National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, members of the committee. Good afternoon, everyone. On behalf of the Royal Canadian Navy's command chief petty officer, Tom Riefesel, with me today, and the rest of the uniformed and civilian members of the Royal Ca

National Defence committee  We see the Arctic as hugely important, not just for the navy, but for Canada looking forward. The Arctic represents a fundamentally maritime operating environment. It is defined by the ocean; therefore, we see it as a key area for us to be looking forward to operating in over the

National Defence committee  We work together almost seamlessly in the regions assigned to both the RCN and the coast guard in search and rescue and other routine activities. In many cases our headquarters are, if not co-located, certainly in the same community. The commanders responsible for the regions acr

National Defence committee  The way I characterize the submarine capability and its importance to Canadians is to draw a parallel to what I think is something people can relate to in the context of ground operations. If somebody in the army were to talk about taking and holding ground, I think there would b

National Defence committee  I have been there and I'm sure Tom's been there a few times as well. It is an incredibly demanding environment to operate in.

National Defence committee  I'm just making a few notes, Mr. Harris, so that I can properly address the elements of your question. Let me start by saying that there's no question that the RCN, all elements of the Canadian Forces, government, and Canadians writ large have challenges. It is a constant requir

National Defence committee  To the specifics of the pressures, first of all, I'd like to say that the 15.7%, as it was characterized in the document, is a cumulative number. It's not a reflection of direct cuts. In fact, part of that number is a result of the pressures resulting from fixed costs going up an

National Defence committee  We have a number of ships tied up right now because of the ongoing modernization. What we've been able to do is to leverage the fact that those ships are in a state of modernization; to reactivate, for example, four of the maritime coastal defence vessels; to reallocate money fro

National Defence committee  No, there's no double-bunking going on at all. For example, on training deployments we will fly people in and out of different locations, which we wouldn't traditionally have done. We would have left one crew in for an exercise. Now we may fly people in and out in order to give a

National Defence committee  One of the hallmarks of NATO—and obviously I will speak to the maritime domain explicitly, but it applies to all the domains—is the very issue of interoperability, as you indicated in your question. Certainly the ability of Canada or any other country—but we're talking about Cana

National Defence committee  I'll go class by class, but before I do, I'd like to address the second half of that latter question because it's common to all classes. Again, the key to transitioning through these gap periods is to maintain competency. The way to maintain competency is through focused trainin

National Defence committee  Thank you. I'll walk through this, possibly in reverse order, if I may. The first thing I'd like to do is specifically address the reference to the training capacity of the finding and recommendation. I would like to clarify that the CRS finding is that we are operating our trai

National Defence committee  We're not dropping anything explicitly or significantly. I indicated in response to Mr. Harris' question that we're at a point right now where we can risk-manage some of this because the fleet is not at its full capacity. In the next couple of years we're going to be returning to

National Defence committee  If I then can transition to the other two elements of your question, first was the issue of resource pressures and the implications, and the second issue was specifically capital expenditures and that kind of thing. The first thing I would say, as it relates to the CRS report its

National Defence committee  In some cases the underspend, as you've characterized it, is a function of smaller projects that are related to other modernization and capital programs, and those have been reiterated in the recent defence acquisition guide. Those are the key priority investment areas from the R