National Defence Committee on Dec. 8th, 2022

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Are you saying that we're forced to rely on our allies to meet our needs?

[Karen Hogan]

The Arctic has always been a collaborative effort. We're not the only country that has to worry about the Arctic.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

You are a real politician; you're good.

If you had a single recommendation that would bring all of this together, what would it be? What would it take? Political balls or money? What's it going to take?

[Karen Hogan]

We've made several recommendations, and in our opinion, all recommendations are equally important, so the government should take them seriously and act on them.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

What's it going to take for a government, Liberal, Conservative or otherwise, to take this seriously? Otherwise, we're going to drop the ball. You have a neutral position. What do you think it's going to take? Is it going to take a disaster?

[Karen Hogan]

I remind you that I'm a neutral party in Parliament. My role is to report to you what is good and what is not, and I make recommendations. That said, it's really up to the public service and parliamentarians to make sure that action is taken.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

You've answered my questions well.

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you, Mr. Desilets.

Ms. Mathyssen, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being with us today.

We're talking about significant gaps in our procurement, in the equipment, our armed forces and our military needs, yet that procurement process takes a great deal of time, obviously, in terms of those gaps that we've seen.

You talked a little bit in your report about the Canadian Rangers, Canadian auxiliary, the Coast Guard and the volunteers who are part of that. We heard in a previous meeting directly—well, he wasn't able to contribute in words, but he was part of our conversations, and he's reported to this committee—what's ultimately needed on the ground for those Canadian Rangers.

Could you talk a bit more about what government spending needs to happen for those folks on the ground, for Canadian Rangers, but also in terms of...?

Mr. Pedersen was one of our witnesses, and he said that training needs to happen for more of the search and rescue folks on the ground. Could you talk a bit more about that in your report?

[Karen Hogan]

If you don't mind, Mr. Chair, I'll ask Mr. Swales to answer that.

[Nicholas Swales]

The rangers were not a significant part of our work because their role is mostly on the ground. They don't have a maritime mission, per se.

What we do speak to in the report is that, of course, where there are communities, where there are people, that is another source of maritime domain awareness information. We talk about a project that was put in place to provide a linkage to those communities to some of the other domain awareness information that the government had. That initiative has proceeded slowly but at present is being rolled out on a more permanent basis.

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

In terms of that gap, though, it's going to take a long time for us to build those ships, so the realization of people on the ground fills that gap. I mean, there was the ship that was missed by the equipment, and people on the ground saw it.

How important is that shift in terms of investment in people and what they need on the ground, in your opinion, if you can give it?

[Karen Hogan]

I don't know if it's important to shift from equipment to people. I think it's about investing in all sources of information. A complete picture of maritime traffic requires all the pieces of equipment, because someone who is trying to evade could avoid one and you hope the other piece of equipment will find them. It's really about investing in all in order to build that complete picture about maritime domain awareness.

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

We've heard a lot—or I certainly have—in terms of the flaws in the government procurement process. I know we all have. In fact, I spoke with one of the folks from the national shipbuilding strategy. The determination was that the government's military needs to provide final details, final plans, and that they're not great about doing that. That's one of the problems they found within the procurement process. We were at a forum with multiple parties, and they talked about the partisanship and the partisan nature of the procurement process.

Could you talk a bit about how we need to streamline, if you could, that military procurement? There are many suggestions that have been made, but overall, could you see suggestions within that?

[Karen Hogan]

I'll start with comments and then maybe Nick would like to add. He's been auditing national defence issues for many years, so he definitely has a lot more detail than I do.

When we looked at the national shipbuilding strategy, it wasn't so much at the procurement but really at the management of that strategy and the management of those contracts. You're right; they were lengthy to put into place. Then there were delays in defining requirements, and those delays really just kept compounding and pushing out. Sometimes there's a large delay between signing an agreement with the shipyard and having an actual construction agreement. That's another one. It is rather complex and time consuming, but it does start with having clear requirements laid out and then clear milestones to better manage the achievement of those milestones.

I don't know, Nick, if there's anything more that you want to add, because I know in these two we didn't really look specifically at contracting per se.

[Nicholas Swales]

I think I would just add, following a little bit on an earlier response, that timely decision-making is important too. That's one of the issues we see with the satellite programs. Decisions to start taking action are happening after it's too late to get the result in a timely manner.

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

Just before you came, we had Jody Thomas here, the national security adviser. She said she would like to see a more cyclical plan for procurement and evergreening. Could you weigh in on that?

[Karen Hogan]

Having a more long-term vision and actually not just waiting for one procurement to be done and then starting the next procurement is a great way of making it more efficient. There are a lot of ways to make procurement more efficient. I trust the government will explore different and unusual ways, instead of repeating the past and hoping to have a different outcome.

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

How much time do I have?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

You have 20 seconds.

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

I will wait until the next round. Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, James Bezan]

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Everybody is being brief in their questions.

We're going to the five-minute round with Mrs. Kramp-Neuman.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Thank you.

Thank you to all of you for being here this afternoon.

My first question is this. What do you make of the fact that the government is reducing instead of increasing the resources in the north, specifically with regard to the lack of heating for the fuel in Nanisivik and the fact that it only operates a few weeks of the year?

[Karen Hogan]

As I mentioned, you need to invest in so many elements in order to make sure you have good maritime domain awareness. Having the infrastructure that supports the vessels, the aircraft and the individuals who are operating in the north is essential.

We did highlight the Nanisivik naval facility. We saw that the budget was originally set at a certain level and then reduced. That reduction resulted in removing the ability to heat the fuel in the north, which then rendered that facility only operational for about four weeks out of the year. In our view, that's not good value for money. We recommended that we need to find better ways to support those vessels. In the absence of that facility, the Canadian government needs to look to commercial means or allies to help fill those gaps.

[Shelby Kramp-Neuman, Conservative, Hastings—Lennox and Addington, ON]

Perfect. Thank you.

In your report, it states there is “insufficient data about vessel traffic in Canada’s Arctic waters” and that the renewal of vessels, aircraft, satellites and infrastructure that support that monitoring has fallen terribly behind.

How high is the risk to our ability to do the monitoring, given how we are onboarding these new capabilities?