National Defence Committee on May 1st, 2018

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

I know that when I talk to our veterans and current serving members who have experience in Bosnia, but also in Rwanda and Somalia, some of the apprehension that's out there about Mali is with regard to convoluted chains of command. Will they answer the phone when you call, like General Dallaire experienced in Rwanda? Are you confident—and keep in mind that blood and treasure could be spilled in Mali from Canada's standpoint—that the UN has evolved enough and learned from the lessons of these really terrible conflicts that we got ourselves into the middle of?

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

I am confident in the Canadian Forces and in what the Canadian package that goes over there will have: a clear chain of command, clear rules of engagement that come from the chief of the defence staff, and the support of our government. I'm confident of that. What they are going into within the UN construct, I don't have confidence in.

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

Still...?

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

Still.

Some of the comments here were about why nations are putting their troops in separate camps. It's because of risk-mitigating their troops from the threat. Also, in term of why they're not going to go into other camps, it's that they don't have the trust in the other camps, and we want to protect our most national asset, which is a person. I don't think the UN—still—has what it needs to in Mali.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

MP Alleslev.

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

Thank you very much. This is an absolutely incredible panel.

If I may, I will sum up just a bit the testimony from today and what we've heard before. We're hearing a theme of how we are prepared at home, how we decide on operations and that decision-making process and the speed—or lack thereof—of that, and how we integrate civilians, military, and the whole of government not only before but during a mission, or when we're not on a mission.

With the continuum of peace operations fundamentally changing and being more complex, more broad, and having a requirement for prevention as well as addressing a conflict once it starts, I'm wondering if we should be looking at home at a different structure of how we decide and manage operations once they're there—with a training that includes civilian, military, and intelligence—and also how we influence the UN.

I know that's a long comment at the beginning, but could I ask you to characterize how we change that big structure so that we better prepare Canada—because it's part of who we are as global citizens—to participate in what in the future we will probably have to participate in more?

[Peggy Mason]

Thank you very much for that question, because I think it's fundamentally important that we develop a meaningful capacity for a whole-of-government approach in Canada. Also, bear in mind that this whole-of-government approach in Canada must take account of the broad strategic and operational framework that the UN has. In other words, what we're trying to do when we decide to go on a mission is to fit into that, not to reinvent or create our own structure.

It seems to me—and here I come back to harping on the training—that it's hard to do this in a vacuum if we don't have that kind of experience, which we don't have because we haven't had a formed unit in a UN peacekeeping operation since 2002. I think the place to start is a whole-of-government training centre, and a priority would be.... The old Pearson Peacekeeping Centre also had Foreign Affairs involved, so there was an attempt to have some key people from Foreign Affairs come for training, as well as—

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

What I just asked, though, is that you've talked about doctrine. Having clear doctrine is what allows for effective training. Are we not in a position where we need to start with a whole-of-government doctrine in order to enable a multi-dimensional effective training?

[Peggy Mason]

I guess it's like the chicken and the egg. I'm not sure how you can do....

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

Okay.

[Peggy Mason]

It's like the problem with the protection of civilians and not developing that doctrine, because it's extremely difficult without the lessons on the ground. The typical way of doing this is that you get the practical experience in what the challenges were on the ground, and you feed that back into your training process. I think it's hard to develop the doctrine until we start getting a little more experience, but there's a lot of training we can do at this stage to start things off.

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

Thank you.

Zoé.

[Zoé Dugal]

Thank you very much. I would like to add to that.

Maybe not in Canada for those reasons, but I think that in terms of lessons learned—

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

It's time.

[Zoé Dugal]

—the UN has become very much better at lessons learned. There's a whole section of their Department of Peacekeeping Operations that is exclusively working on lessons learned from past missions, so this is accessible. As a member state, Canada can access this, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel.

Maybe we don't exactly have it here at home, but we've had a lot of Canadians who have served on missions, and we have others. We have all our other member states and our neighbours that can also serve in this.

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

Thank you.

General Fraser, you mentioned a super DM, so I was thinking that might be part of your answer?

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

I agree with the ambassador. We need a whole-of-government college. We already have a pseudo-college. It's the Canadian Forces College in Toronto, which is whole of government. There's a Canadian securities studies program going on for the next two weeks. There are civilians. There are government people. There are military. There are international students. This is a jewel in the crown, and the chicken and the egg.... We need a whole-of-government approach that the Canadian Forces College actually fits into. We don't need to worry about doctrine. We already have doctrine.

I wish Canadians would stop being so pessimistic about ourselves. We actually know how to do this stuff. All right? We've been doing it for longer than anyone else. Everyone else looks to us. The Chinese are looking to us for how to do operations. The United States look to us for how to do operations. We're good. We just have to start believing in ourselves and get on with it. So let's create a whole-of-government college.

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

And the super DM you mentioned earlier...?

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm sorry. You're out of time, but there's more time and you'll get another opportunity.

For the last question in round two, we go to MP Garrison.

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

Thanks very much, Mr. Chair. This time I get three minutes, so I have to select something that's shorter here.

One of the things we've heard about from some of the other witnesses is a possible contribution by Canada to a rapidly deployable headquarters, and about helping to facilitate a speedy response to requests.

I just wonder if any of you, including Ms. Novosseloff in New York, would like to comment about the rapidness of deployment.

[Dr. Alexandra Novosseloff]

Yes, there are projects at the UN Secretariat on a small vanguard force. That's the name of it, and part of it is to have rapidly deployable headquarters to a mission. For the time being, it hasn't been tested because there's no new mission, but certainly Canada could contribute to such a force with staff officers.

I also want to point out the fact that there is the capstone doctrine at the UN, and that's the basis for all doctrine. There's a whole range of manuals on doctrine, and I think this should be the baseline of any training that Canada does, because what I witnessed in the field is that things go badly when people don't know what the procedures of the UN are, when they haven't been trained on how the UN is conducting its operation. This is an important point, I think.

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

General Fraser.

[MGen (Ret'd) David Fraser]

We actually have a high-readiness deployable headquarters. It's called the 1st Canadian Division Headquarters. I commanded it. I stood it up for the very reason of creating, from the lessons learned from Afghanistan.... It is defence-centric but it has ties in to Foreign Affairs, GAC. We have this capability, and it is on readiness 24-7.

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

Ambassador Mason.