National Defence Committee on May 18th, 2022

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

There's certainly value in building that organization. I think that needs to be a medium-term goal. Most democratic countries have an organization like that—and Canada is a very large country with very few people and lots of challenges as a result of climate change, and other challenges—but I don't think it can be built in the short term.

There needs to be a dual approach: what we want the Canadian Armed Forces to do in the short term, and some response to this, and what the government needs to do in the medium term. When I say “medium term”, I mean prevention and investing much more aggressively in critical infrastructure and in coordination with NGOs, thinking of the forest fire centre, for instance. Those are very good models to follow, I think, rather than simply saying the Canadian Armed Forces shouldn't do this, because, yes, we can say they shouldn't do this, but somebody will still need to be able to respond when people are in dire straits.

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

Thank you very much.

We have Ms. Lambropoulos next, for five minutes.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for being here on our panel today to answer our questions and for their flexibility in terms of time.

My first question will be for Mr. Goodyear, and I apologize if you've already answered this. A lot of our country is suffering from labour shortages. I was wondering if you could perhaps chime in on whether or not NGOs had difficulty finding volunteers and personnel, and if this is one of the primary challenges that you're facing right now.

[Perron Goodyear]

That's a great question. I think different NGOs have experienced different things. We did certainly find challenges, particularly during the pandemic, with people being able to deploy, with vaccination rates and all of that in the early days. In many cases, people want to support, and what many NGOs find is that when something happens there are lots of people who come out and try, and want to help. Many also work on some of that just-in-time onboarding of volunteers to be able to increase capacity. I think it's great to have that volunteer base. Many are more highly trained and are certainly willing to do that.

I would say that within our NGO community we have thousands and thousands of trained volunteers from coast to coast.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

That's amazing, and good to hear.

My next question will be for you again. What link do you believe should exist between the armed forces and NGOs? I know you've already answered this several times, but I'm speaking more from the angle of training. Do you think that NGOs and Canada as a country would benefit from the armed forces training NGOs in certain areas, or are the NGOs actually better equipped than the armed forces in this regard?

[Perron Goodyear]

I think it depends on the role. I think it's cross-training. I don't think it's either/or; I think it's both, and training together using specific scenarios.

Many of our longer-term NGOs already have a history with the military, dating back to the first and second world wars, of going and supporting our troops, so a lot of those relationships are long-standing. I think it is about cross-training so that we can look at whether there are skills that the military can teach to NGOs that can help out, and whether the NGOs also can help to cross-train or identify who needs to do what so that it's a little clearer what capacities are available.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

Thank you very much.

My next question is for Mr. Burns. As the government of a territory, you were mentioning that you often have to look to external resources in order to take care of the natural disasters that take place in the Yukon. You mentioned that the armed forces are your current go-to if you've exhausted all other resources. If this were no longer the case and the armed forces were no longer taking care of this or were moving towards more of a combative role and shifting away from domestic, what exactly would you recommend the federal government provide, in terms of support to provinces and territories, that you haven't already mentioned up until now?

[Damien Burns]

Thank you for the question. That's interesting.

For that one, I might go back and look at the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre model, which is a really robust method of exchanging resources between the provinces, understanding where each of us is in terms of preparedness and response need in wildland fires, and knowing what resources we can move across the country with those sort of pre-arranged agreements for how we organize ourselves in a response structure and how we reimburse each other. That would be one area of focus in my mind.

The other area might be something like what we have in the Yukon. I'm not familiar with whether this exists in other jurisdictions, but we have the Canadian Rangers up here in the Yukon. It's a reservist group. Perhaps some type of reservist group in partnership with some NGOs could be trained to provide that capacity.

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

You have 20 more seconds, Ms. Lambropoulos.

[Emmanuella Lambropoulos, Liberal, Saint-Laurent, QC]

I'll cede my time.

Thank you very much once again to all of our witnesses.

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

Thank you.

What we're going to do now is go to two-and-a-half-minute rounds with Ms. Normandin and MP Desjarlais.

We'll start with you, Ms. Normandin.

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

Thank you, Madam Chair.

My question is mainly for Mr. Burns and Mr. Goodyear.

Given the increased number of requests, several witnesses pointed out that relying on the CAF was an option of last resort.

If the CAF was called upon more and more at the last minute to provide support in climate change-related emergencies, because no other option was available, what would that mean for you?

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

Who is that directed to?

[Damien Burns]

I believe it was directed to me. Thank you very much for that question.

I hope I wasn't too ambitious in my desire to listen to the question in French and understand it. I think you're asking me what I would do if we had to really make sure that the Canadian Armed Forces was the very last resort. I think that is important. That is how I see it in the Yukon.

I think it's necessary to make these investments in our territory and our province, have our own resources, well constructed and well resourced, and have our NGOs well integrated into our emergency response structure. I think it's very important from an economic sense as well that we consider our private sector in terms of how they can respond. There's significant money that can get spent, and there's significant expertise that we would like to rely upon and build. As I think has been mentioned too, there's significant energy and there are volunteers who really want to participate in this.

These are all resources we have to make sure are very well organized and available. I think that's how we make sure that the armed forces are always the last resort. I think what we need to do is make sure that if we are at the point of calling on the forces, they're there for us, they're trained in the way we need them to, to come and integrate into our system, and they are plugging those holes that we can't. As I said, I think that by the time we are calling on the forces, we need that comprehensive...like, please come take this whole problem away from us from a logistics, operations and management sense.

I hope that answers your question.

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

You have 10 seconds.

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

I would have liked to rephrase my question, but I don't think I'll have enough time, unfortunately.

[Damien Burns]

Sorry.

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

It's no problem.

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

MP Desjarlais, go ahead for two and a half minutes.

[Blake Desjarlais]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I want to continue my discussion with Christian, if possible, from where we ended on that last question with regard to infrastructure.

To my colleague Mr. Tolmie's point, I think it is responsible that one day Canada take on the work of responding to the climate crisis, the work of adaptation and that whole...lifting it out of the Canadian Armed Forces and making sure they continue to do the job they should be doing in many other ways. In many aspects of this, they are the last resort for labour. They're the last resort for people who are going to defend Canadians domestically.

In the short term, I completely understand the need to ensure that we provide more resources to continue to do that work to support the Canadian Armed Forces so that they can continue to help Canadians in their most dire need when they are available. In terms of that future aspect, looking at creating the kind of funding and program and service core that are required to respond to these kinds of disasters in a responsible way, how long do you think it will take a country the size of Canada to do that work, and what kind of investment are we talking about with respect to GDP, for example?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

You're not looking at a huge investment, because much of this, as our colleagues have already said, is run by volunteers. The challenge is that you need the right surge capacity at the right time. Currently, we don't have a good model to get the right people to the right place at the right time. The Canadian Armed Forces becomes the fallback, essentially, for providing that surge capacity until other organizations are able to take over when no one is stepping up.

It's not just with NGOs. For instance, you may remember that earlier on in the pandemic, the Canadian Armed Forces helped evacuate Canadians who were then quarantining on the Trenton base. That was supposed to be done by a different entity. That entity wasn't able to deliver on time, so the Canadian Armed Forces took it on, not because they really wanted to do it but because there was no one else to do it.

I think there need to be other people who can actually do things in a very quick and timely fashion. In that regard, to Madame Normandin's point, yes, we talk about the Canadian Armed Forces as a force of last resort, but if you look at my study, Madame Normandin, we have an increasing number of occasions when provincial and territorial entities are calling on the Canadian Armed Forces, even though we can demonstrate empirically that they have not exhausted all of their resources. Essentially, they become a quasi-emergency measures organization.

It's important for the federal government to draw a much clearer line to say that it's not acceptable for the Canadian Armed Forces to be used as a provincial emergency measures organization to supplement capacities. It needs to be a force of last resort. The problem is that this is increasingly not happening.

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

With that, c'est tout.

Thank you to all of our witnesses. You have been amazing, hanging in there with us through all our changes. I know you're coming from everywhere from the Yukon to Europe. I have no idea, Professor, what time it is there. Thank you so much for your time and attention this evening. It has added greatly to our study on a very important topic. We are really grateful for your time and expertise.

With that, I will call the meeting adjourned.