Debates of June 13th, 2016

National Defence

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my honour and privilege to participate in these adjournment proceedings as the member of Parliament for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, the riding that is the training ground of the warriors, Garrison Petawawa, the largest army base in Canada.

I also recognize the members of Canadian Special Operations Regiment, CSOR, their families, members of our Garrison Petawawa family. In the upper Ottawa Valley, every Friday is Red Friday.

I ask all Canadians to remember the brave women and men of the CSOR regiment as they proudly represent our nation in the international war against terrorism, with a special pause for Red Friday.

For the troops and their families that are watching these proceedings, I thank them. I have their backs.

My question for the Minister of National Defence regarding the disdain the Liberal Party has for the women and men who serve in Canada's military is based on the comments I have received from the people who matter most in this debate, the men and women who wear the uniform of a Canadian soldier.

When I was first elected in 2000, the wounds were still raw over the political decision by the Liberal party to punish all the members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment, over the actions of a few individuals, by disbanding the entire regiment.

The Airborne Regiment was thrust into the impossible task of trying to be peacekeepers in a war zone where there could only be combatants and peacemakers. The members and veterans of the Canadian Airborne Regiment deserved better from their government. They became a convenient scapegoat for the decade of darkness that followed our mission to Somalia.

The decade of darkness was kicked off in the 1993 election when Liberal Party leader Chrétien showed the Liberal Party's traditional disdain for our men and woman in uniform when he cancelled the Sea King medium-lift helicopter replacement contract. History is repeating itself today with the stall to manipulate the evaluation process on the need to replace the CF-18 fighter jet aircraft, and without a competitive tender.

We know what happened 10 years after the helicopter contract was cancelled. Canadian soldiers suffered preventable casualties on the bomb-laden roads of Afghanistan.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence has stumbled through the excuse that as members of a military coalition, other coalition members will provide for Canadian lack of equipment. We know from our helicopter experience in Afghanistan that countries look after their own troops first, and rightly so. Only after their needs are met may there be an opportunity for Canada to hitch a ride.

Under the Liberals, Canada had the reputation as the freeloader of NATO. Our troops had to beg for rides or contract for transport if it was available from other countries, because the Liberals refused to buy any new heavy-lift airplanes. Our troops were sent into the desert with forest green uniforms.

The Liberal record under the decade of darkness is clear. The Liberal Party refused to buy any new jets. It was our Conservative government that put an end to the decade of darkness. Every time we bought new equipment, the Liberals opposed it. Now they are again choosing politics over buying the best equipment for our troops. With that kind of record, nobody believes their misinformation. Why would anyone believe them when the facts are clear?

What was truly unfortunate in the response from the Minister of National Defence, when he responded to the fact that Liberals held the men and women who proudly wore the uniform of a Canadian soldier in utter disdain, was the complete distortion of the liberal record of the last 20 years. The Liberals slashed and burned, resulting in a decade of darkness, as so stated by the former chief of the defence staff, General Rick Hillier.

[John McKay, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, I have to give the hon. member credit for her continuing attack on the so-called decade of darkness. She has a talent for non-sequiturs that is really quite breath defying.

The member started out by saying that they are proud of our military history. Of course, we are all proud of our military history. She said that the Liberal budget is a deceitful betrayal. We have jumped from being proud of our military history to the Liberal budget being a deceitful betrayal. There are no facts to actually support anything having to do with the proud military history or the concept of a deceitful betrayal.

The member said that the Liberal defence review is a shameful attempt to cover up the disdain of the Liberals. I have not even gotten off the ground with respect to the defence review. We have not had one in 20 years. Maybe it is just a basic good idea to start with finding out what the people of Canada want from their military. It is, after all, a massive operation. It is an $18.6 billion operation. More than 100,000 people work for DND. It has the sixth-largest budget in Canada, after the federal government and the top four provinces. It is a massive operation, yet the Conservatives say to just keep on doing what they were doing.

What they were doing during that last 10 years, that so-called decade of enlightenment, was melting down the previous budget by $3.3 billion over four years. They never actually got to the point of acquiring the equipment the men and women actually needed. The replacement for the ships is having to be rescued by our government. We are having a go at the jets, because the Conservatives did not get the jets done. There is a whole raft of procurements that have yet to be dealt with, and there were the last 10 years in which to deal with them.

As I say, it is a collection of non-sequiturs. If we actually raise some inconvenient fact, such as what happened in the last four years, the contraction of the budget over the last four years, that had to do with adding to the national debt by $150 billion. Someone had to pay for that. The biggest program spending in the Government of Canada, of course, is DND, and DND had to contribute its share to the deficit-reduction program created in the first place by the mismanagement by the Conservatives.

I just want to point out that with respect to the defence review, it is an important initiative on the part of this government. It is rather important that we as politicians, we as ministers, we as members of the government, ask Canadians what they want out of their military. What is it they are prepared to spend? There are all kinds of threats out there. Our first and foremost defence is the defence of Canada. Second is the defence of North America, and of course, all of that is interwoven with a variety of expeditionary missions that require our presence, whether they are NATO missions or UN-mandated missions.

This is a massive operation and is something Canadians need. We are hardly showing disdain for Canadians. Rather, we are appreciating that Canadians should have a lot to say about their own military.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, under the Conservatives' watch, the defence budget increased from $14.5 billion to $20.1 billion in 2014-2015 on a cash basis, up 38%. Our budget boosted the built-in annual increases for baseline defence spending from 2% to 3%, starting in 2017, which would have added almost $12 billion over 10 years to defence budgets.

The significant progress we made in procurement and operational capabilities is even more remarkable when we consider the pathetic state of affairs in 2006 after 13 years of Liberal incompetence and neglect. We modernized our military armoured vehicles, tanks, patrol planes, and frigates.

We acquired new air transport capabilities that Canada has never possessed before: five C-17 Globemasters; 17 C-130J Hercules tactical transport planes; and 15 Chinooks. Further, Canada began to take possession of the new CH-148 Cyclone maritime helicopters for search and rescue operations.

We launched a $36.6 billion state-of-the-art, made-in-Canada shipbuilding program, the largest in Canadian peace-time history, including the new—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member misses some rather salient facts.

While she says that the budget spending ramped up to $21 billion and that was largely driven by the operational needs of Afghanistan, she neglects to mention that by the time this government came into power, it then melted down to about $18.6 billion.

The member also neglects to mention that the built-in escalator actually increased the budget this year by $301 million.

As well, she neglects to mention that the $3.7 billion was re-profiled into later years, in part because the so-called procurement program, which she thinks is such a terrific program, is actually not delivering the ships that the men and women in uniform need to have.

Therefore, there is a collection of failures in the Conservatives' so-called decade.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Mr. Speaker, just on that last comment, I have to correct the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence. Our Armed Forces know that they got the equipment they needed when they needed it, and that last comment was completely out of line.

I am rising on a question that I raised back on April 11 when General Jonathan Vance, our chief of the defence staff, said that the battle against ISIS has no end in sight. He went on to say that Canadians should prepare for more Canadian Armed Forces casualties with the expansion of the mission on the ground in Iraq.

I questioned the Minister of National Defence on whether or not the withdrawal of our CF-18s was a mistake, since they had already played such a significant role in protecting Canadian special operations forces on the ground during battle and in actually eliminating the jihadi genocidal death cult that we call ISIS.

I want to remind the House, and Canadians who are watching, that Falah Mustafa Bakir, who is the foreign affairs minister for the Kurdistan Regional Government in northern Iraq, said in reference to Canada that:

We would like to tell them that the air strikes have been effective, they have helped us a great deal. They have helped save lives. They have helped to destroy the enemy....

And if it were for us [to decide], we request that to continue.

Therefore, they knew that the CF-18s provided much-needed support to the Kurdish peshmerga on the ground and the Canadian special operations forces who were there. That was again reiterated last fall by Jabar Yawar, who is the chief of staff for the Kurdish Regional Government and the peshmerga ministry. He said, “It is a bad news for us. Canada was a major partner in the coalition and it was a great help to Kurdistan”.

Unfortunately, we saw the air strikes quit and the risk factor to the Canadian Armed Forces increase with the increased number of trainers that are now on the ground.

I want to go over what happened after we announced that we were pulling out the CF-18s.

On February 8, the Government of Canada announced that the CF-18s were coming home. On February 22, they were withdrawn. In anticipation of that, on January 29, the Dutch government decided to pick up the heavy load and carry what Canada was sloughing off. The Dutch put six of their F-16 fighter jets into the air campaign and expanded it so that it also covered Syria as our CF-18 jets had been doing. Then, on April 21, Denmark, another very dependable coalition partner, added in seven of their F-16s to go into Syria and Iraq to cover the shortfall left by Canada pulling out our squadron of CF-18s.

The air strikes are still having a major impact. The governor of Kirkuk is now saying, on the attack that is coming up on Fallujah and taking back ground in Mosul, that if they do not have air strikes, they probably will not be able to take the city. He is saying that the Kurdish peshmerga and special operation forces from Canada and coalition partners have to have it.

The air strikes, just last week, reported on Iraqi TV that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who is the leader of ISIS, was actually wounded in an air strike in northern Iraq. Therefore, the air strikes are having an impact and we should be doing everything we can to support our troops on the ground and to support our coalition partners. Rather than backing off the combat mission, we should be more engaged.

[John McKay, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague does not seem to understand the basic concept of a coalition. A coalition is a collection of individuals, and in this case nations, that agree on a certain task that needs to be done. Then they allocate those tasks among various partners, for example, one does air, one does ground, one does intelligence, one does aid, one does this, and the other does that. Quite rightly, the Prime Minister identified the fact that a lot of nations were prepared to do the air war part of the campaign.

There is something in the order of about 200 airplanes in theatre at any given time, all available to take back territory from the ISIS group of terrorists, and in large part, they have been quite successful. They have taken back substantial pieces of territory basically on the basis of an air war.

At some point or another, somebody has to get on the ground. In this particular case it is the focus of the Government of Canada to train the local Iraqi security forces and the peshmerga in a fashion that they will be enabled to take back ground, whether it is Fallujah or Mosul or Raqqa, or pick the individual city.

In order to give them the best chance to be successful, we have allocated 830 of our best people. We have effectively doubled the size of the mission and we have put Brigadier-General Anderson into Baghdad. He is performing a magnificent task, doing some coordination and liaison among the various factions.

The member will appreciate that this area is complicated. These people in some respects have been fighting with each other for the last 4,000 years and to think that somehow or another removing six of our airplanes from this particular conflict is going to bring resolution or even better protection to our own troops is just a nonsensical and fanciful thought.

We are doing what the Conservatives refused to do, namely, making available to the peshmerga and to the other Iraqi security forces people of the highest quality training. Our people are the top of the tops and by making them available, which admittedly as General Vance has said, increases the risk to the mission, there is a much better chance that when the Fallujah initiative takes place, and part of it is already taking place, and when the Mosul initiative takes place, these Iraqi security people and the peshmerga will have the best possible chance of success.

Frankly, six airplanes in theatre adding to the already almost 200 airplanes that are there would not increase the chances of success in any substantial measures.

At some point or another, we have to realize that there are phases to conflicts and at this phase, there is an opportunity to take out ISIS and take it out big time.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary is being disingenuous when he suggests that the rules of engagement for fighter jets are the same across the board. Nothing supplants force protection that is provided by having our own fighter jets in theatre. Their first role is to protect our forces on the ground. The parliamentary secretary should know better than to suggest that by having other fighter jets there that our troops are just as well protected. That will not happen if there is a full-scale attack on other coalition partners. The first line of defence for those coalition planes is to protect their own troops on the ground before Canadian troops.

The words that the parliamentary secretary is using diminish the major role that the Canadian Armed Forces and the Royal Canadian Air Force played in the combat mission.

We are not saying that there is anything wrong with increasing the training mission and doing more on the ground as is happening, but there is a role from the combat side. We should not be backing away when everybody else is stepping up.

Prime Minister David Cameron said in the British Debates back in November, “we should not be content with outsourcing our security to our allies. If we believe that action can help protect us, then, with our allies, we should be part of that action, not—”

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

The hon. parliamentary secretary.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, again, that is a fundamental misunderstanding of what a coalition is. A coalition is that everyone has everyone else's back. We are not just flying our airplanes in order to protect our troops. The Americans are not just flying their planes in order to protect their troops. The Americans fly their planes to protect ours, us, them, and the Dutch theirs, etc. That is the way that a coalition works.

When there is a gap in the capabilities that needs to be addressed, where troops need to be trained, that is where we can contribute best.

To therefore attribute a disrespect for the people who fly our airplanes and have been flying them for the last years is just absolutely wrong. That is a nonsensical statement.

I want to go to a statement made by John Kerry, the United States Secretary of State. He said, “So Canada is deeply invested in this and we need that partnership”.

He is pleased that the Prime Minister has honoured his campaign decision.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

The motion to adjourn the House is now deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, this House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 7:16 p.m.)