National Defence Committee on Feb. 2nd, 2022

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

It's with respect to Operation Reassurance and our country's role within NATO. How are other NATO countries involved in this operation as it relates to central and eastern Europe?

If you'd like to shed light on that, I'd be happy to hear you on this point.

[Pierre Jolicoeur]

It's important for Canada to take part in these missions. This is a priority since it's NATO countries that benefit from this support. For Canada, it's important to support Ukraine on both fronts, of course, especially since we have a large Ukrainian community in Canada. Other NATO partners, including the United States, have announced additional troops in eastern Europe, but care is being taken not to put additional U.S. troops in Ukraine to avoid upsetting Russia and increasing the pressure. It must be said that Russia is addressing the United States in this crisis. It's not Ukraine or NATO in general, but the United States that is being targeted by Russia. I think the United States is doing very well to avoid putting U.S. soldiers there. However, if there were U.S. soldiers in Ukraine, it would increase pressure on Russia considerably, more than Canada could do.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Jolicoeur.

I have a second question for you.

With respect to Canada's strengths, how do you feel we're leveraging them when we compare ourselves to the collective NATO alliance? How are we leveraging our strengths and expertise in addressing the issue of the conflict?

I don't know if that came through.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I'm not getting any sound from Professor Jolicoeur.

[Pierre Jolicoeur]

I was having sound problems.

Sorry once again. Could you please repeat your question?

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Of course.

With respect to Canada's expertise and our capacities, and if we look at the NATO alliance, are we seeing our expertise and capacities being leveraged in a productive, useful way when it comes to NATO's involvement in Ukraine and the region?

[Pierre Jolicoeur]

Thank you for your question.

Canada is doing virtually everything it can with its military capabilities. Canada already has forces deployed in many places around the world, and there is currently a shortage of personnel within the Canadian Armed Forces. Canada could certainly contribute a little more, but current Canadian military capabilities have a limit, and I think Canada will soon reach that limit because of current deployments. Canada is making the best use of its resources and doing what it can to support Ukraine and NATO countries.

[Sameer Zuberi, Liberal, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Thank you for that.

I'd like to ask one last question.

With respect to the territorial expansion and Russia's intent to destabilize the region, do you see in this conflict—in Russia's involvement in Ukraine—an attempt to expand territorially [Technical difficulty—Editor] with respect to destabilization there in the region?

Again, it's for Mr. Jolicoeur.

[Pierre Jolicoeur]

Okay.

Again, thank you for your question.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have about 30 seconds.

[Pierre Jolicoeur]

I see this as a possibility, but the most important thing for Russia is to destabilize Ukraine. The important part that Russia wanted was Crimea, and they have it for now. The international community has adopted sanctions, but is doing nothing to turn the situation around.

Does Russia want to expand its territory further? It's a possibility, but I think it's minor. What Russia absolutely wants is to destabilize Ukraine so that it does not become democratic. As long as the conflict is at Ukraine's doorstep, Ukraine won't be able to join NATO. In this sense, Russia is achieving its objective, in my opinion.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you very much, Mr. Zuberi and Professor Jolicoeur.

That brings our first hour to a close. On behalf of the committee, I want to thank Mr. Michalchyshyn and Professor Jolicoeur for an outstanding start to this study. It was very informative.

With that, we'll suspend for a minute or two while we re-empanel.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We'll bring the meeting back to order.

I'm very delighted to see both Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Perry, neither of whom, the last time I saw them, had beards.

I want to invite them to make five-minute statements. Is there any agreement between either of you as to who proceeds first?

Okay. We'll go in alphabetical order, then.

Mr. Mulroney, you have five minutes, please.

[David Mulroney, Former Ambassador of Canada to the People's Republic of China, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, and thank you for this opportunity to speak to the committee. Since retiring a decade ago, I've spent a lot of time reflecting on two issues from my professional life. One is the challenge of managing our steadily evolving relationship with China. The other, heavily influenced by my experience working on Afghanistan, is the inclination within the public service to focus much more on policy development than on policy delivery: how things actually get done. It's an attention deficit that all too often leaves things undone. Both issues are, I believe, relevant to the work you're undertaking.

When I left Beijing, I argued that we were failing to see China comprehensively as a country offering real opportunities but also a growing set of challenges. Ten years on, this hasn't changed, except that I now believe that the balance has shifted decisively in the direction of challenge, and that China represents the greatest long-term threat to our country.

Let me be clear that when I refer to China, I am referring to the People's Republic led by the Communist Party and not the people of China.

This growing threat is fed by the conviction in Beijing that weakness and decline in the west are ushering in unprecedented opportunities for global leadership for China. This ambition is collective, shared at the highest levels of the Communist Party, but it's also profoundly personal, the guiding star of China's paramount leader, Xi Jinping. It is fed by a dangerous overconfidence in China's capabilities and at the same time by nagging doubts that growing economic headwinds, demographic decline and mounting international push-back will deny China its global hegemony unless it moves quickly and decisively.

There is a military dimension to this threat, and I will leave that for specialists to describe. While it applies to Canada, it is most acute for our friends and allies in east Asia, democracies whose safety and survival are vitally important to us, not least because they are home to so many Canadian citizens.

This argues for investing seriously in the expeditionary capability of the Canadian Forces, something important in itself, but also essential if we are to be welcomed into new alliances and if our voice is to be heard in the conversations that matter.

In addition to the military threat, Canadians face PRC—People's Republic of China—aggression here at home. This includes harassment of members of the Chinese diaspora, as well as the many Tibetans, Uighurs and Falun Gong practitioners that China's Communist Party targets across this country. The threat also includes aggressive espionage, efforts to influence media and various levels of government, and even attempts to limit our autonomy—what we can say and do as a nation. China's objective is to compel us into the kind of bilateral relationship it understands best, which means becoming its compliant satellite, a vassal state.

Responding to this unprecedented challenge calls for a level of leadership, vision and coordination that is rare in government. It will require multiple departments and the Canadian Forces to understand and pursue goals over narrower organizational objectives. This challenge must not be underestimated and almost certainly requires changes to the machinery of government.

We must also address two operational issues so fundamental as to be existential. First, we need to revitalize and repair leadership culture in the military and the public service and recover the conviction that all public service—and here I include elected office—entails lifelong loyalty to Canada and an enduring obligation to protect privileged information acquired while serving this country.

Second, we need to recapture what I would describe as a sense of national purpose. The defining element of Chinese strategy is psychological, aiming to intimidate and discourage an opponent so that he or she submits without a struggle. Bluster and intimidation are deployed to encourage passivity and defeatism, engendering in the foreign target a kind of national exhaustion, a widespread failure of will and a drift into a terminal dependency.

The best antidote to this is a healthy sense of confidence in who we are and what we've accomplished, and faith in our history, our institutions and our people. We've needed to call on this resolve at key points in the past, and it has never failed us, but it is a resource that needs to be cultivated and replenished by our leaders and by our leading institutions. We can't meet the threat posed by China if we've lost touch with Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Mulroney.

Mr. Perry, you have five minutes.

[David Perry, President, Canadian Global Affairs Institute, As an Individual]

Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for the invitation to speak to you today about the threat analysis affecting Canada and the Canadian Armed Forces' operational readiness to meet those threats.

In my opening remarks, I'll focus on the changes in the threat analysis since the publication of Canada's defence policy, “Strong, Secure, Engaged”, in 2017; recent changes to Canada's armed forces' operations domestically; long-standing shortfalls in key maintenance budgets; and the implications for operational readiness.

As we are witnessing currently with Russia's military buildup on the Ukrainian border, the return of great power competition, which was identified in our defence policy five years ago, has only amplified since. Russia and China, in particular, continue to invest in programs of widespread military modernization and employ those modernized armed forces, in concert with other elements of state power, in ways that threaten Canadian interests. The demonstrated behaviour of antagonistic great powers is the backdrop against which the ongoing reinvestment in Canada's military is occurring.

That reinvestment is needed both to maintain Canada's basic commitments to national, North American and international roles, and to enhance our ability to deter unwanted great power behaviour. In North America and the Indo-Pacific, in particular, greater clarity of purpose and matching resources are needed to ensure Canada's ongoing security and open access to international trade.

Set against those international pressures, the last several years have seen a dramatic increase in the use of Canada's military on domestic operations. Our changing climate and the current pandemic have resulted in deployments across Canada more frequently, and for new and unanticipated purposes. The operations have unquestionably provided a valuable service to the country. However, if we anticipate employing our military at the same scale and frequency domestically as we have recently, we need to re-evaluate the full set of missions we are asking the military to perform and how they are being resourced.

Defence planning presumes the military will be a force of last resort for domestic operations, but that premise no longer appears valid. If the military has become the force of choice for providing domestic assistance, and those roles are prioritized, that will necessarily reduce the operational readiness of the military to perform other missions by impacting training, equipment usage and personnel operational tempo. If that kind of defence reorientation is desired, it should be done purposefully and with any required resourcing trade-offs made deliberately.

Finally, a key aspect of operational readiness the committee may wish to investigate is the operational availability of the Canadian Armed Forces' equipment fleets. The ability to deploy equipment operationally is dependent on the maintenance and support regime that keeps our ships, aircraft and vehicles serviceable. A key component of that serviceability is the availability of funding and the ability to deploy it in what National Defence refers to as its national procurement account, which is a centrally managed budget that funds a significant portion of the military's maintenance.

Within the last decade, defence has been dealing with two different shortfalls related to its ability to address the identified maintenance needs of its fleet. The first is a shortfall in the capacity available in government to put maintenance contracts in place, as well as in industry to do the actual work. The second shortfall relates to the availability of funding to conduct all that.

As a result of combined shortages of funding and capacity, for years our military has been conducting less maintenance across its equipment holdings than is required. Over time, undermaintaining equipment reduces its availability for operational employment, a dynamic exacerbated as equipment ages. Given the advancing age of some key fleets—frigates and fighters in particular—this maintenance deficit is growing, which will limit the operational readiness of Canada's military for the next several years.

In sum, several factors are combining to constrain the operational readiness of Canada's military. These are the need to take additional steps to defend Canada and North America with our American allies, an imperative to be more involved in the Indo-Pacific, a significant increase in domestic operations and the long-standing but ongoing maintenance shortfalls. A re-evaluation of what Canada is asking its armed forces to do and the resources required to do it is in order.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Perry.

With that, we'll go to our first round of questions. For the first six-minute round, we have Mr. Motz, Mr. May, Madame Normandin and Madame Mathyssen, in that order.

Mr. Motz, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Mulroney and Mr. Perry, for your testimony. It was very enlightening.

Mr. Mulroney, I'll start with you. Given the statements you've made, do you see the government's current policies on foreign affairs and national defence as being somewhat disconnected from each other? If so, is that a problem?

[David Mulroney]

I'm quite sure that they are disconnected, but I would say they have been disconnected for a long time. There were a lot of reasons for that.

One is the failure to think strategically and to take foreign policy seriously within the public service and government. We do that because we've had the advantage of having the United States as our neighbour. It takes care of the main things that you have a foreign policy for, which are prosperity, defence and security. We've never thought seriously enough about foreign policy as a tool for advancing our interests.

Secondly, I think there has been a failure—this is my personal view and observation—of civilian leadership over the Canadian Forces, so we've lost that partnership that used to exist 25 to 30 years ago.

There is a failure today, but I think it is a long-standing failure. It contributes to what I would call an inadequate foreign policy for Canada.

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

Mr. Perry, do you have some brief thoughts before I move to the next question?

[David Perry]

I would agree that there is an emerging disconnect between our public rhetoric and what we're asking and resourcing several different elements of our international policy to do. Bringing those back into a better calibration would lead to better outcomes for Canadians.

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

Mr. Mulroney, in your opinion, is Canada in good standing with its allies? It seems like we're out of step with our Five Eyes allies on Huawei. We're out of step on China, on defence and on international co-operation.

What are your thoughts on that?

[David Mulroney]

We have slipped, even within the Five Eyes. I think we have come to be seen as the fourth most aggressive member of the Five Eyes when it comes to combatting Chinese interference. New Zealand is basically not doing anything. We're at the back of the pack. We see that in terms of the meetings that are taking place and the times that Canada's name is referenced when people are talking about the new alliances and new multilateral groupings that are being formed.

That has to do with two things. One is that we're seen to be people who see foreign policy as transmission. It's sending messages, but not so much listening. It's largely rhetorical. Secondly, because we have allowed our military capability to diminish over time, we're simply not able to be present. Increasingly, as new alliances and new multilateral groupings are formed, membership depends on what you bring to the table. We're not seen as bringing enough.

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

Before my time is up—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Motz, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but apparently there's a difficulty with your microphone. It's something to do with your not having connected into the audio part of the Zoom call. Do I have that correct?