Evidence of meeting #6 for Public Accounts in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was equipment.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
Mr. Chairman, I would like to see the blues to make sure they properly capture the opening comments, if that's possible.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Don't give them to the minister, okay? Let's keep them between you and me.
Deputy Minister, Department of Public Works and Government Services
Mr. Chair, I would like to second that.
Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
I have just a couple of points. Number one, our world changed a little bit in the fall of 2006 after Operation Medusa, which I think you've actually heard about. I think it was probably the biggest firefight and the largest loss of life we've had in 50 years, or something like that. It was really kind of at that moment, as we moved into Kandahar, that the number of urgent operational requirements....
By the way, I would say that to be urgent, operational requirements have to first be identified by the commander of the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command in terms of what he needs on the ground. They are then confirmed by the Strategic Joint Staff. So there is an internal process in DND just to identify them, and then, obviously, to kind of convince our partners. Now we have guidance as to what an urgent operational requirement is and how we deal with it in terms of documentation.
To put it in context, out of the roughly $1 billion of procurement identified here, the approval is done over about a two-year period. During that two-year period, we probably procured for the Department of National Defence--not just for Afghanistan, but all up--somewhere in the order of $10 billion to $12 billion. So it is sort of a 10% number.
We have obviously taken the lessons learned and the challenges, especially around document availability and document preparation, in a very serious way. But our turning point really was around the time of Medusa in 2006 in Kandahar.
Dan, I don't know if you'd like to answer that.
Assistant Deputy Minister (Materiel), Department of National Defence
Thanks, Rob.
I don't have very much. Should our project approval guide have had a chapter on it? Yes, it should have. During our 10 years in Bosnia, we actually were occasionally under fire. We did take casualties in Bosnia. We had 100 soldiers who, largely through vehicle accidents and so on, lost their lives through that decade. But we didn't respond by trying to replace major systems at all during that period of time. Nor did we have to do it in Somalia or Kosovo--all those other missions. So this really was the first time in almost 60 years that we had to fix some stuff.
Perhaps just to elaborate on the deputy minister's comments, we were managing about 30 urgent upgrades to core army equipment all at the same time. The Auditor General looked at four of those projects. To some degree, we kind of made it up as we went along, with the Vice Chief's staff and his chief of program staff asking what the minimum documentation needed this week to get this project going would be. Some of those projects were relatively small. Some of them were less than $5 million, and they were at my approval level, which is delegated by the Minister of National Defence. Most of them--probably 12 to 15 of them--were at the Treasury Board level. Then, of course, you're dealing much more extensively with Public Works and the Treasury Board Secretariat and the Vice Chief.
No, we didn't have it in place. We do now. We figured this out. This process is very helpful in making sure that the next time we have to do it, we'll do it more smoothly and with fewer bumps and less stress.
NDP
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Shawn Murphy
Thank you, Mr. Christopherson.
We'll go to Mr. Saxton for seven minutes.
Conservative
Andrew Saxton Conservative North Vancouver, BC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to begin by echoing the words of my colleague, Mr. Christopherson, in his praise and thanks to the Assistant Auditor General, Hugh McRoberts, for the work you've done over the years. Thank you very much.
My first question is for the Auditor General. Auditor General, you recently came back from Afghanistan. Can you share with us some of the experiences you had there, specifically with regard to the equipment our troops have and how well equipped they are?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Thank you, Chair.
I was there, accompanied by Jerome and Hugh, for almost a week. It was five days. We met some 40 people, who briefed us on the operations they were doing there. And of course one important aspect of that was seeing the equipment being used.
I would say that everyone we met there was very proud of what they are doing. They were extremely professional, very articulate, and they were very pleased with the new equipment they had, to the point of saying that certain other forces from other countries were quite jealous. And they were saying that they had actually saved lives. So it confirmed for us what we had been told at headquarters about the importance of this equipment and how it is being used in the operations there.
Conservative
Andrew Saxton Conservative North Vancouver, BC
Did you have any first-hand experience with the armoured vehicles in question, which we're discussing today?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
I didn't. My colleagues crawled up on them and went in them. I chose to pass, though I did go--
NDP
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
No, I thought I would pass on that. But we did hear from them obviously about what happened. I did fly around in helicopters and go outside the base.
Conservative
Andrew Saxton Conservative North Vancouver, BC
Do you have any comments as to the larger context of how the management of Canada's mission in Afghanistan is taking place, based on your experience there?
Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
Obviously when we were there we were not conducting an audit, so I really can't conclude on it. My personal impression, from what we saw, was how professional people were and how very proud they were of what they were doing.
As well, I was quite impressed by the collaboration that seemed to exist, at least between the military and the various development projects going on. In Kandahar City, we visited the base project there, and we saw that people from the RCMP, customs, and various other departments and agencies were all working together on these development projects.
I thought that was actually quite impressive. We are looking at perhaps doing some work in that area as well, to see if there are lessons to be learned from how these different departments and agencies cooperated together on these projects.
Conservative
Andrew Saxton Conservative North Vancouver, BC
Thank you.
My next question is for Mr. Fonberg.
Can you explain to us exactly the situation we were faced with, when the urgent acquisition of these armoured vehicles took place?
Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
Are you referring to the situation in Kandahar province?
Conservative
Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
I probably could, but if I can, Mr. Chair, I'll pass it to my colleague, the lieutenant-general. He would probably give you a much more accurate sense of the situation we were confronting on the ground.
Lieutenant-General A. Leslie Chief of the Land Staff, Department of National Defence
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
In 2006, Kandahar had been largely untouched in terms of a strong, robust NATO-ISAF presence. The Canadian battle group, which later grew into a brigade minus, then arrived, and of course wherever we went, we found nests of the foe. Intense combat was routine, with asymmetric threat response specifically through mines and IEDs deliberately targeting those who are charged to protect the weak and innocent. In this case, it was Canadian soldiers who, speaking frankly, fought the good fight and literally risked their lives, and in some cases lost them in large numbers, doing that which their country expected them to do. It was lonely in Kandahar, because that was Canada's remit. For a long time, we weren't assisted by large numbers of other troops from other nations.
The urgency with which the operational requirements were identified almost always starts with a tragedy. Immediately afterwards, a bunch of military experts at my level gathered and determined what lessons we could learn from this tragedy. Is there an equipment acquisition that could actually help mitigate against it? Are there tactics or procedures that we can modify, keeping mind, of course, that the enemy always has a certain degree of initiative in initiating these tragedies?
The response between 2006 and now, of course, in my opinion, as the user, if you would, has been brilliant. There are a lot of hardworking folk in this town and elsewhere giving the soldiers the kit they need.
I don't know if that's a concise enough summary, sir. Perhaps I'll just leave it at that and see if you have any subsequent questions.
Conservative
Andrew Saxton Conservative North Vancouver, BC
Thank you.
Can you specifically share with us how these vehicles have improved the situation for our troops on the ground?