National Defence Committee on Sept. 19th, 2024

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

I know, I'm just joking.

I think this is the central question of our day. There are political temptations by any party to criticize other parties for whatever stances they're taking. The challenge of our political system is that it's adversarial, so it's very hard to get all the parties on the same side about the fact that there are malevolent actors out there who are trying to use our divides against us. It requires the current government to be more transparent about what's been going on, and it requires the opposition parties to ask the right questions or ask good questions about the quality of government responses to these things, but also not to undermine, for instance, existing oversight bodies. NSICOP, NSIRA, those kinds of things are supposed to build faith in oversight of our intelligence apparatus, so we need to be more careful about playing politics with those organizations.

The question is how much our politicians can come together to talk about this stuff. We had a pretty good response in 2021 during that election about election interference, so the question is whether, in the next election, we can have the parties agree to rules about how to deal with outsiders trying to affect things.

We have some outsiders supporting Conservative candidates; we have some outsiders supporting Liberal candidates. It's not like any one party benefits or is hurt by foreign election interference—they're all hurt by it. It hurts our system, which decreases trust in the system, which then means far-right parties end up getting more support. Luckily, that hasn't really happened here yet, but it has to be that each party polices its own.

We also have to expect better efforts by the media not to legitimize the news stories that come out of far-right folks. We can't have this false equivalence where True North says this and the New York Times says that; therefore, the truth is somewhere in between. It's not. We need to be more careful about what we amplify and what we platform.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Do any of the political parties have those internal mechanisms adequately...? Is there a way to strengthen those internal mechanisms within any party? Do they have them to your knowledge?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Respond very briefly, please. Ms. Mathyssen is past her time.

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

I don't know the internal machinery of any of the parties, so I don't know what they have. However, it's something they need to take seriously.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Colleagues, we're on to our second round. I have at least six motions that have been properly tabled or made in time, and we may even want to debate them today. I propose that we at least get through one second round of questioning without motions. I hope that's good enough. Then at the third round, you indicate to me whether there are going to be motions, in which case we can manage the witnesses' time properly, so [Technical difficulty].

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

[Technical difficulty—Editor]

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

[Technical difficulty—Editor]

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

[Technical difficulty—Editor]

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

[Technical difficulty—Editor]

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

[Technical difficulty—Editor]

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Okay. We're bringing it back to order. I'm sorry about the technical issues.

We were with Mr. Stewart.

Mr. Stewart, I think we have around three minutes left for you.

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Thank you.

I want to talk about the general state of repair of our equipment in Latvia. It seems that in Canada a lot of things are broken. On the equipment we have in Latvia, can you comment on the general state of repair of that equipment?

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

I can't speak to the very specifics of it. I think that generally we send our best equipment to the field, and I would say that in my conversations that I've had with folks in the battle group, the reports about various things are a bit overstated in terms of the lack of resources.

I think the bigger challenge for our forces in Latvia is that they simply don't have as much ammunition to practise the art of war, and that's what they're really lacking. It's not really that their equipment is inferior.

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

In that case, if we don't have inferior equipment, we're also able to repair it on our own and not rely on allies for that supply chain.

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

I can't speak to the specifics of the supply chain, but again, the idea of the alliance is that we're supposed to be interoperable. We're supposed to be able to have our allies helping us do things.

The way the battle group is organized is that we don't have Canadians in every position because we have allies in some of these positions. Some of the maintenance of this stuff maybe is done through allied supply chains, and that's not a bad thing.

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Okay.

We talked about 1,500 troops every six months. That's 3,000 troops a year. Do we have the regular forces and the reservists to supplement that at a trained and ready condition?

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

I think we do in the short term. The challenge is that it becomes a recruiting and retention problem, because the troops want to have new and different experiences. People are now on their second, third and fourth tours. In the long run, this has become stressful.

We have enough bodies for this at the moment, but the challenge is this: How do we make the mission easier, more attractive and more engaging so that it becomes a recruitment tool as opposed to an impediment to recruitment?

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Right, and does that leave us vulnerable at home if all of our assets are directed towards one expeditionary mission?

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

No, because our other adversary that we think of is China, and our army is not really designed to fight a war with China. It would not be called upon to send troops to China. Our air force and our navy are more positioned towards the Pacific, so I think the division of labour kind of makes sense. Our army is dedicated to the land war-to-be—a potential land war in Europe—and our navy and air force are mostly pointed elsewhere.

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

Where do we stand versus other countries with respect to our contribution to the Ukraine war?

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

I don't have the latest statistics on this. I think we're probably in the middle of the pack.

There are lots of countries that made bigger promises than we did and haven't delivered. We've made a fair number of commitments. Is it proportional to our economy compared to the other folks? Probably we could be doing a bit more, but again, we're still recovering from the Afghanistan war in terms of preparing ourselves for a more peer-to-peer kind of war so—

[Don Stewart, Conservative, Toronto—St. Paul's, ON]

That one was 10 years ago.

[Dr. Stephen Saideman]

I understand that, but the challenge is that procurement takes time, and everybody is in the same line for Stingers and for anti-tank missiles and all the rest. We can't jump the line of every weapons procurement that is coming out of other countries, and we don't have the capability for making Stingers, for instance.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Ms. Lambropoulos, you have five minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here to answer questions on this important topic. My first question will be for Mr. Arel.

I'd like to ask if you can explain to Canadians, in terms that the average Canadian would understand, why it is important for Canada to continue helping out these war efforts for Ukraine.