Public Accounts Committee on May 3rd, 2017

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

It's been bandied around the table here as though it was, so I point that out for the record.

[John Forster]

That would be my error. If I conveyed that, that was not my intent.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Secondly, how do deployment in the field—in theatres such as Afghanistan—and then withdrawal from deployment affect recruitment and retention, in terms of the numbers? We're using a pretty generic number, from what I read, that we need this many. Do you take into account any of the differing conditions, especially when we deploy people to theatre?

[LGen C.A. Lamarre]

Without having the exact numbers in front of me, I can tell you this. Being involved in an operation tends to draw recruiting and helps it along. Young men and women are interested by what is going on. For a lot of them, it strikes at that sense of not only adventure but a desire to serve Canada. We have to remember what led us into the war in Afghanistan. Our neighbours had been attacked, and 24 Canadians were killed in those towers. There was a surge of patriotism that was felt throughout the nation, I believe. That helped us at the recruiting centres clear across Canada.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

So—

[LGen C.A. Lamarre]

Sorry, if I can add a bit to that, we reached a point where we had to increase the recruiting that we did, to be able to sustain the number of deployments that we had. During the period from 2006 to 2008, or thereabouts, we increased our yearly intake to make sure we had sufficient soldiers, airmen, airwomen, and sailors who could go on these missions. We were successful in doing that.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

That's wonderful news in the sense that it isn't just a static number. It can depend on the situation. In the discussion here, we're using pretty static numbers, when you're saying they really aren't that static.

If I could ask for your confirmation, the highest percentage of people joining the forces would be when we deployed to Afghanistan. Is that what you're saying?

[LGen C.A. Lamarre]

No, what I'm saying to you is that any time there's a major conflict, you tend to have recruiting centres that are popular.

We just recently celebrated the 100th anniversary of Vimy. I can tell you that sounded the clarion call and people responded. The same thing occurred in the Second World War, and the same thing occurred during the Afghanistan war, to a lesser level because it was not as large a conflict. Nonetheless, we saw the benefits of that in terms of sheer recruitment.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Basic logic would then say that if we're no longer in Afghanistan, because we've withdrawn, the needs become somewhat less.

[LGen C.A. Lamarre]

No. We need to be clear about that. The need for the number of recruits we have is not based on the conflicts in which we are involved.

Right now we're involved in 19 different missions around the world. We are filling those mandates and those tasks given to us based on what the government has directed us to do. The numbers that we have in our establishment—trained, resourced, and everything like that—are based on what the government asks us to do.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

When we take on more responsibility, we have to bump those numbers.

[LGen C.A. Lamarre]

It depends on how much responsibility. It's the definition that—

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Let's say going to Afghanistan.

[LGen C.A. Lamarre]

If I may, I'll just talk about the responsibility for the tasks we have. They're very clear in the existing defence strategy about what it is that we are expected to do. Those numbers are given to us, and those are the number of people that we have to recruit, train, prepare, and have ready to go overseas. That's really what drives it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Thank you very much.

We'll go to Ms. Shanahan now, for five minutes.

[Brenda Shanahan, Liberal, Châteauguay—Lacolle, QC]

Thank you, Chair, and thank you very much, again, to the witnesses for being here today.

I want to explore those numbers a little more because I'm interested in comparing.... I guess I would talk about a funnel. For the recruitment process, how many people come in, how are they onboarded, who drops out? I'm thinking of other forces. It could be allies or it could be the RCMP.

I'd like to get back to that, but before I do, I just want to say that I had the honour and the privilege of being a civilian instructor at Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu during 2006-07. As you can imagine, I was not out in the field helping our soldiers. I was a financial instructor. I was thoroughly impressed by the program that was in place at that time to help recruits and officers with the financial pressures of being a soldier. I'm sure we could go into more detail about what those are. It was, to my mind, a state-of-the-art financial education, although I did find that there was a problem and I tried to address it with my superiors at the time. This would have been in the SISIP program. I have no idea what they're doing now. I must have taught over 4,000 recruits in a six-month period. They were coming in one door and.... I have to say, the saddest thing was when those who didn't make it had to go out the back door with their kit bags and take a taxi back to Montreal. That was sad.

I did not get a chance, as a financial instructor—and I was working with some of the support personnel and so on—to do financial counselling, which was a big pressure. It's under-reported, and I'm sure it's still a major issue today. Someone mentioned earlier the clean credit record. I don't have to tell you there's been a generational change between when we were 18 and couldn't even get a credit card, and an 18-year-old today who has 14 of them. I'm just pointing that out. It was something I tried to address. I did actually—even after I left to go and teach at McGill University in financial education—take it up with one of your ombudsman offices and so on, so I think some work was done there.

However, that was definitely a pressure that the individuals were reporting to me and we did not have a way.... There's a way you can get financial counselling once you're fully onboarded, but as a recruit, certainly the problem of delays would exacerbate that.

I want to get back to that original question about the numbers coming in. What does that funnel look like? What's the drop-off rate? Certainly the shorter time frame would go a long way in solving some of the financial problems that I witnessed.

[LGen C.A. Lamarre]

First of all, thanks for your observations about the financial counselling and the financial education. It is something we recognize. As part of our support program, there was an earlier question about how we supported the SISIP program, and the benefits that come from that include financial counselling. One of the things that we do is that we offer it up to have men and women provide that kind of advice to young people so that they can look after their financial well-being as well.

I don't know the answer as to how soon that starts. I know that all of our recruits are pretty busy, and the recruit training courses are not that long in duration. Therefore, we're hoping they're not showing up with that much of a financial problem for the first 10 weeks of their career. I know that they have access to these things.

Second, for the actual numbers of the recruits who we bring in on a yearly basis and who we manage to train through, we're looking at 4,500 every single year. We have a plan to grow that because, of course, we're short on what it is. In the course of the next two years, we want to raise that towards 5,000 and then continue to meet the targets that we have. Of course, that means that includes a full cycle of attraction of how you bring them in, how you do the basic training, if you will, and then how you coordinate with the environmental chiefs and their organizations. If you're going to be an infantryman, you leave the organization that these gentlemen represent and you go off to be trained at battle schools, if you will, that belong to the army. It's the same thing on the air and naval sides.

We want to make sure that we have good coordination with that so we can simplify that throughput.

I'll stop right now and ask if André has any other points he wants to add about the recruiting numbers.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Please respond fairly quickly because our time is up. I'll give more time.

[Col André Demers]

Roughly, we get 44,000 people who apply to become members of the armed forces. Last year, we recruited 4,542. We neck down from those 44,000 to that number of qualified, talented, motivated applicants to get in the Canadian Armed Forces. Why do they drop off? There are various reasons. It's very hard to collect data, because a lot of the time the applicant loses interest or stops his application file and we don't know why. The medical process is between the applicant and the medical chain. Hard data on how the funnel necks down is very hard to get.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

All right, Mr. Jeneroux, we're back to you. You have five minutes.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll go back to some of the earlier questions about recruitment and retention. You mentioned in your opening comments that you compete with employers across the country, largely for doctors, engineers, and social workers. You also mentioned that now you're moving away from recruitment techniques such as advertising in newspapers and more toward social media. However, you're also reopening the recruitment centres.

Can you help me connect some of the dots here in my mind? Are you looking at different demographics in opening the recruitment centres and in social media? Then, when it comes to the doctors, engineers, and social workers.... Some connection among all of these would be helpful.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kevin Sorenson]

Mr. Lamarre, go ahead.

[LGen C.A. Lamarre]

I just want to make a clarification. We are not reopening the 12 recruiting centres that were shut. What we're looking at with the injection of personnel is to make sure that the capacity that was lost, along with the personnel who were manning it, is there to help facilitate the processing of files for recruiting. That's the first thing.

[Matt Jeneroux, Conservative, Edmonton Riverbend, AB]

There is a recruitment centre in Edmonton, my hometown, inside Canada Place. Is that no longer open, then?

[Col André Demers]

It's still open.