visit of the nearest mission in Kenya.

With regard to Canadians who served, yes, Canadians are sought because they're bilingual, but they're not backed up by their government. I'm sorry about that, but that's the hard fact.

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

That's good.

I have very limited time in this round. I want to ask you about the Folke Bernadotte Institute and why it's your favourite as a possible model for Canada. We're thinking about re-establishing a training centre.

[Carolyn McAskie]

I keep prefacing my remarks by saying I'm a little bit out of date, which means I'll probably never get invited back again, but there are a number of models, either independent institutions or ones that work closely with government but at arm's length. What I've found the Folke Bernadotte Institute had over some of the others—including, up to a point, our own—was that they could draw on government resources for expertise much more easily than an independent organization could, so you would find that the people in the organization or on their boards or in the field were—not entirely, but in many instances—staff members who were rotated out of defence or foreign affairs or civil society.

I don't know if you are familiar with the extent to which civil society and government work much more closely in the Scandinavian countries. You can meet the minister of development for co-operation one day, and then he or she is the head of the NGO because the government has changed. With their small population, there is much more intermixing, and what you'd find there is that you have access to tremendous experience. They do it well, too.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for that.

Given that people have indicated to me they want questions, I have MPs Spengemann, Bezan, Garrison, and Alleslev in the time available. I'll give those members, in that order, four minutes each, but I want to take a quick one before we move to that.

I don't get to talk lots; I get to listen. It seems to me that all three of you are very supportive of Canada's engagement in Mali. Professor Dorn has tried to quantify the risk level, because that's going to be an ongoing question. To be very decisive and definitive, I'd like to ask each of you to state whether you are for or against Canada's involvement in Mali and why you think it's important. If you could do that in 60 seconds or less, I'd appreciate it.

I'll ask Ms. McAskie first.

[Carolyn McAskie]

I'm very supportive of Canada going into Mali.

First of all, I'm supportive of our getting into peacekeeping, and given that we need to make one choice, it's better to make one choice than to have a scattered approach and do a little bit here, there, and everywhere. We have to have enough focus to make a difference.

Mali is a partner of long date. We are friends with Mali. We need to support them. We have let them down in the past by pulling away. They are our friends. They deserve our help.

Second, the Sahel is an explosive area as a result of the growing environmental degradation and growing poverty. We have allowed that to happen, and that's what creates fertile ground for terrorism. Studies have been done over decades on the clear link between conflict and poor development, poor governance, environmental degradation, poverty, etc. The Sahel is a classic case, and the international community has to come together to address it in the broadest sense.

It's not just a question of putting in some helicopters and a few troops. It's a question of standing back and looking at a region in the world that will have an enormous impact on global health and security.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you for that.

Mr. Dorn, could you also in your remarks just again quantify your expert opinion on the level of risk? I know you mentioned it earlier, but that's a big question and people keep asking it, so I'd like your opinion on that, please.