National Defence Committee on June 16th, 2023

[Andrew Leslie]

I would argue that, when numbers are bad, there is an instinctive reaction to try to not be as transparent as one might hope for, as a member of the external public. Most of the numbers on equipment acquisition and the numbers of people in specific jobs are not good right now. As a matter of fact, they're borderline awful. It needs dramatic improvement, so there is a tendency not to be, perhaps, as transparent as one might wish.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

That's it for you.

Colleagues, it's Friday. Question period starts at 11, and I know a lot of members want to end at quarter to 11, but we do have the room until five to 11. Do we run a 20-minute round, or do I run a 10-minute round?

You want a 10-minute round. Okay.

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

Chair, we can't run late. We have to get to question period.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I know. There is a sort of Pavlovian response to get to question period.

With that, we're going to end up running two-minute questions, and the first one is from Ms. Gallant.

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

I have two questions, first for General Leslie and then for General Thibault.

General Leslie, in what ways does Canada diverge in procurement practices from the United States as opposed to being in lockstep when it comes to defence policy?

General Thibault, how do we extract major procurement like helicopters and fighter jets from the political football field where, in an election, it's “buy fighter jets” or it's this bread-and-butter issue? We have to take that away from there so that we can just get it done as the procurements come due.

[Andrew Leslie]

In the United States' system—and the United States arguably takes its security perhaps the most seriously among all the NATO partners, for obvious reasons—the service chiefs, the head of the Navy, the Army, the Air Force, the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard, each have purchasing authority under military officers. They don't go through the same slightly labyrinthian maze of approvals required where everyone has to not say no in the Canadian system. That takes time, and a lot of time.

In the American system, it's arguably a lot faster, more effective and with better output, based on the size of the American forces and the quantities of money that are currently available to spend on a program.

[LGen (Ret'd) Guy Thibault]

How do we get out of the political football field with these major capabilities?

I think that, when it comes to being able to explain why we need fighter jets and an army in a country like Canada, we should all be thinking collectively at both the political level and at the bureaucratic level how we explain this to Canadians. Ultimately, that's when you end up saying, “Well, we don't really need these kinds of capabilities”, and that's not an informed position. It's a kind of political statement that has no basis on real understanding of what the needs are.

I think that we start with what the threats are to Canada both at home and abroad and why any of this matters. I think we could all collectively be doing a much better job of explaining that to Canadians and to our elected officials.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. May, you have two minutes.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

In about one minute, General Côté, can you share examples of where procurement went well and the best practices we've learned from that which we could apply for future procurements?

[BGen (Ret'd) Gaston Côté]

A few examples with my past in the special forces is that we definitely had direct contact with the program manager or the item manager, and we clearly spelled out our requirements.

We always have a lot of homework to do whenever it comes to procurement. We also need to plug into the system in a way that they understand our requirements.

On the other hand, to go back to Afghanistan, there was a requirement that we procure CH-46 Chinook helicopters in order to save lives and to diminish the number of convoys that we had on the roads. It worked extremely well, except that, at the time, Chinook helicopters were in great demand worldwide, so we basically had to purchase used helicopters.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Thank you.

I have three incredibly experienced generals in front of me, and we've heard a lot about lists and priorities.

Starting with you, Mr. Côté, what should be the government's number one procurement priority?

[BGen (Ret'd) Gaston Côté]

In the short term, it's definitely all the requirements that actually have been highlighted, because of what's happening in Ukraine.

Second, and probably one aid priority, if you will, is everything that looks north. Definitely, we have ocean-going ships. We also now have ships that can navigate in frozen water like we have in the Arctic. But we definitely need to have a better understanding of what it entails with regard to military operations in that milieu.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

General Leslie, what is your number one priority?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

General Leslie, again, is going to have to work it in.

Colleagues, work with me here.

Madam Normandin, you have one minute.

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

I will come back to risk aversion. Should we make decisions more quickly, even if they might not be perfect? That would avoid choosing equipment that, even if it is next generation at the time of the analysis, will no longer be next generation when it's acquired because of the analysis time.

Should we be doing things more quickly, even if it means sometimes making mistakes?

[LGen (Ret'd) Guy Thibault]

Thank you. I'm glad you circled back to risk.

When it comes to our risk aversion that's been built into the entire system we have right now, we're penny-wise and pound foolish. A lot of that is for just trying to diminish risk as we're trying to move forth programs. Long-term costing to try to get things costed down to the nearest dollar when we're talking about multi-hundreds of millions of dollars is an example of the risk aversion we've built into the system.

I think the operational risk right now has to trump the rest of the risks that we're trying to manage through these defence procurements. When we're talking about the risks to the men and women of the Canadian Forces, as Gaston just talked about, getting them off the road was one of the examples of why the Chinooks were so important in Afghanistan.

There are many more examples where the operational military risks are being treated secondarily to programmatic or bureaucratic risks. That has to change.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Madam Normandin.

Ms. Mathyssen, you have one minute.

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

Considering the short amount of time, in a past meeting we heard very clearly, and we've heard it before, that without specific and more security clearances, people around this committee table can't do the work they need to do to consider the big questions they have to ask. Would you agree with that?

[Andrew Leslie]

As a former MP, absolutely. I believe you should have the security clearances required to whatever level you believe to be necessary within common-sense constraints, to have access to the information you need to make informed choices.

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

General Thibault.

[LGen (Ret'd) Guy Thibault]

I would totally agree. Obviously, when we're talking about public hearings, it's one thing, because obviously there are lots of very important national issues of security that have to be constrained from sharing publicly. But for parliamentarians to do your jobs, whether it be in the committee of parliamentarians looking at national security, it's really essential you have a better understanding.

I think that comes back to the earlier question of how we stop making these things political footballs. If we had a better understanding of really what's at risk, what the threats are, why these programs matter, that would go a long way, I think, to helping us not make these issues political footballs.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Ms. Mathyssen.

Mr. Bezan, you have two minutes.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank all three witnesses for their service to Canada. It's great having all three generals in front of us and participating in this important study.

General Thibault, you talked about the need to take on more risk. In looking at processes and procedures, does Treasury Board add a value, or is it part of the problems that we are dealing with in procurement?

Both General Leslie and General Thibault, could you talk about the issue of streamlining procurement? Can we do this through National Defence?

General Thibault, as a former vice chief of the defence staff, you had your hands on the procurement files. The threshold at Treasury Board right now of what National Defence can spend is about $50 million. Shouldn't that be higher, or should that just be completely moved over under one minister of accountability in the Department of National Defence?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You have about a minute, please.

[LGen (Ret'd) Guy Thibault]

Maybe I can kick it off quickly.

On the issue of risk, when the government came in and talked about the whole deliverology and the idea of ministers ministering their ministries and thinking a little bit about getting on with defence procurement, I think we were all quite excited about the opportunity. Really, on a risk basis, for those programs that are not risky, either in terms of their complexity, their schedule, the amount of money we're spending, clearly, those should be things that would be delegated, and more levels of bureaucracy would not be added to move those programs forward. What was disappointing to me was that something that was very simple in terms of starting to increase the Minister of National Defence's authorities in this respect, took 10 years to do. It started by our saying in 2010 to have a delegation to the minister, and it took 10 years to provide the minister with basic accountabilities for some of these, based on the low-risk program.

If we want to accelerate things, starting with the risk calculation, I think, is the real place to start. Unfortunately, even when the delegations are there, programs that have been delegated are still being called up to be reviewed at Treasury Board. I think that's a problem.