National Defence Committee on April 6th, 2022

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

This time, my question is for Ms. Winger.

A witness said this week that people who leave the armed forces are often given priority for positions in paramilitary and public sector organizations. Yet they sometimes bring with them the toxic culture we are currently seeing within the armed forces.

I would first like to know whether you have noted the same phenomenon.

I would also like to know whether the fight against toxic environments within the armed forces will potentially also have a positive effect on the defence sector, paramilitary organizations and the public service?

[June Winger]

That's a very interesting question that you raised, and it's a very complex situation, obviously.

It's nearly impossible to train out a toxic work environment. You can't put people who have these behaviours and these ideas and give them training [Technical difficulty—Editor] see the light and change their ways. These are typically embedded characteristics of people.

When whatever happens that causes them to leave the military, if they have these characteristics, they often end up getting preference for public service positions. National Defence is a big supporter of hiring ex-military members, and so they should be. The challenge is that those who have those ideologies are then coming in, and it's almost as though they're in a hidden uniform. They're showing up and they still have these beliefs. They're coming into an environment where they are quite comfortable, where they're familiar with things and they have the support of current serving military members. You see that they tend to support one another when they're at the workplace.

Of course, there's a hierarchy within that, but—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Ms. Winger, we're going to have to leave the question there, only because it's a very complicated question, as you rightly said. You can possibly work it into the response to another question.

Ms. Mathyssen, you have a minute, please.

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

Ms. Winger, I wanted to ask how the privatization you were talking about before—the contracting out—impacts the transparency and national security of the work that your members do?

[June Winger]

Again, that's a very difficult question.

How does it impact the security of the work? There are a great deal of challenges. We are reliant on our contractors to be following the rules, but the contractors don't have the same goals as the National Defence employees. National Defence employees want to make National Defence work. They want the operation to be successful. They want to serve Canadians. Contractors want to make money. That's what their goal is. They want to create profit sharing for their shareholders. They want to increase revenue for the owners. That is what their goal is.

When you have these two compromising goals, it doesn't necessarily work. You end up with corners getting cut. I used the example at a DND medical centre. You have employees who are cutting the chemicals, so you don't have the appropriate cleansers in there. You don't have the knowledge going into the training that happens with it. We see that time and again. I would say—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I'm sorry, Ms. Winger. I seem to have the task of interrupting you. It's because my colleagues ask complicated questions and ask you to answer them in 30 seconds. It's all their fault.

Mr. Schmale, you have four minutes.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I appreciate the testimony today by the witnesses.

I'm not a regular member of the committee, so I apologize if some of these questions have been asked before.

My first question is for the professor. Are you aware of any impacts that the mandatory vaccination policy has had on recruitment and retention within the Canadian Armed Forces?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

To the best that I'm aware, with the numbers that are available—you'd need to check with the military personnel generation group—the policy has not had an impact on recruitment. It appears that interest propensity is as it was before. The impact it had on attrition was relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. It was manageable for the organization.

I think this is really a question about needing an organization that is resilient. If you have large components of the organization not being operable, then you can't perform for Canadians. I think that's really what the vaccination issue is about.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thank you very much, Professor.

I'm switching gears a bit here. In your view, could positive change in the military culture happen without erasing the military or naval or even warrior ethos?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

I think you're already seeing significant changes. You'll soon see the new profession of arms manual being released, “CAF Ethos: Trusted to Serve”. You'll see the Canadian Armed Forces journey, which is the new health and wellness strategy.

I think the vast majority of women, men and diverse members of the Canadian Armed Forces are dedicated to cultural change and to sustaining that cultural change. It is a matter of making sure we have policies that can be operationalized and realized, and that are developed in consultation with stakeholders and experts, rather than just from the top down.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thank you, Professor.

Not too long ago, according to these numbers that I have in front of me, 20% or more of the Canadian Forces regular force used to be recruited from Atlantic Canada. Is that number still relatively the same? Is it around 20% of members in the CAF?

I'll let you answer that first, before I go to my second question.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

I'd be able to obtain those numbers for you. I don't have those numbers with me. The military personnel generation group has those numbers.

Of course, systematically, that's a challenge for the organization, because there's a significant demographic decline in Atlantic Canada and demographic challenges also within Quebec. These pose a whole separate conversation in terms of challenges around sustaining bilingualism within the federal government and the Canadian Armed Forces.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

How much time do I have, Chair?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have one minute.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Perfect.

Professor, you talked about this a bit earlier in your comments, as well as in your opening statement. Can you maybe expand on one change or recommendation, or maybe the most important one, that you have for this committee that would be impactful in increasing recruitment?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Understand what the requirements are to be able to deliver for the government's expectations. I believe we don't currently have the right balance between accountability and transparency processes, on the one hand, and politicians who keep saying that they will deliver for the military, that they will deliver the people, that they will deliver the kit. I don't think we can have politicians making those promises when they know full well that the processes and the bureaucracies simply aren't aligned to deliver that.

I'll give you the example of sonar operators. We're building all these fantastically expensive ships. Well, if we don't actually have the expertise to staff those ships, those will be sitting around in dock. With the F-35s, we have a significant challenge around pilots. I think these are all very attractive occupations. The problem is that most Canadians have never even heard of them. They don't know what a sonar operator is, let alone what this individual might do and how they're critical to the operation of a ship.

I think that's where we all have significant roles to play in socializing Canadians and familiarizing them with the Canadian Armed Forces as an employer of choice.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Schmale.

Welcome to the committee, by the way.

[Jamie Schmale, Conservative, Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Spengemann, you have the final four minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Chair.

Professor Leuprecht, it's good to see you again. Thank you for being with us.

At the outset, I want to ask you about your appointment, I think a fairly new appointment, to the board of the German Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies. I want to take advantage of your presence and ask you if there's anything we can borrow from the German experience—good, bad or ugly. Sometimes having the same problems appear in a different jurisdiction sort of underscores how important they are here, but there potentially are also positive things, and maybe even very recent things with respect to the war in Ukraine.

Is there any light that the German experience with respect to the talent pool, as you say, but also the HR processes could shed on our scenario?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Well, certainly on the equipment side, one of my German friends likes to say that the Germans have boats that don't float, planes that don't fly and tanks that don't roll anywhere. I would say that we have some rather similar problems on the equipment side.

Interestingly, we have similar sorts of challenges on the staffing side, but the German staffing organization is much more agile than the Canadian one, in part because much of the German Bundeswehr runs on a defence agency rather than civil service employment model. It runs on different types of contracts. That has meant that even in a society that is very similar to Canada's, with unfamiliarity and perhaps even some hostility towards the military, they have been able to sustain their numbers. But the German military is also facing significant staffing challenges, and I think there's obviously a lot to be done here in terms of comparative work on what is working in comparable jurisdictions.

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

That's very interesting. Thank you for that, Professor.

On the HR policy side, one way to slice this would be to say, okay, let's take a look at some private sector and public organizations that do HR extremely well, that have high retention rates, that have excellent recruitment processes and that get the people they want quickly enough. Then, line those up against the HR policies of the Canadian Forces and figure out which obstacles are structurally in the Canadian Forces—by virtue of, as we discussed, universality of service and other military-related policies that cannot be eliminated—and which ones could potentially go.

To your knowledge, has any of that been done? Have any third party management consulting firms been retained to take a look at this, or might this be one pathway to broach some of these questions that you mentioned in your introduction?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Mr. Spengemann, that's a great question, but actually, I'm not sure the Canadian Armed Forces needs more consultants to tell them what problems they have and what challenges they have. They know full well what those challenges are. What they don't currently have is the internal civilian and military staffing to be able to address all of these challenges.

What the Canadian Armed Forces needs, more desperately than consultants, is a 15-year sustained commitment by all parties in this House to regenerating, sustaining and operating this organization. To this effect, I would urge all parties to work together on multi-party votes on key defence decisions and on committing to a joint pathway forward for the Canadian Armed Forces.

It is similar to a private sector organization, in the sense that if you keep changing pathways or if you don't pay attention, as some might argue has been the challenge also for this organization, you're bound to run into trouble. Now that we're in trouble, we really do need sustained attention, because we are genuinely, Mr. Spengemann, embarrassing ourselves with our allies.

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

Understood.

Let me take the 30 seconds I have to ask you this then: Is there a white paper or a policy paper that zooms in on the very specific HR questions you've mentioned? Are there marching orders? I don't think it's clear to the committee necessarily that those marching orders exist, in a figurative sense, and that the armed forces could work on them to change these HR policies. Is that available? If so, could you provide that to the committee?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Be very brief in your answer, please.