Harjit S. Sajjan

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, it is one of the questions we have had, especially as we have our consultations across Canada. This is a discussion that we do bring up and there are various experts members who provide their advice.

I also want to point out, which is very important, that the reserve units and leaderships themselves have an opportunity to present their facts through the chain of command. All Canadians, even as reservists as they are a citizen as well, can participate in other ways with the defence review and make their feelings known.

The reserves play a critical role currently, and we need to look at modernizing the process.

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, when it comes to the defence of Canada, our number one priority is the security of Canadians.

There are a number of things we do now, for example our Canadian Joint Operations Command, our binational relationship with NORAD, and also our Special Operations Command.

As we launch our defence review, we will be looking at ensuring we have the right command structure and the right capabilities that meet the needs of the current threats, but more important, the threats of the future as well.

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, there is a considerable amount of training that happens, and I will give an example from B.C. There is an exercise that the province has taken on for emergency preparedness in Port Alberni, in which we will be taking part. We also work very closely with some of the heavier search and rescue teams where they have trained some of our members on light urban search and rescue. Many different aspects of training happen.

We also take proactive measures in ensuring that some of our members are trained up, for example, with the threat of forest fires this season. We are ensuring that some of our immediate response units are already trained up. I believe they get stage 3 training early on so if they are ever needed, rather than waiting to get the training, they can respond immediately to these threats.

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, the department works quite seamlessly with the various agencies. We have members who are actually posted within the provincial emergency units. Each province has that, but we also work within the various departments ensuring we have the right level of response.

It depends on the level of emergency. We may put more resources to it. However, this is something that just does not happen overnight. It is planned, trained on, and then we execute. Fortunately, it has turned out very well, but we need to be always vigilant on how we move forward.

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, I actually recently visited the operation centre. I was thoroughly impressed with the response. A lot of the contributions we have made have already been outlined. I would like to highlight the relationship that the joint task force west, the commander and some their staff actually had with the province. The relationship resulted in great coordination and effort.

The only direction I gave to the chief of the defence staff, when the request came to me from the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, was to ensure that all assets were available for this operation. Then the chain of command did its wonderful work.

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, in terms of universality of service, there is obviously a set requirement that our members need to be fully operational. However, when there is an injury or any type of circumstance where a member cannot fulfill those duties, there is a process that is taken. There is an opportunity where we look at how we can employ the member, in other trades potentially. They do go through a process. If they cannot go through that, then they go through a two-year to three-year transition period where they can get all the necessary training and the resources so they can transition into civilian life.

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, this is a problem. We have put more resources on to this issue. A member should not have to wait that long. We are working on this backlog. The chief of the defence staff did brief me on the numbers, but unfortunately I have forgotten the actual percentage that it has been reduced.

Having said that, any priority case that does come up, we action immediately. I have given one example, which was when a member was retiring and wanted to go to school. We were able to make sure that he received his pension cheque and sorted that out within 18 hours.

We are trying to manage this as quickly as possible, and, more importantly, trying to reduce the burden of these files as they come to management level so our members are not waiting for long periods of time.

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, some anti-armour capability is going in. I am not going to discuss exactly which one and give this information to ISIL. We are addressing that immediately. We are looking at even newer systems as well.

I would note that our members are well protected. We work in a coalition environment. They have all of the assets necessary. We have mitigated a lot of the safety concerns. The other aspect is that our members are extremely well trained as well, and they have proven this on a number of occasions, which we have talked about in the past.

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, I would like to talk about what we will be doing now in terms of our involvement in the world. We have announced and have started to implement our renewed mission in Iraq and Syria. We have troops right now doing training, as part of operation reassurance in Poland and other parts of Europe. We have a company in Ukraine right now. When it comes to any new type of mission, we will do it with a thorough analysis like we did with Iraq and Syria. When we come to any decisions, there will be a cost to it, just like the cost for Operation Impact, which was $306 million, and which we had to come to cabinet for approval and debate in the House. Therefore, for any new initiative, we will do a thorough analysis, and if additional resources are required, it will be a government decision.

[Business of Supply, May 16th, 2016]

Mr. Chair, the metric for involvement with the United Nations is not about the number of troops. We will actually be elevating the conversation much higher than just the number of people that we send. We want to look at how we can do new capacity-building, preventing conflict from going to the tipping point, whether we can we do capacity-building and policing early. It is not just looking at it from a military perspective. We need to look at where there is lack of governance as well. We need to understand conflict better. Therefore, the metric of how we participate with the UN, or any other multilateral organization, will be much more than just the number of people we provide. It is how we provide it, how we integrate some of our assets, and how we integrate with some of the other organizations that are already involved.