National Defence Committee on Nov. 21st, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have 30 seconds.

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

Ms. Tremblay, would you like to answer?

[Nancy Tremblay]

Thank you very much.

I'm going to speak French, since this answers Ms. Normandin's question.

The optimistic approach at the beginning of the project is very much tied to the information available at the time and the information we get from industry. Bear in mind that the projects we undertake are quite complex, and we get more information as things progress. The estimate is based on the information we have at the beginning of the project, so it's not about trying to get approval.

DND has brought in an initiative to improve project timelines so that they better reflect the risks and their impact on the timeline.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

That is a very long 30 seconds.

Thank you.

[Stefanie Beck]

It's exciting.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

It is exciting.

I'm assuming Mr. Bezan has an exciting, five-minute question.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I always do.

General Kelsey, your number on authorized strength reserves and regs combined is about 101,500. Current strength is sitting at just over 87,000 and change. The total shortfall is 14,400 thereabouts, which is down from the 15,500 we were roughly at a year ago.

Is that correct?

[LGen Stephen Kelsey]

Public math, Mr. Chair, is never my strength, but I'll agree because those are the numbers I used.

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

In the past, we've had General Eyre here. He also mentioned that, at one point, we had 10,000 troops who were undertrained and undeployable.

Out of the current strength of 87,000, do you know how many are undertrained and undeployable because they haven't been able to go through the proper schools for the trades they selected?

[LGen Stephen Kelsey]

That's the difference, Chair, between the trained effective strength and the trained effective establishment.

As of today, that number is 11,320. These are people in the training pipeline, people who could be on maternity or paternity leave or people who have medical conditions that don't allow them to deploy. That's the regular force, reserves.... I didn't mention Rangers. Of course, there are 4,848 Canadian Rangers.

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

Rangers are almost at full strength, I would think.

[LGen Stephen Kelsey]

Generally speaking.

There are different standards, but, yes, they're at full strength.

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

With those 11,320—for those who are undertrained, not those who are on leave because of various reasons—how are we going to get them trained more quickly so that we can increase our overall readiness?

[LGen Stephen Kelsey]

That is the key question. General Carignan is chairing a new business transformation meeting herself to undertake understanding that.

First, I'll address the recruiting and then I'll address your specific question about the pipeline, because it affects all services.

Recruiting transformation includes changing how we get people through the door. We're not lowering standards; we're lowering barriers. We're redesigning security clearance processes—not the standard but the processes. We're undertaking the medical, which I know this committee discussed before, to make it closer to Canadian standards. We're making Canadians safe, but we're getting them in the door more quickly. There's also the aptitude testing. We made changes in October, and we're already seeing results related to those.

As the question points out, it's not just about getting them in the door and in basic training. It's about each of the services being able to adapt to this greater load. Because of the state of the gaps in the number of people we have, we have to make a choice between pulling people from line units—readiness—into training institutions by the air force, navy and army....

It's a very complex system of systems, but it's the strategic discussion that General Carignan is leading.

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

I appreciate it.

I have quite a few other questions.

In the supplementary estimates, is there any restoration of funding for cadets? We know it's been reduced from $240 million down to $200 million.

Are we fixing that delta and increasing funding for our cadet program?

[Stefanie Beck]

Not in supplementary estimates (B).

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

I understand, talking to industry, that the innovation solutions Canada program has failed to follow up in confirming contracts with companies that are doing drone testing and targets and making pyrotechnics to train our troops, as well as our allies.

Are those programs going to be restored so that Canadian industry can have confidence it can follow through on the development of new technology to help our training?

[Stefanie Beck]

Thank you for the question.

I'd need to know more details about exactly which companies you're talking about. As you may know, this is a shared program between multiple government departments, so it also might not be us.

I will say we have not found it to be a very satisfactory program either. We share some of the concerns of businesses as well. It is very much a developmental innovation kind of program, as opposed to what's really needed by industry. In the defence industrial strategy, we can address something more along the lines of how you get this market and scale up.

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

In the supplementary estimates, are there dollars to start investing in upgrading our wings to deal with the security challenges in receiving F-35s and P-8s, which we will start getting in 2026?

[Nancy Tremblay]

In the supplementary estimates, there is $561 million for the P-8s.

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

Does that fix the infrastructure, cybersecurity and physical security that we need for our wings to receive the P-8s?

That's just going into the airframe. That doesn't help us with the security challenges we have on the ground to receive the aircraft.

[Nancy Tremblay]

Bringing the P-8 within the Canadian Armed Forces.... There is a requirement to address the whole capability, which includes infrastructure training. It goes against equipment infrastructure training.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you very much.

I'll ask just a couple of questions myself.

I'll address this to Deputy Minister Beck. To start, $3.3 billion is a lot of dough. It's a lot of money, particularly, for supplementary estimates. Does this move the 2% needle at all?

[Stefanie Beck]

Yes, it will. This will get us up from about $30 billion of annual spending to just over $34 billion. Yes, it is part of the path to get us to the full 2% by 2032.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

If you weren't presenting these supplementary estimates, presumably you wouldn't be moving the needle. I'd be interested in knowing, in percentage terms, how much the needle gets moved by the passing of these supplemental estimates.