National Defence Committee on Feb. 14th, 2022

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Ms. O'Connell, you hit the nail on the head here.

We need a different recruiting model. I'll give you some examples.

We need more capacity for direct entry. One of the ways Germany fills, for instance, some of its cyber-trades is by creating a direct entry program for people with the specialized Ph.D.s in computer science and electrical engineering, and so forth. They make them lieutenant colonels and they remain lieutenant colonels for life. Why lieutenant colonel? It's because that's roughly the pay equivalent they would get in industry. We don't have anything like that here.

We need to relax the uniform requirements for some trades. If you're just sitting at a computer all day, do you really need to have these very stringent...?

We need to relax the requirements for fitness for some of the trades, but that's highly controversial, because it effectively means relaxing the universality of service requirement. Universality of service means that any member of the Canadian Armed Forces can effectively be deployed. I'm adulterating that slightly here.

If we can't attract enough resources, the situation is going to get worse. It's going to get worse for two reasons. One is that the labour market, as we all know, is going to get tighter, and the other is that we continue to have declining fertility rates in this country. As a result, you're not going to be able to find the people you need. Therefore, we need to rethink how we bring people into the organization.

Some of these are legislative constraints, which I can explain or write to you about, and some of these are cultural constraints whereby the Canadian Armed Forces just can't wrap its head around the fact that it might be possible not to have universality of service and it might be possible to take someone who has 15 years of experience in industry and bring them into National Defence and make them a lieutenant colonel, for instance.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you.

Wouldn't the same argument be made if you wanted to recruit more women into senior positions? If you haven't had women serving, or at the very least a very positive experience for women to be serving, to have that long-standing history will be challenging.

It's the same with racialized communities, indigenous people and on and on.

In regard to the other idea of having women serving, you brought up the point about the option of deployment at any point. Again, if you want women serving, does that not pose a risk also if a woman says, “Well, if I choose to have a family one day; is this an area I want to get into?” when there is this caveat that could be thrown at any point versus expertise? That's not to say that women who have families can't have that deployment, but the point is that if we need that expertise, we need to also be cognizant of the realities of their recruitment needs.

I will just add this before you answer, because I will run out of time: We are finding this is a challenge in police forces locally, and even recruiting firefighters when I was in municipal government, because we also have a changing cultural diversity of new Canadians who we are going to need to rely on in the labour force. Joining CAF or even firefighting services is not culturally something they have grown up with.

Sorry. I threw a lot in there, but can you see that these are also barriers that CAF is going to be continuing to experience, and is it all in the modelling and recruitment side that you see areas that can potentially fix this?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I don't know how such a thoughtful question gets answered in 30 seconds, so I'm going to ask our witnesses to respond over the course of the next few minutes as we go on to other colleagues.

We are at 5:25 p.m., colleagues, and we're just barely out of the first round.

Mrs. Gallant, you have five minutes, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

First, to Mr. Robertson: What do you suggest can be done with respect to increasing naval capabilities, given that contracts have already been committed to? They are already billions in cost overruns, and delivery dates keep on getting pushed down the road.

[Colin Robertson]

We probably have to be slightly more innovative, just as we were in the supply ships when we decided to basically refit two ships that were being constructed in the navy yard, which previously hadn't been considered.

We are interoperable with the United States. Basically, they are our principal ally. They're building a lot of ships, so maybe we should look to them. In the past we've looked to Chile, Spain and others for supply ships when we were down. I think we should be looking to other sources.

We should be getting ahead of the game on things like submarines. Perhaps we should talk with the Australians, although I'm not sure the nuclear submarine option is one we want to consider. We looked at it in the late 1980s and decided it was going to be too expensive.

Perhaps we talk to the Japanese. They are an important ally, and submarines are great value and are probably going to be in the future in the Indo-Pacific as well as in the North Atlantic.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Leuprecht, seven years and $7 million dollars to get an officer.... In the balance between discipline and the shortage of the higher ranks such as colonels, as you mentioned, how sensible is it for the government to enforce COVID shot mandates, given that the government claims 98% of the military are already fully inoculated? Are the inoculation mandates in the best interests of the national security of Canada?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

I might just correct you, Mrs. Gallant. It's $1 million and seven years for an officer, roughly, depending on the trade. It's much more expensive if you're a fighter pilot, for instance.

What happens if you have people who are unvaccinated is shown by the aircraft carriers in both the United States and France that were taken out as a result of the virus being carried on board. You can bet, Ms. Gallant, that our adversaries were paying very close attention, because they've just learned how to take out an aircraft carrier, war frigate or anything else that floats without having to fire a shot.

The resilience of the force in force posture is imperative if we believe that the Canadian Armed Forces needs to be an instrument that is ultimately available for the government when failure is not an option and you need to succeed, because you can't have a force that's down on its luck because of either a malicious or a biosecurity attack on our country.

Uniformed members already sign up for other types of restrictions when they agree to service in uniform, so I guess this is one of the elements that will now end up having to be added to that, not in terms of choice or no choice, but I see no way around that requirement to ensure the resilience of force posture, nor am I familiar with an allied military that sees a way around this requirement.

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

Thank you.

Everyone on that ship was vaccinated, apparently. That is quite important.

In 2014 Canada recognized the immediate need for a cyber-command, but at the same time we had this crush of new veterans no longer deployable due to injuries sustained in Afghanistan. The veterans already had security clearances and the warrior mindset. There was a local veteran-friendly transition program here in Ottawa, at Willis College, and they even developed a curriculum specifically for military cyber-defence.

Given that we're short 10% of mandated military strength, to what extent should Canada consider keeping injured but capable personnel trained specifically for cyberwarfare, since such activity can be conducted in Canada rather than having to deploy?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Mrs. Gallant, it's a fantastic question that we already wrote about 20 years ago, when we went to Afghanistan.

Under the Employment Equity Act, federal institutions have a mandate to proactively hire persons with disabilities. This has always been interpreted as hiring from the outside. For the armed forces, the challenge was always how to ensure that persons on the inside with disabilities—psychological, physical or other—as a result of deployments or missions would be able to continue to make a meaningful contribution to the organization they had chosen for employment, should they so choose.

We've made considerable inroads on that, but there's still considerable work to be done to ensure that we can provide for service members who choose to stay in, but that requires conversations about universality of service that I raised earlier on.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mrs. Gallant.

I'm going to take the next five minutes. I want to pick up on Ambassador Robertson's initial comments about reviewing the security architecture of Canada, which is long overdue. I share the view that the architecture is, if you will, post World War II, but doesn't really reflect modern realities.

I buy the core argument that our budget should be moved from about $25 billion to about $40 billion ASAP. I appreciate that I live in a political world, and that may not happen any time soon.

Given the limitations of politics, but also how politics reflect population, I would be interested in your thoughts of what a modern security architecture would look like.

[Colin Robertson]

The new challengers are such now.... We spent a lot of discussion in this particular hearing talking about cyber-attacks. That is something that is real and current. A few weeks ago, they closed down part of our department of global affairs, the Pearson building, and other institutions. They shut down part of the Newfoundland government a few months ago.

Latvia, for example, has a unit in its military, which is attached to and has direct access to the prime minister's office. It is constantly monitoring what's going on, both in cyber and another critical area, disinformation, which is something that parliamentarians care deeply about.

The new fields that are out there.... We've just had discussions, as Professor Leuprecht said, about using health as a weapon, and disease to close things down. There are all sorts of new threats. Climate is a challenge for us. It's certainly real to the armed forces, with our floods, fires and ice storms. That's when they get called upon. There's a whole new range of threats out there that we don't.... As you put it, we tend to take a look at things in a traditional sense.

We need to sit down and think about what our grand strategy is going forward. The national security part is a piece of it: Other countries look at their national security either on an annual basis or, as the Americans do, every four years with the change of administration. We seem to drag along and make incremental change.

Because our resources are slight, we'd be far better.... This is where, again, I would challenge this committee to say yes, we appreciate that we're not going to have the ability to do everything we want, but let's focus on the priorities. That's part of what this committee is trying to achieve. I applaud it and encourage it, and I wish you well, because you're on the right track.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Professor Leuprecht, I'm interested in your two-minute response to the security architecture going forward.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

There's a process and a substance question.

In terms of the process, I'm quite enamoured by what the U.K. did with the integrated review of foreign policy, defence, security and international development, which we treat as silos. There's an understanding that all of these are instruments of U.K. interests and a way to assert U.K. interests.

While I have some issues with some of the results that came out of it—one of the shortfalls of that review was that it was not at all coordinated with some of the allies and partners, and I thought there could have been more allied and partner input—it's certainly an integrated approach.

There's then a capability to translate what we come up with.... “Strong, Secure, Engaged”—whatever it might be—might be defence policy, but the government didn't call it a white paper for a reason. It was effectively out of date the day we introduced it. We have no plan for tomorrow's force.

What we need for tomorrow's force, as you rightly point out, Mr. McKay, if there is no new money, is to think about how we allocate and optimize the resources we have. I've long said our first priority isn't necessarily a bigger military. In fact, National Defence gave back $1.2 billion last year. Our challenge is to spend the money we have and make sure we have a better military, in particular a military that is better organized. Do you know that we spend a billion dollars a year, give or take, on tanks? We need to ask ourselves questions about what the optimal allocation is. That is ultimately a political question, not a question for Defence.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you for that response.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about tanks.

[A voice]

It's a tankless job.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

It's a tankless job, yes.

With that, Madame Normandin, you have two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would like to come back to the issue of recruitment and retention.

One of the things we've heard on the ground, from some of the people who are in the forces, is that there's one area where there's going to be a lot of demand in the future, and in which we're really falling behind: cybersecurity.

I will follow up on what you mentioned, Dr. Leuprecht. There is a need to have people who would be ready to be deployed. There is also the issue of transfers which comes up quite frequently.

So I wonder how relevant it is to continue to transfer people who work in cybersecurity, for example.

Shouldn't we make sure that there are as few transfers as possible of these people or their spouses?

This is often the problem, as one does not want to lose this necessary expertise.

I'd like you to talk to me about that, as well as the possibility of offering more teleworking opportunities in some of the military trades.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

If I may, Ms. Normandin, I will answer in English, because the answer is a bit complicated.

The Canadian Armed Forces now has an NCM military cyber-operations trade. We need the same thing on the civilian side. We need a classification we don't currently have, because it's easier to bulk up on the civilian side than on the military side.

Let me give you another example that is not human resources; it's public administration.

The DND corporate network and the CAF network are owned by ADM(IM). That person is doubled-headed, is both on the information management side and the chief information officer. What does that mean? We have a corporate network within which we run the military operations. The problem is that network security and offensive cyber are two very different problems. At present, the military operations side is actually under the civilian side of the department. That leads to friction and misunderstanding, but it also leads to different types of prioritization.

Imagine you had two competing attacks on the network. Your corporate senior network access goes down in Ottawa, and some access or some capabilities go down in Latvia. The current incentive structure is such that the DM and ADM(IM) would likely bring up the corporate civilian side first, because that's where their incentive lies in the way they're remunerated and in the way they report and so forth. We actually need a military side of the network that is run and operated on the military side.

Our dysfunctions on the cyber side are so serious that, in part, not only are we no longer being invited to the table with our allies, but in some cases we don't even know the table exists. We find out afterwards, because our allies find us so lagging and deficient in some of the capabilities we bring to bear. It's not just a cyber matter and defence matter; it is a matter of reputational risk.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We're going to have to end Madame Normandin's time on that depressing note.

We now have Madam Mathyssen, for two and a half minutes.

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

One of the things we were talking about on that retention side was whether it was necessary for a culture change. Is that drive necessary to make the CAF, and DND for that matter, a far more inviting and safe place to work, not just for women but for people of colour and people from equity-seeking groups?

One of the things that's been mentioned is that CAF should implement mandatory exit interviews. Everybody leaving the armed forces has to provide that necessary data. DND gets that necessary data to be able to improve those things.

Is that something that would help, and if not, why not?

The question is for both witnesses.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

That assumes that we have a disproportionate attrition problem among equity-seeking groups. It turns out that was the case in the 1990s, but in the 2000s the Canadian Armed Forces remedied that attrition problem.

The latest number I'm familiar with—and you can ask for those numbers; the Canadian Armed Forces has them and DGMPRA, the Director General of Military Personnel Research and Analysis, keeps those numbers—can show that we don't have a disproportionate attrition problem among certain equity-seeking groups. That doesn't mean we don't have problems that we probably should remedy within the organization, but I think the organization can show that it has remedied some of those lags.

It does have a problem with attraction among certain groups within Canadian society, that is to say disproportionately in urban centres, among women, but also interestingly among some ethno-demographic groups and socio-demographic groups. That's particularly interesting, because some ethnic communities sign up in considerable numbers and some don't sign up at all.

Rather than these big recruitment strategies in which we're going to spend how ever many million dollars to run some fancy television ad campaign, what we actually need is much more nuanced recruiting. The reserves, in particular in urban centres, are the ace in the hole, but again, they don't get the resources and they don't get the right people on the recruitment side. Those are the people who can also help to resolve some of the issues that were raised earlier about making sure we are more connected with the populations they serve.

Of course, your point is entirely well taken. The folks in uniform—the pillar that is there to defend our democracy, our prosperity and our security—must reflect our Canadian population.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

For our final four-minute round, I have Mr. Motz and then Ms. Lambropoulos. I don't see her on the screen, so if that could be corrected between now and then, that would be good.

Mr. Motz, go ahead for four minutes, please.

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

Thank you very much, Chair.

Mr. Leuprecht, you mentioned early on—and were cut off unceremoniously by the chair, unfortunately—a plethora of activities and actions and responsibilities that CAF has right now, which are exacerbated by the mandates from this current government.

What are a couple of things that CAF is doing right now that you think it shouldn't be doing, and that CAF should be doing right now but isn't? Keep in mind that I have only four minutes.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Mr. Robinson will have something to say here too, so I will try to keep it brief.

I think the three domains that are going to be the most important and the most contentious, and in which there's the most competition and the most transformation, are maritime, space and aerospace, and cyber. We need to disproportionately double down in terms of our efforts in those areas.

In terms of cyber—

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

Okay. I'm sorry. I have one more question. You mentioned cyber. I'm going to cyber right now.

Both Your Excellency and Mr. Leuprecht, the U.S. has indicated that it's going after cyber-attacks like terrorism attacks. You mentioned over a year ago, Mr. Leuprecht, that our systems in the legislation are set up to protect us, basically, geographically, based on our borders, when geography doesn't apply anymore.

For both of you, should we also look at foreign-based cyber-attacks as a military issue?