National Defence Committee on May 2nd, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Colleagues, I call this meeting to order. I see quorum and I see that it's almost four o'clock. I'm told that we will have the room and the facilities for two full hours.

The first hour and a half will be with our three witnesses, and the last half-hour we'll go in camera and have committee business. We might lose a little time switching from the public channel to going in camera, hopefully a minimal amount of time. In that time we have a number of things we need to discuss as a committee.

I want to welcome our witnesses at the initiation of this study on rising domestic operational deployments and challenges for the Canadian Armed Forces. I don't know who thinks of all of these long titles. Really it's about aid to civil authority.

With us we have Josh Bowen, faculty, disaster and emergency management program, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology; Michael Fejes, assistant professor and Ph.D. candidate, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs; and Adam MacDonald, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Political Science, Dalhousie University.

Thank you to each one of you for indulging us. I apologize for being half an hour late, but this is what democracy is all about. We have to vote.

With that, I'm going to ask Mr. Bowen to lead us off for five minutes and then we will go to Mr. Fejes for five and Mr. MacDonald for five, and then we'll go to our rounds of questions. I'm hoping that with some efficiency we'll get in three rounds of questions. Thank you.

Professor Bowen.

[Josh Bowen, Faculty, Disaster and Emergency Management Program, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm honoured to join you today from Treaty 6 territory.

My name is Josh Bowen. As was pointed out, I'm a faculty member in the disaster and emergency management program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. I'm also a member of the Government of Canada's disaster resilience and security advisory table, and I'm a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces.

During my service, I was directly involved in five domestic disaster response operations. I finished my military career leading the military's disaster response planning in western Canada.

Tomorrow marks the sixth anniversary of the Fort McMurray wildfire. Eighty-eight thousand Canadians were evacuated from the community, and thousands lost their homes in the fire. I served as a senior CAF liaison officer to the province and coordinated CAF support during that disaster. It's because of my experience both in and out of uniform that I'm here today to discuss the need to build a civilian disaster response capability.

The CAF is meant to be our force of last resort, when there is no one else able to respond to the disaster. The CAF's integral communication, mobility, logistic sustainment and standing readiness forces across the country mean that the military can mount a significant response before the ink dries on a provincial request for assistance.

In the 19 years from 1990 to 2009, the CAF deployed on 33 domestic disaster response operations, responding to wildfires, floods, winter storms and major air disasters. In the 11 years from 2010 to 2021, the CAF deployed 38 times, eight of which were in 2020 and 2021. All 38 of those responses were related to weather events. That does not include the extensive CAF support to the pandemic response.

The CAF will always be ready to protect and defend Canadians when called upon, but as noted in the 2020 CAF operational and activities transition binder, the impacts of climate change “have already imposed added stress on Canadian Armed Forces resources, which will likely be called upon even more frequently and with less notice to assist with humanitarian and disaster responses”.

The current geopolitical situation demands the CAF's attention. As we roll into flood and wildfire season, that attention will again be divided as the CAF is called upon to support Canadians facing disasters. Climate change is only going to exacerbate the scale, scope and frequency of disasters here and around the world. We need an alternative to having the CAF occupy speed-dial spots one through nine. We need a civilian capability that can deploy when needed.

The good news is that there are proven options we can consider. Across the country, we have four heavy urban search and rescue teams. When a building collapses, we can respond and save lives. Alberta, as an example, is establishing incident management teams that leverage municipal and provincial employees to coordinate disaster responses when needed. The reality is that neither of these replaces the capabilities the CAF brings: primarily, organized and self-sustaining labour.

In every disaster that I've responded to, Canadians have come out to help in any way they can. Whether it was small communities bringing responders food to say “thank you” or people coming out to build sandbag walls to divert flood waters, Canadians want to help each other. Let's build on that.

Both Australia and Germany have volunteer-based disaster response capabilities spread across their countries that leverage the skill sets that civilian volunteers bring, augmented with a little specific training, and they can be called upon to support disaster response within a matter of hours.

In Canada, we leverage the capabilities of the Canadian Red Cross to coordinate emergency social services needs and provide support to disaster survivors and impacted communities. There are other non-profit organizations, such as Team Rubicon Canada, that leverage the skills that veterans, first responders and civilians bring to support communities in their times of need. Whether it's sifting through ashes following wildfires to recover valuables, clearing debris to open roads or coordinating disaster response operations, these organizations and others can and should be relied upon to support Canadians on their community's worst day.

The CAF is our force of last resort, yet we have become so accustomed to calling in the troops that we are not building the needed civilian capacity to respond. Our disaster NGO community in Canada is rich, and they can fill that gap.

Canada needs to build volunteer-based civilian capacities so that we do not consistently rely on our last-resort option.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Professor Fejes is next, for five minutes, please.

[Michael Fejes, Assistant Professor and PhD Candidate, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, Carleton University, As an Individual]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Thank you so very much. Good afternoon to all the members of the esteemed committee on national defence.

As mentioned, my name is Mike Fejes. I'm currently a doctoral candidate at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and an assistant professor at the Royal Military College. It's an honour to appear in front of you today as an individual, to address the domestic demands on the Canadian Armed Forces and to discuss some of my recent research on the Canadian Armed Forces primary reserves in aid to the civil power.

I want to start by saying that this is a very interesting time in Canadian defence history. In regard to domestic demands that are being placed on the CAF, there are a number of converging concerns that are taking place today.

First, as my esteemed colleague mentioned, the effects of climate change are increasing in Canada. They're becoming more frequent and severe, they are affecting more Canadians and they're costing Canadians billions of dollars in damages.

Second, the number, frequency and intensity of CAF domestic response operations are also increasing across Canada. Today, almost 50% of the CAF current operational deployments are domestic. Recently, there have even been short periods of time where there were more CAF members deployed on domestic operations than on international operations. What was once considered an unexpected frequency of domestic deployment has now become almost an annual event or annual cycle, and this challenges the CAF in new ways.

Third, despite many noble attempts to increase our size, the Canadian Forces is getting smaller. Because of this, there is a steady but increasing reliance on the primary reserve force. Of note, the 2015-16 Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces report on plans and priorities sees the army reserve, while leveraging existing unit structures and capacities, eventually taking the lead in domestic operations with support from the regular force. This is a reversal of the current role.

Unfortunately, these trends are likely to continue converging. Even the previous chief of the defence staff admitted publicly that present-day demands have the potential to engage the military beyond its capacities. Today, a smaller CAF needs to be prepared to respond to multiple and increasingly demanding emergencies concurrently with its part-time soldiers.

The key question I would ask the committee is, how do we ensure that our Canadian Forces reserve personnel are supported and are able to respond decisively when called upon? As such, Canadians need to examine our overall preparedness strategy and, from a Canadian Forces perspective, the organizational approach that underpins our response strategies.

I would ask that the committee consider two themes to improve the way that the CAF primary reserves can better support the provinces and the territories.

First, the current conditions of service for the primary reserve allow for much greater latitude than the regular force, who serve under a different kind of social contract. Perhaps it's time to re-evaluate this.

Second, after transformation, many of these new domestic headquarters that were created—with the exception of joint task force north where all activities are deemed to be operations—were actually superimposed on top of, or developed from, other existing headquarters.

Domestically, when the army reserve trains, they do so at the unit level in local armouries across the country, but when called upon, they undergo a transformation and deploy through territorial battalion groups, domestic response companies and even Arctic response company groups. However, on a daily basis, these headquarters have only a small staff dedicated to domestic operations, and they have no permanent operational units placed underneath them.

If the future climate of the Canadian Forces resembles the 2011 Leslie report, and we seek to reduce overhead and improve efficiency and effectiveness, but we do so despite constrained resources, then the CAF will have to look at how its reserve force is managed institutionally and how it can rapidly and effectively respond when called upon.

I understand that significant efforts to optimize reserve participation in future domestic operations are ongoing, especially through new and emerging capabilities such as cyber, but it is the modernization of headquarters and personnel policies to create more enduring conditions of employment that are required to better leverage the reserve force contributions.

To conclude, “Strong, Secure, Engaged” confirms that the defence of Canada and its people remains the overarching priority for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces. However, my final point here, based on my research, is that in the event of a large-scale crisis, without dedicated personnel and established command structures specifically within the primary reserve force, any whole-of-government emergency response will be that much more difficult to execute.

Thank you very much for your time.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Finally, we have Mr. MacDonald for five minutes.

[Adam MacDonald, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science, Dalhousie University, As an Individual]

Good day, Mr. Chair and other members of the committee. I want to thank you for inviting me to speak at today's session and share my thoughts regarding the Canadian military's role in domestic emergency response.

The last decade has seen a sizable increase in provincial requests for assistance from the Canadian Armed Forces in dealing with domestic emergencies, specifically—but not only—due to the growing number and severity of climate change-induced natural disasters throughout the country. The Canadian Armed Forces continue to adapt to this new reality by augmenting their capacity to support these growing requests, by establishing, for instance, Operation LENTUS, a yearly mission to train and place soldiers on standby to assist, and through growing coordination between regional joint task force commands and provincial emergency management organizations.

Such efforts serve a long-standing, clear mandate for the military to be prepared to offer this assistance, as reiterated in the current defence policy. However, these increasing requests are transforming this mandate from an as-needed duty to a baseline regularized duty, which, combined with competing capability, operational and structural issues confronting the organization, has generated debates about what the role of the Canadian Armed Forces should be in domestic emergency response.

Two main questions lie at the heart of this matter.

First, are these requests for support sustainable for the military in terms of management, without compromising its other missions and priorities?

Second, is the military the suitable organization for addressing these challenges, in effect becoming the de facto emergency response organization for provinces, as part of larger efforts to construct more resilient systems and societies in the face of climate change throughout Canada?

With the recently announced national defence review and ongoing development of the national adaptation strategy, now is the time to explore this matter as a political issue and not simply a technical, resource or organizational one.

It is understandable why the military is increasingly relied upon during these emergencies, as it possesses unique organizational logistics, planning and personnel resources and qualities, which no other government body at any level does. Operation Laser—the pre-positioning and deploying of units to support provincial government requests—and Operation Vector—assisting the Public Health Agency of Canada to secure and distribute vaccines during the pandemic—have showcased the military's unique attributes in these regards.

Higher-level political direction and guidance are needed, however, to entrench this mission as a top-tier mandate if the status quo is to continue. It is becoming clear that, if the Canadian Armed Forces are to continue to meet these requests for support, they will have to create more capacity and possibly dedicated capabilities to do so.

There are strong reasons to reconsider the growing reliance on the military in domestic emergency response.

First, there are competing demands on the military's focus, operational capacities and resources in terms of adapting to the altering strategic landscape defined by the emergence of rival great powers, numerous large-scale procurement renewal plans, building new capabilities in emerging domains such as cyber and space, and reconstitution challenges regarding training, recruitment, retention and culture change.

Second, there are possible civil-military implications of any growing “ownership” of domestic emergency response by the military, if this is increasingly becoming a mainline duty.

Third, these developments may disincentivize provincial governments from investing in their own specific emergency services capabilities and lead to growing societal expectations for military assistance in every domestic emergency, thus transforming perceptions of the military as a frontline service rather than a force of last resort to be used after civilian agencies have been exhausted or overwhelmed.

If the military, however, is mandated to continue and possibly fully prioritize these requests, and to prepare to support the expected growth in demand for these requests in the future, serious examination of how best to structure and resource the organization so it can do so sustainably is required.

Such an examination should explore four key areas.

First, it should ask whether a new operational command is required to plan, train, coordinate and oversee the domestic deployment of military assets in these missions.

Second, it should ask whether existing support capabilities, such as health care, logistics and engineering, should be expanded beyond servicing the needs of the military, in order to meet broader emergency response demands.

Third, it should ask whether dedicated units should be constructed, exclusively trained and deployed for these types of missions, allowing other elements of the military to focus on different missions and mandates.

Finally, it should ask whether these units and capabilities should be part of the regular or reserve force, with particular deliberation on duties and the extent to which the latter, as a volunteer service, should be relied upon in this sense.

The question is not whether the Canadian Armed Forces should or should not be involved in domestic emergency response. It has and will always have a role, especially because it possesses unique capabilities, such as search and rescue and strategic lift, which would be difficult to replicate elsewhere.

What is needed, however, is determining the scale and scope of military involvement and its purpose and function as part of a broader whole-of-government effort—indeed, a whole-of-society effort—to adapt to the disruptive realities of climate change on our economy, infrastructure and society, which will will only increase in intensity moving forward.

Such a determination requires public deliberation and clear political direction, rather than letting mission creep to continue being uncritically examined.

Thank you for inviting me. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. MacDonald.

Ms. Findlay, you have six minutes, please.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all our witnesses for being here.

Professor Fejes, I want to express all our condolences on the loss of your cadets at RMC. I see that you're a lecturer there. It's a very tough reality. Just so you know, Parliament did hold a minute of silence today for them to formally acknowledge their loss. Please pass that along to the community. We feel that loss with them.

I'll start with you, Professor. I understand what you're telling us in your testimony, but I'm wondering what solutions you might be suggesting. You've posed some good questions on current conditions of service and whether we need some sort of permanent operational force.

What would you be recommending if you were the one saying, “How do we deal with this?” Should we be looking at a separate force like the U.S. has through FEMA or should we be looking at a specialized group within the military? What's your thought on that?

[Michael Fejes]

I do not advocate for a separate military force or dedicated resources specifically for domestic response; however, I do advocate for what people would actually call the “recapitalization” or the “operationalization” of the reserve force.

Right now, as I mentioned in my testimony, business is conducted on a voluntary basis. When there is a call-out, it's basically a determination of who is available and who would like employment. If you look at what happened during the summer of 2020, I believe, during COVID, the military basically came forward and said, “Anybody who wants four to five months of employment over the summer, please step forward, and you will be gainfully employed.”

This was conducted; however, in my professional opinion, I don't feel that this gives the military the latitude to support Canadians to their full extent. I would call for some sort of reanalysis on the terms of service for reservists. For example, right now for reservists, there are three distinct differences between a regular force soldier and a reserve soldier: They cannot be posted, they cannot be deployed and they can choose to leave the military at any time.

I would call not for the same terms of service as a regular force soldier, perhaps, but I would ask us to look into the terms of service for reservists. Perhaps there's some sort of accommodation that could be made there that would allow the government and the Canadian Forces to call on reserves in a little more organized structure.

Thank you.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

That's good.

Mr. Bowen, you were talking about leveraging municipal and provincial groups and NGOs with disaster capacity. How do you see that working? Can you expand on that a bit?

[Josh Bowen]

One of the things we've seen in some of our most significant allies, specifically Australia and the United States, is moving away from having the military hold primary responsibility for responding to disasters. That's a recognition, both of the competing demands that are on those forces but also of the costs.

For 2017-19, the CAF incurred $17.5 million in incremental costs when deploying Operation LENTUS, with the average duration of those deployments being about two weeks. That roughly translates to $80,000 a day in additional costs.

When we look at building out and supporting NGOs, and provincial-municipal organizations, to have hyper-localized trained and equipped volunteer teams across the country, we see a dramatic reduction in time and costs. As an example, I know that Team Rubicon's incident management team and their debris management team costs were $3,000 per day. Overall, that's an order of magnitude reduction in costs.

If we're able to empower NGOs, provide a little bit of funding, and then empower provincial and municipal organizations to take on that role, when we do require the CAF to come in, they are truly that force of last resort.

One of the key things that need to be done—and this dovetails quite nicely with Mr. Fejes' comments—is to build systems in place, so that small businesses aren't penalized when their employees want to volunteer. We need to build systems in place, so that employees aren't penalized, when they want to volunteer to help Canadians.

As has been done in some of the provinces, employers can get tax breaks, or access to funding, to allow their reservists to go and deploy overseas, or deploy on disaster response operations. If we could put a similar mechanism in place, when Canadians want to volunteer their time to support fellow Canadians, that will dramatically reduce the costs associated with deploying people to support disasters, and increase that local knowledge and participation to reinforce, rebuild and support communities at the local level.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Colleagues, you'll take note that the bells are ringing. I expect the vote is in half an hour.

Can I have unanimous consent to go ahead for the next 15 minutes while we have our witnesses here?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

That will take us to 4:40.

I apologize to the witnesses. The issue here is that committees are supposed to suspend, when bells start ringing, but our colleagues have graciously decided that we can continue for 15 minutes. At that point, we will have to suspend, and then we'll have to figure out how long it's going to take to vote. Anyways, welcome to democracy, ain't she grand.

Ms. O'Connell, you have six minutes, please.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you all for being here.

Perhaps I'll continue with Professor Bowen.

If I understand correctly, you would like to focus more on a voluntary system. Would you see maybe an ownership or housing of the leadership, and an organization of that system in some role within CAF, or a unit within CAF? Do you see it more as potentially each province and territory establishing their own system with some federal guidance?

Help me understand how you would envision that. What would you recommend in terms of the initial set-up of that? How could we ensure consistency of training, and the ability to cross provinces and territories if one province needed a bit of help? How could they also have that system in place?

[Josh Bowen]

I think you're absolutely on point. Competent disaster response teams cannot be created after the disaster occurs. We need to build a national structure in which we're standardizing training, we're standardizing capabilities and we're standardizing the modality through which organizations and volunteers deploy.

If we look at the current structure, Public Safety Canada provides guidance to the provinces, and coordination, and then they develop their own individual capabilities. If we were to nest a deployment coordination group within the GOC, or within Public Safety Canada specifically, that would then alleviate the strain on the CAF to be able to hold a resource and manage a resource that they don't own or control and quite often have friction with, based on historical precedence. By leveraging organizations like the Red Cross, Team Rubicon and others, and bringing them together under an umbrella like an NGO consortium that works as auxiliary to government with Public Safety Canada, we're then able to identify what capabilities certain organizations bring to the table and what their ability to respond is, whether that be timelines or whether that be mobility requirements, which could then be supported through CAF strategic airlift or through rotary-wing airlift, as required. Those are the kinds of things the CAF could do and the kind of role the CAF could play to be able to enhance what volunteers already do.

If we look to the German system, they have 80,000 volunteers spread across the country in 800 different locations with a single national training centre. Everybody gets coordinated standardized training to be able to go and respond. That is what has been done to alleviate the strain on their military. If you look at Australia, they have a similar system in place. They have different regional and provincial organizations that actually do response. They're entirely volunteer-based, and they've partnered with organizations that leverage the specific skill sets that first responders and military veterans bring to the table and that civilians bring to the table so that we don't have random “person number three” showing up saying that you're now in charge of building inspections to make sure that the building is viable for people to go in and—

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Sorry. I don't mean to interrupt, but I am limited on time, and I wanted to sneak in another question on that very point.

You served as well, and we just finished a retention and recruitment study. Some of the testimony that came up too was that not everybody necessarily wants international deployment or a lifestyle that might challenge them with that. Could you see, or do you have knowledge of, an option where people would like to be engaged in their country in a disaster situation, let's say, or an emergency, but they perhaps don't want the lifestyle of an army reservist or someone who needs to deploy? Does that somehow fit into what you're thinking of as well? Is there an appetite there that you think would exist?

[Josh Bowen]

I believe so. I don't necessarily see that being nested within the Canadian Armed Forces. It costs a lot of money to train somebody to be a soldier or to be an officer, and it doesn't matter what the trade is. The cost associated with that initial training can be better put toward supporting NGOs that already bring those skill sets, that already have those connections, and that already understand how disaster management in the country works rather than necessarily filling it with somebody coming in who is there to help, and who will always continue to serve the country and support in any way possible, but who doesn't necessarily have the right language to be able to communicate with the people who are on the ground there, the provincial, federal and municipal organizations.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kerry-Lynne Findlay]

Go ahead, Ms. Normandin.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I thank all the witnesses.

I am going to ask some general questions and I invite the witnesses who want to answer to jump in.

There seems to be talk of a parallel militia for everything related to Operation LENTUS and the climate crisis. I will come back to the form that this militia might take. Before that, I would like to know what it would be used for. Should there be some sort of scale of events that this militia could be involved in? I'll give you an example. Filling sandbags in a flood is not the same as evacuating people in a large-scale fire. The levels of danger and organization are different.

Should we first ask ourselves what the cost is of asking the military to do certain interventions? In general, would it be more relevant to determine from the outset which tasks, such as filling sandbags, will be systematically carried out by civilians and never by the military because it would not be worth the effort? Is this the kind of thinking that should be done in the first place? Should we wonder what this parallel militia should be used for and in what contexts the armed forces should intervene?

[Adam MacDonald]

I'll just say that I think one of the problems is that for a lot of other mission sets the military has, they're based on mandates, such as, we want to protect North America, and we want to contribute to global security with allies. That gets married with the generation of certain capabilities, such as, we're going to be able to deploy two task groups of four warships simultaneously, or we're going to be able to simultaneously deploy 1,500 soldiers on contingents to work with allies. There's no force generation goal that's associated with assisting domestic emergency response and it creates a function that the military is going to find ways to support that. There's this socialization that's been happening over time, which we've talked about, where the military is increasingly doing more and more things that it's not specifically trained to do, but there's a societal and provincial expectation.

One of the things before we even get into this would be how the requests get filtered through public safety and how they determine where the military can define its role better and where it can and cannot assist. Societally, it'll be unacceptable to Canadians if it's a domestic emergency response and there's no one else and the military comes in if they're placed on a cap. It's kind of getting out of this. I think there's going to have to be a part where the military says that we're going to contribute these things to emergency response, and that frees up space and almost pressure into other orders of government and other parts of the federal service to figure out how to organize those things.

It's a transition, but I think the way things are going it's disincentivizing other areas and levels of the country in preparing for domestic emergency response. That's a very hard challenge, because the military is never going to say that we're only going to contribute 1,000 soldiers a year, and when those are used up, we're not going to do any more emergency response, because societally, we're getting primed to expect that from the forces.

[Michael Fejes]

To add to that, I would also like the committee to consider a note of caution when discussing volunteers. Canada has been very lucky in the past several decades in our domestic response in taking on things like the Manitoba flood or the ice storm or even recent flooding. COVID is probably the most lengthy and enduring crisis response that we've had to deal with in our history when we talk about responses in terms of months, rather than days or weeks.

This is where volunteers can get a little bit touchy. It can become a sensitive issue. We're assuming that volunteers are available for a lengthy duration of time and we're assuming that volunteers will stay and are available. We've been very lucky in some of our major domestic crisis operations that society has been able to step up to volunteer, but we also have to consider if that will be the case in future domestic crises as well.

Thank you.

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

Unless other people want to add something, I would like to hear your opinion on the cost-benefit ratio.

It may be useful to use the military in a situation where no one else can intervene. However, when the task can be carried out by civilians, for example, the cost of using the military is much higher.

Should this kind of action also be considered when deciding which tasks should be carried out by the military?