National Defence Committee on April 27th, 2022

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

Mr. Chair, I agree they could be more developed.

As I said, in the reserve force, we get that benefit by having people who have the skill sets that they've acquired. On the regular force side, we've often considered concepts of internships where you can go to a more skilled or cyber environment, do an internship and come back. It probably wouldn't be leaving the Canadian Armed Forces, but opening our eyes to how we can leverage the common areas that we have between ourselves and industry.

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

Thank you very much for that.

I wanted to use the rest of my time—I think I have just under two minutes—on a question around improving recruitment from under-represented groups. The Canadian Forces is working hard to become more inclusive. There are, in my proposition to you, under-represented groups for whom the very consideration of serving in the Canadian Armed Forces may not be an easy one, because of their past exposure to conflicts and other armed forces, potentially in a negative way.

What does the Canadian Forces need to do today to present itself as a highly marketable and highly desirable place of work to trades that don't necessary fall into the outward-facing, point-of-the-spear, combat-related roles? There is a whole plethora of trades that are potentially not known to members of those groups that you're trying to encourage to join.

What's the challenge there?

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

It is a great question and it's a great capture of the environment.

What I'll do is ask General Brodie, who is looking at our recruitment, to speak about the types of initiatives and programs that they're looking at.

[Brigadier-General Krista Brodie, Commander, Military Personnel Generation Group, Canadian Armed Forces, Department of National Defence]

First and foremost, we need to build awareness. As part of our comprehensive effort to optimize the CAF onboarding experience—including both recruiting and the early entry and onboarding training experience—we need to be able to build awareness and to create relationships and connections with those communities that can help us connect to the people who represent the talent that we require.

Our primary target audience is Canadians in that 18 to 34 age group. Leveraging that secondary target audience are the influencers and intermediaries. They are people who, within community networks, within family networks and culturally and racially diverse communities, can help us to connect with the talent that we are seeking to meet the operational requirements of today and tomorrow.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Ms. Chabot, welcome to the committee.

You have six minutes.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you for your welcome, Mr. Chair.

I would also like to welcome the witnesses and thank them for all the work they do in the Canadian Armed Forces.

My question is for LGen Allen.

LGen Allen, I'd like to talk about personnel retention. You said that Canada needs a strong armed forces, given the challenges they face, and you're right. That strength is the men and women in the forces.

Given the recruitment and retention challenges, how do you attack—pardon the expression—the issue of work‑life balance, which is important not just for women who enlist, but also for men, now?

You've already talked about housing and transfers, which are causing problems for members and their families. If action was taken now to try to correct this problem, wouldn't it have a significant leverage effect?

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

Absolutely, it is completely at both the front end and in retention throughout the life of a career that we have to be looking at the challenges members are facing and how we can ensure that the policies and the things we have the capacity to change and influence can make people more able to deal with the demands that exist. It is a demanding career to be in the military, but we don't need to make it more difficult for people by having barriers or, I would say, perhaps not even being aware of what those challenges are for individuals at the start of their career, at the middle of their career and towards the end of their career.

With respect to attracting people, we need to make people understand the variety and opportunities that can exist for men and women, for anybody who is interested, but then also recognize the barriers people face at various points in their lives, and how we can ensure that we are flexible enough to try to provide options for what sometimes are quite temporal or time-bound challenges that people face.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Thank you.

Are you currently working on breaking down barriers that you've already identified? Retention is a major problem. You say that the private sector sometimes attracts the best candidates.

There is certainly a problem related to the conditions of practice and the competitive working conditions that favour the private sector. It can also be cumbersome. For example, are transfers essential in a career path or shouldn't they be reduced?

Are there already possible solutions to overcome the obstacles?

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

Yes, certainly there are initiatives under way. We are taking a look at what the impacts are on families. A life that requires you to move from place to place can make things challenging for families, so the establishment of family services and support for families as they move is one of those elements going forward.

The introduction of, I would say, consideration around people's religious needs and the diversity of the religious environments they come from and making sure we can try to accommodate the needs for spiritual leave is important. Again, it's trying to make it not appear that those elements of service that exist are barriers for who they are as individuals.

I can turn to General Bourgon as well, who has been implementing some of the policy changes in place. Maybe she can provide you with some more detailed examples.

[MGen Lise Bourgon]

Thank you for your excellent question.

We have an excellent initiative under way. It's called “Seamless Canada”. The Canadian Armed Forces are working with all the provinces and territories on three issues, three themes: support for families in terms of spousal employment opportunities, education for children and the medical aspect.

As you said, the balance between work and family is extremely important. These three working groups focus on access to child care during the day and on school. We are trying to develop these few measures with the provinces and territories. These measures have a great effect on the ground to help with retention.

Almost half of our military members have children or dependants. We know that access to child care is difficult. Through the seamless Canada initiative, we're trying to work with the provinces to increase capacity on our bases. National Defence is also making efforts. Our mandate doesn't currently specify that we have to provide child care, except for—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you; we appreciate it. We're going to have to leave it there.

Madame Mathyssen, you have six minutes, please.

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

Thank you.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here today and for your service, of course.

One of the things that came up this week was a report on extremism and racism in the military. As we've talked about inclusion and trying to recruit, trying to attract people into the military, that plays a huge role in terms of how they look at their careers, how they will be treated, and of course, for women in particular, sexual misconduct within the military. I know that's on the minds of so many women currently serving and women looking to get into the military.

One of the key points in that report said that, over 20 years, 250 recommendations have been brought forward to the government, and they haven't been acted on. It said to turn to Deschamps and to Fish.

In terms of your perspective—and I know we've spoken about this through Status of Women in our report—the CFNIS was alerted to this as a big problem in terms of the chain of command and keeping that within the chain of command in terms of security for women. It was about a year ago that we were hearing that.

I would like to know now what changes have occurred since then so that we can just stop talking about reports and reporting on reports and so that we can see action in place.

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

For those of you who have seen the announcement—I think it was on Monday by the Minister—we are very appreciative of the work that was done by the minister's advisory panel on anti-racism for pointing out what I would say are the factors, the realities, from both the people with lived experiences and the people they heard who said, “You have the information available. You need to act.” That is certainly what we need to be doing.

The experience of what we hear from our people, from our advisory groups, who are there to help us identify the specific elements as well as the many recommendations that have come before that is where we have to go forward. We have already undertaken a number of those initiatives, moving forward to address some of those aspects ahead of us.

I would say that it is a challenge that we cannot shy away from, and we have many reports. The reality is that we need to make sure that the activities and how we're addressing the various recommendations that we have result in a cohesive outcome. Sometimes the recommendations can be variations on other recommendations in different reports, and we need to pull those together for the outcome we're looking for and the best way forward.

Some of the very simple things like exit interviews, mentoring programs and focusing on a character-based approach to selection of individuals are items already now under way within the Canadian Armed Forces, and we absolutely think that the work the panel did was wonderful to be highlighting this to us again.

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

Those examples are good to hear, for sure, but my specific question was about the issue with CFNIS. I know there were even contradictions between the major general who was leaving, saying that CFNIS wasn't part of the command structure, and yet it still was. This became an issue in terms of the investigation with General Vance.

Could you specifically talk about the recommendations that Deschamps and Justice Fish pointed out in terms of that and how those changes are being made?

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

The CFNIS, as part of an element within the military police group, is independent of the chain of command where they are working. They have a separate chain of command from the NIS themselves through to the MP group headquarters.

I will acknowledge that the provost marshal does fall under me as the vice chief of the defence staff for administrative purposes to make sure that they are building programs that are necessary, that they have adequate funding and that they're focusing, but I don't have a role to play inside specific police investigations. That is the independence that exists.

Justice Fish's report certainly identified that there is a desire to perhaps create a greater perception of independence by having the provost marshal be an appointee outside of the chain of command. We are examining that as part of the Fish report recommendations.

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

Is there a timeline on when we can hear about where you are on those recommendations, and on that Justice Fish recommendation specifically?

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

We have a responsibility actually to be coming back to and reporting on how we are progressing with the recommendations, all 107 recommendations. We focused initially on the first 36 of the 107 recommendations, which were ones that we could get after right away. I think we spoke to this at a technical briefing that we provided before and we certainly would be happy to provide further information on the implementation of the report at a time of your choosing.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

We are now on to our second round.

With that, we welcome Mr. Fast to the committee. You have five minutes, please.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm looking forward to the discussion around this table.

General Allen, thank you for saying that your first priority is your people. That's the way it should be, especially for our armed forces who are serving Canadians the way they are.

Can you tell me what the current shortfall of recruits is? Is it around 11,000?

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

I couldn't give you the exact number. My knowledge is it's around 8,000, but I could ask General Bourgon if she has more accurate figures than that.

[MGen Lise Bourgon]

That's approximately the shortfall in the recruits. It's about 7,500 recruits that we're short, actual recruits. There's also a gap in the training, how many individuals in the CAF are trained and ready to be employed on operation, but 7,500 is a good number.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Can you tell me, since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, how many members were either forced out of the CAF or voluntarily left because of their vaccination status?

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

I can take that question.

When mandatory vaccination became a requirement for both entry into the Canadian Forces and for service in the Canadian Forces, we set out to have our people vaccinated or committed to have every individual fill out an attestation as to their vaccination status. For those who have requested accommodation for either physical, medical or spiritual reasons, there were a total of, I think, 1,300 people. Those are people who requested accommodations from getting the vaccination. To date, 158 is the last count that I know were approved; 980 were denied, and there still remain about 160 files that are still pending review. Those, I would say, are the numbers as they pertain to the approval.

Then there are administrative measures that are applied for those who do not wish to get vaccinated. If they wish to change their minds and get vaccinated, that's wonderful. Otherwise, there will be an administrative review that will likely lead to release.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

If and when vaccine mandates are lifted at the federal level, would these members who have been forced out or left voluntarily be welcome back to the CAF?

[LGen Frances J. Allen]

Vaccination is a requirement. To be vaccinated is a requirement for entry into the Canadian Armed Forces. We know that vaccinations work to save lives and to protect people going forward. We in the Canadian Armed Forces are often called upon to go and serve and to go into communities to help.

Teamwork is what we're all about in the military and we know that getting vaccinated—