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.
Commander, Canadian Forces Recruiting Group, Department of National Defence
CRFIMS 2 is already in place. The documents are digitized and the data is entered into the system. The files are tracked electronically, but we still have a paper copy. Everything is done electronically.
Conservative
Liberal
Paul Lefebvre Liberal Sudbury, ON
If you would be so kind, could you add that to the time of my turn? Thank you.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
All right. Thank you, Mr. Lefebvre.
Mr. Jeneroux, you have seven minutes.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Wonderful. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for being here today, and Mr. Forster, thank you for attending two days in a row.
Just quickly, I want to clarify something on page 5 of your comments, Mr. Forster. You mentioned that you want to meet the target of 28,500 primary reservists. Just for the record, can you clarify what you're at right now?
LGen C.A. Lamarre
Could I have just one second to consult on the exact numbers we have?
I believe it's around 20,000, but I'll have to undertake to come back to give you an accurate picture of the exact numbers today.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Okay, perfect. We'll work with 20,000 for now.
Like any organization that has a high level of stress and public scrutiny, I'm curious about your comments on staff morale. Do you have any specific programs in place to help raise staff morale? What is the situation now, and what types of programs do you have?
LGen C.A. Lamarre
Are you talking about staff morale in one specific organization, or in the Canadian Armed Forces as a whole?
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
You guys are here in front of me, so let's do the Canadian Armed Forces.
LGen C.A. Lamarre
Okay.
I would say to you that the morale in the Canadian Armed Forces is actually quite good. I'm not sure if you're referring to a specific incident or....
LGen C.A. Lamarre
On programs to maintain, you're looking at how we're looking at quality of life, perhaps, and to assist those pieces...?
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Yes. Let's say, again, it's a high stress job. I think you'd agree with me that there is a lot of public scrutiny involved as well, so what types of programs do you have available to individuals who would feel that morale is taking a bit of a hit?
I'll take your answer that it's good now, but are there certain programs in place?
LGen C.A. Lamarre
Let me address that in two parts. First of all, I'll talk about the morale of the uniformed members of the Canadian Armed Forces, and then I'll talk about the morale of the families.
First, what really drives morale in the Canadian Armed Forces and keeps it high is having good missions, good training, and good leadership. I believe in all those areas we have that clearly identified for members of the Canadian Armed Forces. We now have members of the Canadian Armed Forces deployed on 19 missions around the world, including places such as Iraq and Kuwait. We are also participating on the African continent, in the Middle East, and in Europe. In each one of these missions, our people have worthwhile goals that keep them well employed and well occupied so that they can make a difference.
This has to do with the quality of the training we provide our men and women. It doesn't matter whether you're flying something or part of a crew that's flying something, whether you're on a ship or in land formations, or whether you're in any of the support occupations, we put a high premium on high-quality training so that our men and women feel prepared for the jobs they do. Where we see this being received, and received well, is in how they're appreciated by the coalitions to which we belong. All of the coalition members, whether they are NATO organizations or members of some other organization, are grateful to have Canadian men and women in uniform. That drives the morale wherever we go.
On top of that, there's the leadership. We put a high emphasis on development of our leaders, and that includes not only leaders in the officer corp but also our non-commissioned members, our men. At the corporal, master corporal, and sergeant-on-up levels, we spend a tremendous amount of time developing leadership skills. You take that combination, along with some good support programs, and the next thing you have is a very high level of morale for our men and women in uniform.
If I can switch over to the families for a second, they are also something of great importance. You can say it's something we've been putting a lot of emphasis on. We've put in programs to support the families, whether it's recreational programs on bases or the military family resource centres, there's a tremendous amount of energy spent on making sure we support families.
I can't say we're exactly where we want to be. As a matter of fact, the CDS, with the support of the DM, is looking to make sure that our morale and welfare systems are well in place to support the families. When we're moving families across Canada from posting to posting, we ensure that they're well supported in those moves. We want to facilitate how those families are supported as they depart a location and how they get themselves into their new locations.
When you consider how we look after our members and how we look after our families, you see that we're putting forth a fair amount, actually a large amount, of effort towards making sure morale is good in the Canadian Forces.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
That's great. Perfect.
I was going to go down another line of questioning, but since we're talking about families and mobility, I'll stay with that for a moment. I understand that it's often a big part of the work you do, that mobility piece, having to move across the country, uprooting families, causing families to restart their lives, often in different locations. I'm wondering if you know off the top of your head how many members choose to leave each year in order to avoid mobility obligations. Do you keep those statistics?
Susan Truscott Director General, Military Personnel Research and Analysis, Department of National Defence
We don't have the specific reasons related to our exit release codes. Those would normally fall under voluntary releases. However, we do surveys. We do a “Your-Say” survey every six months to assess morale and well-being, and we do a family survey every two years to understand the complexities and challenges they're facing. We also have retention surveys, which are administered every two years, in addition to an exit survey. It is in the retention surveys, the exit surveys, and the family surveys that you see some of the indications of why individuals leave the Canadian Forces.
Conservative
Matt Jeneroux Conservative Edmonton Riverbend, AB
Do you do your best to limit some of these mobility obligations? Is that part of policy with the CAF?
LGen C.A. Lamarre
We have tried to make sure we only order moves when they are required. We found out a long time ago that if you have geographic stability it helps the family overall. That includes making sure that salaries aren't interrupted and those types of things. There is an effort afoot to make sure that when you're moving people it's for good reasons such as career development and filling key positions to make sure we can achieve our operations.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Kevin Sorenson
Thank you very much, Mr. Lamarre.
Now to Mr. Christopherson, please, for seven minutes.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you all.
Mr. Forster, thank you for returning, and thanks to our guests, also.
We are doing two defence chapters in just one week. Normally, I don't feel the need to do this, but it might just be a good time to insert the fact that the starting point for us is respect and appreciation for what the armed forces do. It's a difficult job, probably one of the most difficult in the entire nation, and there's a lot of respect for the work that you do. Our job is to work with you to make it even better for Canadians. We want to start by saying thank you for the service.
Having said that, after two years, Mr. Forster, I think you know that nothing launches me, anyway, and I think most of my colleagues, more than finding out that we're getting consistent audits over and over again that find exactly the same problems, and in many cases, many of the same promises to fix them, only to find out when there's another audit that the problems are still there.
I refer you to page one under Introduction, paragraph 5.5, where the Auditor General says, “The Office of the Auditor General of Canada conducted audits on the Canadian Armed Forces recruitment and retention in 2002 and 2006”. Over the page, paragraph 5.6 says, “Previous findings indicated ongoing, systemic recruiting challenges for the Regular Force in its efforts to counter higher rates of attrition and fill certain chronically understaffed occupations.”
In fact, on page 3, the Auditor General flat out says, “In our opinion, it is unlikely that it will be able to recruit, train, or retain sufficient personnel to meet its target of 68,000 members by the 2018-19 fiscal year”.
Either the Auditor General is wrong, in which case I give you the floor to make that case, or you have work to do that you don't quite yet know how you're going to do, or you have an ace answer that's going to satisfy all these concerns. But I have to tell you, the answer better be pretty good because this is the third go-around on the same issue and, sir, you know that when things are brought to you and they are still not fixed after three times, you would be getting a little upset. I eagerly await your answer.
