Debates of May 17th, 2007

National Defence—Main Estimates 2007-08

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Chair, I would like to thank the minister for being here tonight to discuss the estimates. The official opposition gets to pick which two ministers do this and I guess he has been twice lucky with the Liberals. I have a number of questions for the minister and I hope that he finds them fair.

I am going to ask a basic question about the spending plans of the government with respect to Afghanistan, as a follow up to the last time the minister was in committee of the whole in November.

The minister stated then that the incremental costs for the mission in Afghanistan to date was $2.1 billion. He estimated that there will be a further $1.8 billion expended. He estimated that the cumulative incremental costs to February 2009 and also bringing the Canadian Forces home would cost $3.9 billion.

In light of some of the purchases that have taken place, the tank purchases and other procurement decisions that the government has made recently, I want to ask the minister to tell us what the total incremental costs of the mission will be, and further to that, what exactly has driven up the total estimated costs to date?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Chair, the incremental cost as of today is about $2.6 billion. By the end of February 2009, $4.3 billion is our estimate at the moment including any costs in withdrawing.

What has changed the figures from the previous ones is that we have added some soldiers there. There are a few hundred more soldiers. They cost money. There are more machines there. We brought in a tank squadron. The operating costs while it is there add to these costs. That is the difference.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Chair, I take it the government is not including in those costs the costs of any equipment?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Chair, I do not include any substantive equipment. There might be minor equipment which would be included, but not substantive equipment because we are going to use it for 20 years: aircraft, tanks, trucks, whatever.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Chair, can the minister give us the DND full cost of the mission then? This is the number that his department does track. Can he tell the House what that sum is?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Chair, I can give the member the full cost as of today. That includes salaries of troops that we already have and will have no matter what. That is why, although we can give the full cost, it does not reflect the cost of Afghanistan because those full costs were absorbed in the rest of the department.

As of today, the full costs are $6.1 billion. I do not have a figure for the future because we have to wait to see how it evolves.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Chair, this House and the Canadian people have been promised a defence capabilities plan for a long time now, for at least six months, if not probably longer than that.

How far long is that plan? Is the government using that plan as it produces it to inform its own procurement costs?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Chair, the Canadian Forces defence strategy, which is what we call it now, is well advanced in the government system. I anticipate it will be public within a month or two. Yes, we are using it as the guide for our acquisitions.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Chair, in terms of the department's handling of the detainee issue in Afghanistan, I really have to say that it was the first question that I asked the minister in the House of Commons the very first day that this Parliament sat. I requested at that time, over a year ago, that the agreement be redrafted.

I said it was a deeply flawed agreement that was agreed to under the previous government. It did not have any provisions for follow-up by Canada. It had no veto on onward transfer of prisoners and it did not have the same strong provisions that other NATO countries had in their agreements.

I asked the minister about that in committee as well. I asked the CDS about it in committee, and I asked department officials about that agreement over the course of that year in committee.

The minister's response at that time was that there was no intention of redrafting the agreement. The CDS and the officials of the department really kind of brushed off my concerns.

Why did it take so long for the minister to acknowledge the deeply flawed agreement and the problems within that agreement? Why did the government have to wait until human rights activists took it to court before it acknowledged the depth of the problems and then did redraft it?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Chair, let me say first that since I have been in the department, no defence official has ever informed me of any abuse or torture of any detainee. Zero, none. There are a lot of hints and things out there, but there has never been a case brought to my attention.

Rather than going into the past, I think we should appreciate the fact that we have now an extended agreement that is improved over the previous one signed in December 2005 by the previous government. This agreement guarantees human rights access. It guarantees officials from our government access. It also guarantees that the Afghan authorities will reduce the number of detention centres where Canadian detainees will be placed so we can track them better.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Chair, I understand that the minister was not given graphic incidents of actual torture that may have taken place. I do understand that.

The fact is, though, that the government's own Department of Foreign Affairs produced reports year after year of the potential of abuse and the knowledge that abuse and torture did take place in Afghan prisons.

The new agreement is much better than the previous one. In terms of the enforcement of the agreement, I would ask the minister to take time to tell us how that agreement is being implemented. I am particularly interested in section 7 where the agreement talks about detainees being held in a limited number of facilities by the Afghans. Can the minister give us an idea of how that section of the agreement would be implemented and monitored?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Chair, this question is more properly in the domain of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

I will try to answer her question, but just so the member understands the defence department is responsible to conduct operations, operate the PRT and assist with development. When and where our forces get individuals of interest who become detainees, they process them properly in accordance with all the rules of war. Then they hand them over to the legal Afghan authorities.

That is where the defence department's responsibility ends as a department. It is not where the government's responsibility ends but the defence department's. I answer for the defence department.

I do not know the details of how it is going to be done because that is within the domain of the foreign affairs minister, but we have officials working with Afghan officials now to ensure all these details are worked out.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Chair, I understand that, but I want to ask a few more questions on it. If the minister is unable to answer them, that is fair enough.

The new arrangement gives full access to the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, the Canadian government and the UN human rights organizations. I would like to know who the government is considering to send in as monitors. Will they be fully trained as human rights monitors as there is specific training around that and, therefore, will they be able to spot signs of mistreatment?

Also, has the government used that right of access to date and how often is it planned that monitoring would take place?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Chair, the only part of that question I know for certain is that we have used the right of access. We used it in the foreign affairs committee the day I said we had a verbal agreement. We used it that day. I do not know subsequently because it is not within my area of responsibility. The member would have to ask the foreign affairs minister.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Chair, section 5 is a very important provision in the agreement. It requires that the Afghan government notify us if it wishes to transfer a detainee to a third country. I am sure most people think that a third country would be the U.S., but given that there are Uzbek militants involved in the border areas, they could be taken as detainees as well and possibly transferred to Uzbekistan.

Would National Defence be involved in granting a request or would it be another department?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Chair, I believe foreign affairs is responsible for coordinating the Afghan effort and it would be through the Department of Foreign Affairs.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Chair, I will move on to procurement.

When the Standing Committee on National Defence first got involved in its study on procurement, the first question that I asked on February 6 was who the lead minister was and who had the final responsibility on defence procurement. The minister answered that there was no final responsibility on defence procurement. That is on the record.

Is the minister still of that view and who in cabinet would be responsible if there were a major crisis or a real problem with defence procurement?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Chair, at least four ministers get involved in procurement: the defence minister is responsible for the requirement and the funding, the public works minister is responsible for the contracting, the industry minister is responsible for industrial benefits, and the Treasury Board President is responsible to make sure that the money is authorized to be spent.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Chair, I understand that, but I still want to know who has the final authority or responsibility for procurement in the Department of National Defence.

Pierre Lagueux, who was the former assistant deputy minister of materiel, appeared before the committee not long after the minister did. I asked him about the minister's response and he said, “I've read the transcripts, and I've been watching the committee with interest. To be quite frank, I'm a little surprised at that”. Mr. Lagueux went on to say further that in his time at DND, “it was clear to me who was going to hang if things went wrong”, namely the Minister of National Defence.

Would the minister agree that he is actually the minister with final responsibility for defence procurement?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Chair, I will admit that the Minister of National Defence, and that is me at the moment--

[An hon. member]

And for a long time.

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

--and for a long time I hope, is responsible to ensure that the military gets the equipment, buildings or whatever it needs, so that if eventually the product coming out was not acceptable then, yes, I would step in because I have the money and he who has the gold rules.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Chair, another issue that I have raised a number of times is the need to replace the fixed wing search and rescue planes. It is something that is very important not only to me, but to the people in my province of British Columbia, because of the geography, the mountains, the ocean, for all of those reasons.

Their replacement was announced three years ago. Could the minister to tell us how long it will be before there are replacements for the 40 year old Buffaloes that are used in British Columbia for search and rescue?

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Chair, as I answered previously to the another member, the search and rescue project is being reviewed now for options. The air force requirements people, as I understand it, have not come to me with their proposal, but I think they have been recalculating and deciding perhaps on another approach.

However, I have been assured that the current fleet of aircraft will continue to operate until they have a solution.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

They are falling apart.