Art Eggleton

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Chairman, it became operational in the nineties. I cannot tell the House exactly what the date was. If the hon. member is trying to suggest that maybe the previous government ordered it, I do not know that such is the case. This was not an attempt to say what government had done what, entirely, although most of it was done by our government. It was also an attempt to say that these are the kinds of things we have to serve our needs. In fact, the frigates were also ordered by a previous government but they serve us well. They are modern, state of the art equipment. It is our responsibility and it is on our watch to make sure that we have these kinds of things to be able to do the job, and that is the case.

The hon. member said that his party voted against the quality of life measures because it found them inadequate. I have not heard those members say anything in the House tonight or anything I can remember for a long period of time that has had anything to do with quality of life. They like to talk about the main battle tank, as they are tonight, or certain other things, but they do not focus on the comprehensive picture, including quality of life. They have said nothing about that, and of course as has been pointed out, they voted against that report.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Chairman, I do not know if I can do it all in two minutes but I will try to get a start on it. Maybe a subsequent question will help lead me into further areas.

Critical infrastructure of the country consists of things like our communications systems, our gas lines, our electricity lines and our financial systems, many of which are interconnected within Canada and interconnected within the continent, which is another reason why we have to work closely with our friends in the United States on these matters. We want to ensure that these things are protected from either natural disasters or man made disasters, whether they are in the physical form or in the cyber form.

We are used to natural disasters in the physical form. We have certainly seen the damage that can be done by an ice storm or by flooding et cetera. At the same time, we have all of these intricate information and computer systems that are vital to the operation of all the critical infrastructure facilities we have in this country, and they do exist at different government levels and in the private sector.

We have developed a map of many of the critical infrastructure systems in the country. We are working with people in government and in the private sector to help in the development of plans for the protection of that infrastructure from natural disasters or from cyber attacks or from other kinds of attacks that may come as a result of terrorism.

These are all areas that are part of the mandate of the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness, which predated September 11. The government was recognizing the possibilities of terrorism, of asymmetric threats, and was creating this kind of entity even before September 11 came along. Of course since then it has provided for a heightened focus and I am grateful to say that additional resources were provided in the last budget to help make sure the office can do its job.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Chairman, as is indicated in our report on plans and priorities, part III, which is of course the main subject of our discussion tonight, while we can deal with the specific figures and how we are spending the money, it is important to focus on the programs that are part of our plans and priorities in part III of the estimates.

Recruitment and retention is a key priority. We have entered into a new three year recruiting program. I am pleased to say that we have passed our overall recruitment numbers this year of 10,000 which was our goal. It much exceeded the previous year's target. We now have our force strength numbers back up to over 60,000. In addition to that, our retention rate is higher and our attrition rate has gone down by 20%. We are beginning to find the kind of formula that is necessary to keep troops as well as to attract people into the operation.

As the hon. member has pointed out, it is quite true that there are some deficiencies. We may have made our overall 10,000 recruitment target, we may have our attrition rate down and we may have our numbers up over 60,000, but there are still a number of occupational categories where we are coming up short. She mentioned pilots. That situation is getting better now but at one time that was one of our main preoccupations and we put in place a bonus system to help keep people. That is helping to accomplish this.

We also have a challenge with respect to doctors. We are looking for ways of helping to pay for their education and at the same time ensure that they not only put in time with the Canadian forces in providing medical services, but that they can also do so in the community. With the Canadian forces we cannot get the wide range of experience that the medical profession needs. To keep up to date, they need to work in the civilian community as well. We have been able to provide changes in terms of service for engagement of physicians and other people in the medical profession that will help to bring them in and to retain them.

We are looking at a wide range of areas in the technical trades where we need more people, for example a number of them in the aviation area and a number relevant to computer technology. We need plumbers too. We need quite a number of people in these different occupations. We are going out and looking at ways of attracting them. We go to community colleges. We might help pay for their education, or bring them in when they have received an education in other cases or perhaps start them out higher in the ranks. We are looking at different things that will help attract them because there is a great deal of competition in the private sector.

As the government has pulled the unemployment rate down, created more jobs and helped the private sector to create more jobs, the competition has also become a little tougher. We need the right combination of work experience, challenges and remuneration that will attract people and retain them.

There are still many people out there I am very happy to report that do want the kind of challenge they would face with the Canadian forces, the kind of adventure that is involved and the kind of service to one's country. We will continue to find that right formula to both recruit and retain.

I am very pleased to say that our numbers are back up over 60,000. We are having success but we still have some areas of occupation to which we will continue to give more attention. As an hon. member from the NDP pointed out previously and quite correctly so, as long as we are short in those areas, we put more stress on the fewer number of people who we have in those occupations in the forces. We are anxious to relieve that stress and to add people to these various categories of employment.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Chairman, quality of life has been a very high priority for me. It has been a high priority for the government. After all, what organization has people that are willing to put their life on the line as part of their job? We owe these people a lot of gratitude. There was some discussion about what constitutes a hero the other day. A person who walks in the door and fills in the application is a hero for being willing to take on that unlimited liability and responsibility that could lead to the loss of the individual's life. Recently we saw how painful the reality of that can be.

I set out when I became minister to deal with this matter. I am very grateful to the Standing Committee on National Defence and Veterans Affairs for its contribution to this.

I heard a number of stories from people across the country who were having difficulty making ends meeting. They were having difficulty with having to go to food banks or with not getting the kind of repairs that were necessary for decent housing accommodation in terms of the married quarters. There were other things, such as a spouse getting a job upon moving to a new base of operations or issues of child care and other support services.

I asked the SCONDVA committee to look at the matter. Many members of the SCONDVA committee and the former chairman at the time, who is also in the Chamber tonight, took up the cause, went across the country and brought a lot of attention and awareness to the people of Canada, to parliament and the government on this issue.

As a result, committee members produced a report with some 89 recommendations. I am pleased to say that 68 of them have now been completed and the rest of are works in progress. A report is about to be issued to that effect as the annual update report.

We first tackled the pay and benefit issues. The amount of money, as a percentage, we ended up giving to our troops as an increase even surpassed what the committee had recommended. We saw that the remuneration was out of whack with the public service. We needed to make the kind of changes to ensure that we continued to attract people, but also at the same time recognize the kind of contribution that these troops were making.

We went on from there to other benefit packages. One new provision we put into effect was something called the post living differential allowance. For example, a naval person lives in Halifax and is transferred to the other coast to Esquimalt, the Victoria area. There is a big difference in the cost of living from one coast to the other. This can also be found in many other parts of Canada. If a person goes to Yellowknife in the territories, the cost of living is quite high in that location.

We then set about dealing with the housing conditions. We have invested $186 million over five years to improve the housing conditions of Canadian forces housing properties. We opened a centre that is a co-sponsorship project with the Department of Veterans Affairs to look after injured and retired service members.

We then established operational trauma and stress support centres, recognizing PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, the very horrible conditions that some of our troops have experienced, like those who served in Rwanda. We all know quite well the kind of situation that General Dallaire went through as did many of the other people who served in that theatre of operation.

We then went on to dealing with our family support centres as a means of also helping the spouses and the children of our force members. We have increased very substantially those support operations.

We have to bear in mind that the invisible support of our troops overseas is the families back home. When I was in Halifax seeing one of the ships off in Halifax, they were passing out invisible, see-through ribbons, all to stress the point that there is an invisible part of the Canadian forces; the families who stay back home and wait out the period of service that these people have undertaken when they travel. Those family support centres become important, as do the traditional kinds of supports in the rear parties, the regiments, the units that also try to rally around the families of the members who have been sent overseas.

The family support centres have grown enormously and there are some fine facilities throughout the country. Day care operations are part of that and it is of significance for the families. We are pleased that we were able to do that in the last five years. That very clearly indicates the kinds of priorities that the Liberal government has and the kind of support we want to give to our troops and to their families.

I am however sorry to mention that there is one party in the House that voted against the quality of life report. That was the Canadian Alliance. Obviously the previous member who spoke was more concerned about the main battle tank than she was about the quality of life for our troops. We believe though that there has to be a balance in all these things. The quality of life is important but it is also important to have the right equipment, the right training and the right leadership. These things all in balance make for a successful Canadian forces. That is the kind of balance that the government is committed to providing.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

It is only 15,000. It is actually growing. We put a plan in place about a year or so ago to increase the size of the reserves. It is part of the land force reserve restructuring. We have established a project office. We have a major general who heads that office. We have increased the numbers of the reserves.

In the next phase we intend to add capabilities and to all round improve the portion of the army that is the reserve force. It is a very valuable part of our total army and we want to make sure that it gets the additional resources, capabilities and numbers to be able to make a bigger contribution.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

No, Mr. Chairman, that is not the case at all. If the hon. member heard my remarks at the beginning of the evening, she would know that multipurpose, combat capable forces are still quite relevant. We have obligations for the defence of Canada and Canadians to work with the United States in terms of the defence of the continent but we also contribute to international peace and security. We need to be combat capable because even peace support operations have become more challenging and more dangerous in that respect.

We have people serving in a conflict zone now in Afghanistan. Therefore we will continue to need multipurpose, combat capable troops to serve a wide range of purposes and needs that presently exist with respect to the Canadian forces.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Chairman, we still do have the Leopard tank. We have not used it a lot lately. It has not had a lot of need out there in terms of the kind of conflicts that we have today.

Certainly that has to be considered in terms of the capabilities but we have upgraded the turret of the Leopard. So we do have a main battle tank and it has been upgraded.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Yes, Mr. Chairman, we did have that service going in, we were working there together, but we provided some things as well.

The hon. member should remember that our Hercules and Airbus aircraft transported a lot of goods and a lot of U.S. troops. In fact over the period of time, we probably transported as many American troops in our planes as they transported in their planes. Perhaps the hon. member should look at that. It is all part of working together, working as a coalition and working in a co-operative way. We provided a lot of transportation for them as they provided transportation for us.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

No, Mr. Chairman. Let us take strategic lift for example, air transport. Of the 19 NATO countries, only two that have that kind of lift: the United States and the United Kingdom. I do not hear anyone saying that France, Germany, Italy or any of these other countries have no credibility because they do not have strategic lift. They went into Afghanistan and other theatres of operation by leasing lifts. There is nothing unusual about doing that at all. Not every country can have every capability possible. We have the kind of capabilities we need to be able to do the job that we ask of our troops, and we will continue to do that.

[Supply, May 7th, 2002]

Mr. Chairman, we can get into a theatre of operation just as quickly as anyone can. We can get the lift we need to get into those operations and we can get our troops prepared, as we have demonstrated time and again.

We were one of the first to be in Kosovo. We were among the first to get into Eritrea, Ethiopia. We were one of the first to be in East Timor. We have been very quick to deploy into Afghanistan after we were asked to become a part of that operation. We do get our troops there. We do get them well trained, well equipped and ready to do the job.

No, we do not have every capability. It would take additional resources for those capabilities. As we go through the defence review update, the hon. member and perhaps many others will suggest that we look at those possibilities, but they also come with resource tags. We need to look at what we need and what kind of capabilities we can afford to have.