National Defence Committee on Feb. 9th, 2022

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you very much.

The CDS spoke of the threat environment in Canada having changed significantly. Yet in the past two years, when our nation was most vulnerable, having a federal government lurching from one failed measure to the next dealing with COVID, the military was stood down. Troops were sent home, and they delivered Uber Eats to make extra money. They couldn't train. They couldn't even go to the gym, because the gyms were closed. The basic training that's so badly needed, because we're sorely in need of new troops, stopped altogether.

Whose order was that? Was that the order of the CDS, or was it a political decision to shut things down like that?

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Mr. Chair, that was a military decision based on the uncertainties in the spring of 2020, not knowing what trajectory the pandemic would take.

The machine restarted again in June, with the personnel production pipeline, the recruiting, the training, etc. We've learned and we've continued to evolve over the course of this pandemic, adjusting our measures and adjusting our practices to take into account the safety of our people, while at the same time delivering training and readiness and performing on operations.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

The CDS mentioned how important health is for the troops, and they're focusing on that.

The hospital at Base Petawawa was supposed to open in 2015. At last count, it still wasn't open in 2020. Has it opened yet for operations?

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Mr. Chair, I don't know.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

What is the plan to boost troop strength up to where it had been projected to be for this time, given that we have been in a no-train period for so long? Is there a plan to make up for lost time?

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Mr. Chair, let me just clarify that we have not been in a no-train situation for some time now. We paused operations for three to four months in the spring of 2020, but now we are in an operational mode where we're training, doing exercises and recruiting. As I mentioned earlier, the plan is to reinforce the recruiting system, to make changes to the recruiting system to streamline it and to make the personnel production pipeline more efficient. That's one end of the spectrum.

The other end of the spectrum is on the retention side. We've just recently published an armed forces retention strategy, a targeted retention strategy that focuses on those ranks, occupations and cohorts that need to be kept in. We need to retain—

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Is the cyber regiment up to strength and working yet?

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

In the armed forces, we don't have a cyber regiment. Several years ago, we stood up a cyber operator occupation. That occupation continues to grow, and it has to continue to grow because so much of our future is going to be based on what those very talented individuals do.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Are they exercising for multi-faceted scenarios, the different exercises we go through at NATO? It will start with a cyber-attack; then there will be a health attack, and then it ends up that it was all related to a kinetic military attack. Are our troops training for those types of scenarios actively?

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Yes. In fact, they are in operations every day. They train every day. They train with the director of CSE's personnel. They work and are employed with CSE personnel, as well. They work with our allies. They train with our allies.

However, have we broken the code completely on this yet? No. We still need to continue to develop, to train, to learn and to become better each and every day.

I'll ask Ms. Bruce if she has anything to add on that.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

She's going to have to add it in another fashion.

Maybe, as Mrs. Gallant's time is up, I'll ask the final five minutes' worth of questions.

Mrs. Gallant asked a legitimate question there, but I want to ask.... This committee is doing a threat analysis. That's our baseline. We're starting to look at it. It's blindingly obvious at this point that the risk of threat is up. You would know the threats better than we would.

The threats are literally around the world, and the two primary actors are Russia and China. I consider China to be an existential threat to this country. I don't consider Russia to be an existential threat in the same idea. The military is probably far more focused—maybe not far more focused but certainly focused—on the Russian threat, which is coming home to roost in the Arctic. If you see a map of the Arctic, you can see the militarization of the Arctic quite dramatically from the Russian standpoint.

Ms. Mathyssen picked up on a point about the readiness of the equipment, and I think the numbers were around 55% to 60% for aerospace. I've forgotten what the land and the sea numbers were, but both of them fell below the standards that are reasonable to expect. Whether or not they're aspirational standards, the numbers are certainly well below what any one of us would like to see.

You have a threat that's up and an ability to respond to the threat that's down. I'm sure that causes you some sleepless nights. I'd be interested in knowing how you intend to rapidly get the military, in all of its aspects, up to the ever-increasing threat level that we are observing at this committee.

[Gen Wayne D. Eyre]

Yes, you posed a question that keeps me awake at night, because those threats are real and our ability to respond to them is challenged by the challenges to our readiness: challenges to our equipment readiness and challenges to our numbers. The reconstitution of the Canadian Armed Forces that I've previously talked about is going to be fundamental to achieving that readiness into the future: rebuilding our personnel strength with the right occupations and the right culture, focusing on operations and operational concepts that need to be put in place, and working with allies.

One of the things I didn't mention before in terms of the reconstitution is reconstituting our relationship with allies. I firmly believe that one of our competitive advantages is being part of a system of like-minded allies and partners we can work with.

Finally, there's the modernization piece: continuing to invest the right staff into our modernization projects, as well as the new fleets of equipment that need to come in, making sure that we can get the procurement done on those and making sure that we have the force structure right for that. As we face increasing threats to our continent, the continental defence—NORAD—modernization piece is going to be absolutely critical as well, having infrastructure that we can operate out of in the Far North so that we can project capabilities up there.

You're absolutely right about what Russia has done. They have occupied many of their previously closed Cold War bases, opened some new ones and put in place what's called an A2AD, anti-access/area denial strategy, which basically gives them pretty firm control over their part of the Arctic Ocean. It's very similar to what China has done in the South China Sea.

We have to take a look, and we're developing the concepts as to how we can better operate and how we can better project our forces up to the extremities of our country. It's a multi-faceted approach, and it's a long answer to a very complex question.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I agree that it was a complex question, and you certainly made an admirable stab at responding. What I do worry about is whether we actually have any time for the luxury of thinking about this a great deal, given the increased threat analysis.

Colleagues, that does bring us to an end, but I do take note that Mrs. Gallant asked a question of CSE. I know that Christmas has passed, but we can open it up to see whether Ms. Bruce can answer the question put by Mrs. Gallant.

[Shelly Bruce]

Thank you very much, Chair.

I would note that CSE and CAF have a very long-standing partnership of almost eight decades of collaboration.

CAF's cyber-authorities were laid out in the “Strong, Secure, Engaged” policy, and CSE has its authorities laid out in the CSE Act. We have a clear national mandate for protecting Canada's most important systems and information and for conducting foreign cyber-operations as well, within certain parameters, and also a new authority to assist CAF with technical and operational support.

We have been working for the last few years together with General Eyre's teams to ensure that we can build the processes, the teams and the capabilities that account for our authorities when they come together and ensure that the governance is in place. That work is well under way.

Is there more work required? Yes, but it's a good-news story, I think, at this point, and together we believe that the blended authorities will give us sufficient range to manoeuvre across the fullest spectrum of cyber-operations.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Bruce, for that answer.

On behalf of the committee, I want to thank Ms. Bruce, General Eyre, Colonel Holman and Mr. Matthews for their two hours' worth of attendance here. It has been a good exchange, sometimes a tad acrimonious, but nevertheless a good exchange.

We look forward to your appearance before the committee in the future. In the event that you wish to come before the committee for something that maybe the committee is not summoning you for, feel free to reach out to the clerk or to me.

With that, we'll bring the meeting to an end.

We look forward to reconvening on February 14. At this point, colleagues, we have confirmed Mr. Rasiulis, Mr. Colby, Christian Leuprecht and one or two more that are pending. On the 16th, we will have Mr. Kolga, Mr. Fadden, Mr. Hampson and Dr. Paul Taillon. These will be at the next two meetings on threat analysis.

With that, the meeting is adjourned.