Evidence of meeting #54 for Public Accounts in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was numbers.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Michael Ferguson  Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada
John Forster  Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence
C.A. Lamarre  Commander, Military Personnel Command, Department of National Defence
André Demers  Commander, Canadian Forces Recruiting Group, Department of National Defence
Susan Truscott  Director General, Military Personnel Research and Analysis, Department of National Defence
Gordon Stock  Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada

4:35 p.m.

Conservative

Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB

Some are open and some are not.

4:35 p.m.

LGen C.A. Lamarre

That's right. Twelve were reduced in 2012-13. That resulted in some loss of personnel who had been manning them. What we're doing right now is re-equipping the recruiting group with those personnel to be able to process files. There has also been a shift in how files are processed. Earlier, a question was asked about a guy or a gal presenting themselves to do the recruiting. Now we encourage online applications, and most of our recruiting hits come from there. That is how they are coming in to be seen. I think that's important.

If I could also quickly talk about.... You mentioned going and getting people specifically. We have moved away from large newspaper advertising campaigns because the research shows that where you get the most bang for your buck is through social media. But it's not unique. At the same time, we are doing other campaign efforts to make sure that we attract very specific groups.

We have groups that are working towards their initiatives, working to attract indigenous candidates to come work with us. Some of these programs, like Bold Eagle and Raven, are experiential. You bring them in for a period of time, expose them to what the military does, and pay them while they're doing training like any other recruit, and they are given the opportunity to participate in that. It's experiential.

We'll do the same thing with the women in force programs that are going to take place both in Borden and in Saint-Jean—two pilot projects, one in an August time frame and the other one in the fall—where we're going to bring in women to have a chance to see what it's like so they experience this as well.

Finally, there is a tremendous amount of outreach that goes on within specialized environments. For example, our surgeon general has a four-man recruiting team that looks specifically to recruit medical personnel, reaching out to medical faculties across Canada to let people know what they have the opportunity to do by joining the Canadian Forces as medical people.

4:35 p.m.

Conservative

Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB

That's the students' end of that. My wife is a doctor, so I'm a little curious about this. Do you also do it through existing programs, say a residency program, for doctors with 10 to 15 years of service?

4:35 p.m.

LGen C.A. Lamarre

There is that opportunity. If somebody wants to join us right now, there is a bonus for them to join us a general duty medical officer. After that, what we tend to do with these individuals is to give them a specialty in family medicine, which is a good base to prepare them to serve. At the same time, if you have bone surgeons or anybody like that who would like to join us, we're happy to take them.

4:35 p.m.

Conservative

Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB

My wife is a general surgeon, so I'll pass that along to her.

4:35 p.m.

LGen C.A. Lamarre

Okay.

4:35 p.m.

Conservative

Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB

I want to talk specifically about pilots. We talked about pilots a bit last time you were here, Mr. Forster, and about the types of fighter jets that were being procured—or not procured, depending on your opinion around the table. Does a long-term commitment to a specific type of plane impact the recruitment process, positively or negatively? For example, a fighter pilot would know how to fly one type of plane but may not be specialized in another type of plane. Does that factor into recruitment? Have we seen some uncertainty in that over the last few months perhaps?

4:40 p.m.

LGen C.A. Lamarre

We have not seen uncertainty, but you're right that different planes require different qualifications. We see that some of our pilots who travel through their careers will fly different types of platforms. At that time we have to provide training for that specifically.

As far as recruiting pilots is concerned, because that's the area of specialty that we're in, we attract and we recruit them. The level of training that we provide is basic training. The training that must be provided to them for specific platforms is provided by the air force, so that's an area that's more within the wheelhouse of the commander of the air force.

4:40 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson

Thank you, Mr. Lamarre.

We'll now move to Mr. Arya, please, for five minutes.

May 3rd, 2017 / 4:40 p.m.

Liberal

Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Ferguson, the Employment Equity Act says that “designated groups” include women, indigenous peoples, visible minorities, etc. In the previous audit's findings, you mentioned that “there was no comprehensive plan to attract more applicants, particularly women, Aboriginal peoples, and visible minorities”.

In this current audit, did you examine the representation of designated groups other than women?

4:40 p.m.

Gordon Stock Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada

We did look at it from the perspective of updating our evidence from the 2002 and 2006 audits. We found that after those audits, there were programs put in place to increase the representation of aboriginal peoples to try to increase their representation. Those programs were quite successful, so at this point we have not continued to discuss those. I think it is possible to actually increase the representation of these groups if the programs are targeted specifically to those groups.

4:40 p.m.

Liberal

Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON

In your view, there is adequate representation of aboriginal peoples and visible minorities in the Canadian Armed Forces.

4:40 p.m.

Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada

Gordon Stock

I think that is an area that continues to be a bit of a struggle, trying to attract those people to the armed forces. I don't think it's an insurmountable problem as long as the programs are designed specifically for those groups.

4:40 p.m.

Liberal

Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON

My point is that you looked specifically into the representation of women, which is important. We all want that equity, and we need more women in the Canadian Armed Forces. There's no question about that. At the same time, the Employment Equity Act also states that we have to look at the other designated groups. Was it looked at? What's the current state of representation there?

4:40 p.m.

Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada

Michael Ferguson

Fundamentally, we ended up focusing on the recruitment of women because between 2002, 2006, and 2016 we didn't see any improvement. We saw that there were some programs in place for the other groups, and there seemed to be some progress. Again, it's one of those scoping decisions when we are involved in an audit.

4:40 p.m.

Liberal

Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON

Did you look at how many of the women were indigenous or visible minority?

4:40 p.m.

Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada

Gordon Stock

No, we did not.

4:40 p.m.

Liberal

Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON

Okay.

Mr. Forster, I'm glad you noted the statement by the minister and the chief of staff that diversity is strength. We in the government are now asking that major private corporations state their diversity policy. The bill is currently going through the process. According to the bill, all major corporations have to state what their diversity policy is. The government did not define diversity there, but at the committee stage, at my insistence and the insistence of my colleagues, we have included it that the diversity policy cover the designated groups under the Employment Equity Act.

I'm happy to note that your goal is to have indigenous people at 3.5% and visible minorities at 11.8%. That's good, but what is the current status now?

4:45 p.m.

LGen C.A. Lamarre

I can give you the actual numbers of what we have right now. For women it's 15%, for the indigenous population it's 2.5%, and for visible minorities it's 6.3%. Those are the numbers of what we're tracking.

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON

It would be almost double, then, to go from 6.3% to 11.8%. There's a big gap there.

I see that you've launched a campaign on Facebook and Linked In. Have you targeted the ethnic media too? If you want to attract ethnic minorities, it's required that they be reached out to.

4:45 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence

John Forster

Yes, we are doing that. The minister has driven us very hard to do that. He's been one of the strong advocates for our need to get very focused and targeted in our recruitment if we're going to be successful. In those communities we have to find leaders and spokespersons and champions.

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON

My last question is on the bilingual requirement. In many ethnic communities English and French are the third and fourth languages.

4:45 p.m.

Deputy Minister, Department of National Defence

4:45 p.m.

Liberal

Chandra Arya Liberal Nepean, ON

There's the perception and an assumption that when joining any government service, including the Canadian Armed Forces, bilingualism is a must. Is that a requirement?

4:45 p.m.

LGen C.A. Lamarre

No, sir, you don't need to be bilingual. We want you to be able to operate in one of the two official languages and of course we provide training in the other official language as well.

We do that based on where you are in your career path, but also, for example, a young francophone soldier getting posted to Edmonton will have access to language training there so that he or she can operate properly in that environment.