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.