National Defence Committee on Dec. 5th, 2023

[Alyssa Truong]

I have not experienced that personally, so I can't express that personally. I have heard anecdotal reports of that, yes.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Sergeant Banks, you said that in some of the buildings—not necessarily a dwelling, but buildings—it is normal to see warnings about things like lead paint chips and asbestos or other health hazards.

[Christopher Banks]

The warnings are often just verbal. It's not like there are always signs posted.

The Brampton Armoury suffered lead paint for, I think, six years before we had a remediation. There's still asbestos in the building, but we were told as long as we don't disturb the floor tiles—which is where the asbestos is contained—it'll be fine.

However, then we have contractors coming in and drilling holes in those same tiles to run cat 5 wires for the new IT system.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Would you consider these typical dwellings to match up with what a normal Canadian would consider a pleasant living quarter for them to raise their family?

[Christopher Banks]

"Average” is a pretty subjective word. I would say that it is pretty typical for some rundown urban centre houses, but not very typical for suburban houses, which are typically better maintained.

It's a flawed comparison, I think.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Okay.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Kelly.

Mr. Fisher, you have five minutes.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much to our witnesses.

Sergeant Banks, it's nice to see you again. Welcome back to committee.

I'm interested in military families. Of course, it's important that we recognize when a military member serves, their military family serves as well. In fact, I said at the last meeting that we owe military families a debt of gratitude. Military spouses support their loved ones in so many ways, serving both here and serving abroad.

Ms. Hill, I understand your research focuses on military families here in Canada. I'm interested in if you've had a chance to study supports for military members and their families in other countries.

[Shannon Hill]

Thank you for that question.

From my research specifically I was looking at the relocation and school transition experience within Canada. In saying that, some of the families I did speak to certainly had experiences relocating outside Canada.

From a support perspective, what some people might not know is that when military members and their families are posted outside Canada, they have to undergo quite an extensive screening process across various domains, one of which is child and youth education. This is to make sure that their children will have access to the same quality of education that they would if they were to stay in Canada. From my knowledge, military members and their families don't undergo that screening process when they stay inside Canada. The families I spoke to mentioned feeling that they had more support leaving the country. That's not to say there are certainly supports within Canada.

The focus of my study was specifically within Canada, but some of those points about the experience outside Canada came up.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I have another question that I want to ask.

Is there a country you're aware of that does it really, really well that we could take a quick look at?

[Shannon Hill]

That's a great question. I don't think there's enough research for me to be able to answer that.

Again, I think more research is warranted, particularly on the experience outside of Canada.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Okay, thank you.

Ms. Truong, my riding is home to CFB Shearwater. We have a military family resource centre, and it's an incredible resource for that community and military families.

We had a chance to chat with officials, and so I will ask this question.

In 2018, we invested new funding to modernize the military family services program and provide additional supports to military families.

You do an awful lot of work, and you've been recognized for that work with military family resource centres. How important are the MFRCs to ensuring that military families are supported, especially as it pertains to relocation?

[Alyssa Truong]

They are vital. Without supports, I don't think that families would be able to traverse the number of moves they have to do.

As you noted, you're in Shearwater. Every MFRC is very different, depending on the demographic they serve. We've had two different experiences between Greenwood and Borden. I would like to also see a little more levelling of the playing field with that too, because it can be very stressful to try to traverse moves, schools, health care, etc.

They are an invaluable resource.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Absolutely. Thank you for that.

Ms. Hill, you listed off a bunch of things that would impact young people: going to school and furthering their education after multiple relocations. You talked about one example where somebody went to nine schools. I'm aware of someone who went to three different high schools in a three-year span.

You talked about clubs, sports, leaving friends behind, curricular gaps. You also said that there are some positives from this, but then you moved on. My interest was piqued on that. For someone who has never had to relocate, I struggle to think of what those positives might be, other than seeing this great country that we live in.

[Shannon Hill]

That's a great question.

To clarify, the note about the nine schools was that it's been reported in the United States that students can attend up to nine schools, and certainly that can differ.

I can speak from my personal experience of growing up in a military family in terms of the positives. Certainly it was challenging to have to move and to have to make new friends and change schools, but I was very fortunate for the experience. To this day, I've met so many incredible people whom I've stayed in touch with. I know people all around the world.

A lot of the adolescents I spoke to in my study also talked about being proud of living in a military family, despite these challenges.

I wanted to emphasize that, because I often find that the negatives or the challenges get focused on a lot. It is important to note that there are positives—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We're going to have to leave the answer there.

Mr. Champoux, you may go ahead for two and a half minutes.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

That's very interesting, Ms. Hill.

I want to revisit the fact that the CAF has to make itself more attractive to prospective members interested in a career in the armed forces. In our riding offices, when situations involving veterans come across our desks, the issue is always that the veteran can't access services they are entitled to and very much need. Many of the veterans I speak to say they want to give up because the idea of facing off against the beast of bureaucracy is just too daunting.

Sergeant Banks, you're telling us today that the living conditions in the CAF aren't necessarily any more enticing.

Why would a young person thinking about enlisting be interested in a career in the armed forces today? Does it still hold any appeal, in your view?

[Christopher Banks]

Sometimes it's easy to think that we're sitting here with a list of complaints like “I hated my career” and “I didn't have a good time”, but for everything negative I have to say, I also have a lot of good things.

I had some of the best experiences in my life. I met some of the best people in my life there. It's like Shannon said. It's the same thing. I have friends all over the world now. That's something that most people don't get to have. There's a lot of good that comes with it.

[Martin Champoux, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Nevertheless, there is a lot work to be done to make this bureaucratic beast better for people, both while they are serving and after they retire.

Do you think efforts are being made to fix the situation? It seems as though we are always hearing about the same problems, the same barriers, the same challenges, not just for veterans—who deserve to be treated properly—but also for serving members.

Are you hopeful? Are you optimistic?

[Christopher Banks]

I would say that there are a lot of genuine people within the military and supporting the military who do genuinely want to see improvement and who do genuinely work hard to make those improvements happen. They're small and incremental sometimes, but they do exist.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Madam Mathyssen, you have two and a half minutes.

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

Thank you.

Mr. Banks, you've talked a lot about the maintenance and property management on base, and those contractors, subcontractors and sub-subcontractors. I've certainly heard from a lot of the union representation that those services used to be provided by full-time public servants on base.

Could you talk about the feelings that exist now? You talked about it before, but go into a bit more depth about that relationship, I guess, with what you see in terms of those contractors and subcontractors on base.

[Christopher Banks]

I mean, on one extent, there are problems with the availability of contractors. There are so many contractors who get blacklisted because of the piss-poor performance—pardon my language—they do during the course of their contract, but because there's no one willing to take up our tender for the next contract, that blacklisted company gets hired to do the same terrible job all over again. That has always been a problem.

From my perspective as an OIC armouries, it was that they were trying to centralize so many services that the smaller armouries that were outside, like for Brampton.... We were pretty far outside of the city of Toronto comparatively. We were often forgotten because we weren't in that Toronto bubble, but we were still supported by the Toronto garrison.

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

Often, base commanders are forced because of the way the financial pots of money are split to go through those contractors, yet they're told that it saves money overall. Do you believe that is the case?

[Christopher Banks]

Given the number of times that we've had to spend money, to pull money from other line items to spend on fixing the gaps from the hired contractors who left, I would say that it's probably no.