National Defence Committee on May 2nd, 2022

[Josh Bowen]

That's a great question and definitely one that other people are far more knowledgeable about in terms of exactly building that structure.

What I will say, though, is that we need to identify the core capabilities that we require. We need to identify who has them already so that we're not duplicating effort. The last thing we want is for everybody to show up to a disaster with a left-handed screwdriver when what we really need is a hammer.

We need to be able to identify what those core capabilities are and then leverage the skill sets that people already have, that already exist, and coordinate that: identifying the capabilities, identifying a coordination mechanism—and that will necessarily involve the government, it will involve civil society and it will involve the military at some point—and then determining how we most cost-effectively fund that model.

The other piece that it will require is bringing in the post-secondaries to be able to actually support the training and the ongoing professionalization of the field. That's where I would start.

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

Thank you very much for that.

The area of civil-military coordination is interesting, because we will need it here at home unless we seize either the private sector fully, the civilian sector fully, or the military fully, with the question of disaster response and mitigation.

Is there a synergy between civil-military coordination expertise gained here at home, and later deployment of the same members of the Canadian Forces elsewhere in the world where civil-military coordination is critical to peacekeeping reconstruction and humanitarian protection work? Is there actually something synergetic that we could develop and tap into?

[Josh Bowen]

As you know from your work in Iraq, coordinating civil-military response is absolutely essential. It doesn't matter whether it's conflict, or it's a disaster response. Being able to build mechanisms where people can share ideas, share information, and then appropriately allocate that information and those resources to respond to whatever the crisis of the day is, is absolutely essential.

So yes, there are multilateral and multi-agency coordination mechanisms that we could leverage. There are also coordination mechanisms here at home, and with our closest allies that we could look to leverage.

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

Could you send us what you have on Australia. It's not a case we've looked at as a committee yet, but we'd be grateful if we had any material there.

[Josh Bowen]

Absolutely, sir.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Spengemann.

Ms. Normandin, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

The witnesses have talked a lot about the role of reservists. We know that they are relatively under-utilized, and we can imagine that this has an impact on retention capacity. The committee just did a study on this. When you're underutilized, you may be less willing to stay.

That said, I am thinking of a certain type of reservists, for instance the rangers, who have a very specific function and who know that they will be called upon to do this type of work.

Could we envisage having a form of special unit composed of reservists who would have to intervene in specific contexts, for example during a national crisis? Wouldn't this be a hybrid solution that would be a win-win situation and would also be interesting in terms of recruitment?

[Michael Fejes]

I'll jump in first, please.

When it comes to actually trying to develop niche capabilities in the reserve force, various historical studies have found varying rates of success. Initially, reserve units have been tasked with things like laundry and bath units in support of the regular force, and found atrocious retention rates, whereas conventional infantry units continue to attract and retain reserve recruits. You have to tread very carefully with the idea of creating specialty niche units within the reserves, where again participation is voluntary or at least currently voluntary.

The demands that are placed on primary reserve members are so wide and vary so greatly. Instead of actually trying to develop niche capabilities, which rely again on volunteers who may or may not determine they're going to provide their service or not, my recommendation is that we actually look at broadening the terms of service for the reserves, so that they can be called upon when needed, but that they come with a wide and broad variety of skills.

Additionally, creating domestic response reserve units would mean that they have specialized skills and training, and they would not be able to deploy internationally, when called upon, as well. You want to maintain a broad pool of reservists, and you want to be able to call on those broad pools of reservists decisively when crisis happens.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

[Adam MacDonald]

Can I just say something quickly?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Can you work it in with Ms. Mathyssen's question, because Ms. Mathyssen always follows Madame Normandin.

Ms. Mathyssen, you have two and a half minutes.

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

One of the issues that was mentioned in terms of drawing on the reservists was duration of time. Can you provide the other problems that we would have to look at in order to proactively assess what would be required? I would think about time from family, which many Canadian Armed Forces members already have to deal with, but also housing, and all of those things.

Can you give us a quick list?

And then yes, I will give some time to Mr. MacDonald, as well.

[Adam MacDonald]

I just want to say quickly that when we think about reservists, we can think of two broad models. We can think of a strategic reserve. They do the same thing as a regular force, but we just augment them either in time of war or when needed. When we were in Afghanistan in the mid-2000s, 30% of the combat battalion there were reservists. They were vital. You can have functional reservists that do different things from the regular forces. We saw this in the navy. The reservists in the navy had their own ships, the maritime coastal defence vessels, and other types of tasks and duties.

Now we're seeing this kind of movement back towards more strategic reserves. We have a one navy concept, to use the navy as an example, but we still see this idea of trying to do a bit of a dance to try to do both. I think that is kind of strategically misguided. There needs to be a far more reconceptualization of the purpose of the reserves within the military and within communities.

I think reservists are a great way to broaden the appeal of the military. They usually are some of the most diverse. They're usually in urban centres. A lot of major military bases aren't in urban centres anymore. The regular force is kind of a bit distant from Canadians, whereas reservists have a bit more of a direct connection.

I think there are no more full-time reservists. The reservists are supposed to be part time, which gets to the problem that we need legislated pay for quick call-ups. Rather than doing things like,“In three months we're going to deploy you for two months,” it would be, “In a week, we need you for six months.” How do we action that with major industry and other businesses?

Also, reservists deserve credit. They need medals and recognition for service. The military has an expeditionary-oriented view that service and value are largely based on international deployments. I can tell you it's way harder to go to the Canadian Arctic than it is to go to Afghanistan, and I think there should be recognition of that.

Another thing I'll say is the reservists have brought in interesting recruiting mechanisms to try to bring in more people quickly. What's happened is the retention at mid-level reservists has dramatically decreased. There's a huge issue about how to train and retain these people. They can't get their training done, because we just don't have mid-level reservists to do it. It's a huge challenge in the reserves. It probably needs a complete full rethink, in my opinion.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

Next is Mr. Motz for five minutes, please.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here.

I just want to bring this full circle back to why we exist as a committee. It's about national defence. I have a couple of quotes from Lieutenant-General Eyre. He was the Canadian army commander at the time and now he's the CDS.

In 2020, Lieutenant-General Eyre said:

If we become focused on solely humanitarian-assistance, disaster response, when the country really needs us, when the stakes are very high and we have to fight and we’re not ready, that’s going to cause casualties and it’s going to cost loss of national interest

In October 2021, he said:

...involvement in domestic operations reduced the resources available to confront challenges and threats to world security, which continue to increase.

Mr. Bowen, I have some questions directed to you.

You have mentioned, and I would agree with you, that we need to re-examine how we deploy and how we deal with natural disaster-related events in our country. If that's the case, you prefer, according to your testimony, more of a reserve force or something along those lines.

What composition of regular force and reserve force personnel is needed to ensure effective response to what National Defence, CAF, should be doing, and what our reserve force could be doing with regard to natural disasters?

[Josh Bowen]

Thank you, sir. I had the distinct honour of serving under General Eyre in western Canada and during the Fort McMurray wildfire event. Actually, I would not advocate establishing a reserve force specifically to deal with disasters. If we did that, we would be cannibalizing our existing forces and existing capabilities. We would necessarily need to draw on the regular force air force, the regular force army and navy to be able to respond, to be able to support the mobility, the logistical sustainment, the transportation, the communication, all of those other assets and capabilities that so many NGOs actually bring to the table.

I do think—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

I'm sorry for interrupting. Maybe I misquoted what you said. I said reservists. What I'm thinking about.... As you start speaking again, sir, and I apologize, you're talking more about a civilian corps like you mentioned, Red Cross, Samaritan's Purse and other NGOs that do such great work.

Can you reinforce for us what advantages there would be from a cost perspective, from a training perspective, to the Canadian taxpayer and to a response theatre, their capabilities as opposed to how we're doing things now?

[Josh Bowen]

First and foremost, I would say that building hyper-localized, trained and equipped volunteer teams across the country is going to drastically reduce the time and cost that it takes to mobilize during a disaster. If we look to my earlier comments about the typical daily incremental cost for a CAF deployment being about $80,000, NGOs can respond for less than $5,000 or $3,000 a day to do similar tasks. Leveraging those organizations that rely on volunteers who are unpaid who are there to be able to support their fellow Canadian is something we should be looking to do.

More importantly, they already have mechanisms in place for coordinating the deployment and the employment of those volunteers, so rather than just having a federal agency or a provincial organization respond and then deal with an influx of volunteers who continue to show up and donations and all of those kinds of things, having an overarching federal coordination mechanism, where we're able to say, “Samaritan's Purse, you have these skill sets, Red Cross, you have these skill sets, Team Rubicon Canada, you have these skill sets. These are what we need, these are the effects we need to achieve, can you support?” Then they say they can, with localized response capabilities, which drastically reduces the cost and the time required to mobilize.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I'm sorry, Mr. Motz, but the clock doesn't lie; it says six seconds.

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. May for five minutes, please.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, thank you to all of you for your patience today and for your expertise.

This has been fascinating, and I have to admit that I've sort of lost track a little bit in terms of who supports more of a civilian-led force versus something within the CAF, or are you all on the same page there?

Mr. Bowen, I know you had suggested more of a civilian-led force. Do the two of you concur with Mr. Bowen?

[Michael Fejes]

If I may jump in first, please, obviously I want to say I concur with Mr. Bowen that a civilian-led agency is far superior to anything that the CAF would be able to produce because the CAF has conflicting priorities and obligations at most given times.

In addition, I also want to highlight something he said, where the more prepared municipalities and provinces are to assist with domestic crisis response, the better the Canadian Forces will be able to come in to assist. It is really a win-win situation for everyone involved to see preparedness across the board.

Where I think I differ from my esteemed colleague is with the idea of unpaid volunteers taking the lead, because I would want to do some research into how long that model would be sustainable before the Canadian Forces came in to provide additional support.

Thank you.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

I see Mr. Bowen was shaking his head a little bit.

Do you want to respond to that? Maybe there was a misrepresentation there.

[Josh Bowen]

Thank you, sir.

If I may, I agree that the Canadian Forces need to come in as an augmentation force and that we should have a civilian, largely volunteer-based organization leading. Whenever there is a disaster response, the local authority always has jurisdiction, so it would never be volunteers acting alone independently of that local authority providing the legal framework for the volunteers to be able to respond. Then, having an organizational function that says who is going to fill which roles and allowing the volunteer organizations, the NGOs, to be able to fill those roles is where I think we need to get to.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Go ahead, Mr. MacDonald.