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Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence

Issue 9 - Evidence

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OTTAWA, Monday, December 10, 2001

The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 12:35 p.m. to conduct an introductory survey of the major security and defence issues facing Canada with a view to preparing a detailed work plan for future comprehensive studies.

Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the Chair.

[English]

The Chairman: Good afternoon. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, whether you are here in the room, watching on television or following us on the Internet.

This afternoon we continue our study on major security and defence issues.

My name is Colin Kenny. I am from Ontario and I chair the committee. Let me introduce the other members of our committee, starting on my right. On my far right is Senator Tommy Banks from Alberta. Beside him is Senator Norman Atkins from Ontario. On my far left I have Senator LaPierre, also from Ontario. Senator Wiebe, Senator Cordy and Senator Day, who are, unfortunately, delayed by travel problems, will join us later today.

Our committee is the first permanent senate committee with a mandate to examine the subjects of security and defence. We are conducting a survey of the major issues facing Canada. We will be reporting back to the senate before the end of February.

Today we shall continue our work by hearing from the Auditor General about two portions of a report she issued last week: one on the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency entitled "Managing the Risks of Non-Compliance for Commercial Shipments Entering Canada," and one on "In-Service Equipment" which relates to national defence.

In the second part of our meeting we shall be hearing from the Assistant Deputy Minister of Human Resources at the Department of National Defence about personnel matters.

Three weeks ago, our committee conducted a fact-finding visit to the West, where we visited military bases in Esquimalt and Winnipeg to see if the equipment used by our Armed Forces is functioning well and in good service. We also visited the port of Vancouver and the Vancouver airport to examine border security. This was our second airport and port visit conducted this year.

Our first witness is Ms Sheila Fraser, Auditor General of Canada. She was appointed to this post in May 2001, having served as Deputy Auditor General for two years.

Before joining the federal government, Mrs. Fraser enjoyed a fruitful and challenging career in the private sector. In addition, she had several assignments with the Auditor General of Quebec, as well as with several departments of the Government of Quebec.

Ms Fraser is accompanied by Mr. Kasurak, Principal, who is responsible for the audit on defence equipment.

Ms Sheila Fraser, Auditor General of Canada, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: I am very pleased to be here to discuss my first report as Auditor General of Canada. I trust that you will find the information useful.

Peter Kasurak, the principal responsible for our audits of the Department of National Defence, accompanies me. Mr. Shahid Minto is here as well. He is the Assistant Auditor General responsible for our work on the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.

We understand that the committee's primary area of interest is defence, so I will keep my comments on the customs and revenue chapters brief. We would be very pleased to appear before the committee at any later date should you wish to examine those issues in more detail.

I would like to start by highlighting an issue common to these audits, as well as many others that we have noted in the past: inadequate information. By that, I mean a failure by departments to collect, to analyze and to use information in a way that would enable them to make better decisions, to manage risks and to improve their programs and services.

In our audits we found examples of inadequate information to manage the maintenance of major military equipment and to oversee cross-border commercial shipments and travellers to Canada.

Good information is the essential first step to good management; without it, managing risk intelligently is not possible.

Let me turn to chapter 10 of our report: "National Defence: In-Service Equipment." Military readiness is composed of four basic things: people, the military people in place and their qualifications; the equipment, whether it is on hand and whether it is serviceable; training, which can be individual, collective and joint, whereby more than one service is involved; and enablers, such as command and control and intelligence systems. Together that package forms what we understand to be "readiness."

"National Defence: In-Service Equipment" provides Parliament with its first set of comprehensive statistical data for a major component of readiness, and that is equipment. Today, I would like to tell you what we found concerning the state of equipment readiness; what we learned about the department's ability to manage that readiness; and what I think needs to be done to respond to shortcomings that our work identified.

In general, the information needed to manage equipment is unavailable. The information that is available is inadequate, incomplete and often inaccurate. Our report goes into some detail on this issue, but I would like to cite just a few examples: None of the armed services has standards or targets for how ready its equipment should be. We could find only 41 per cent of the required post-exercise reports that document problems and lessons learned, and that facilitate corrective action. The rest were either not completed or had been lost. Navy maintenance data are inaccurate because of the posting of data up to two years after operations, the use of estimates rather than actual measures, and the loss of data due to bad diskettes, server crashes and failure to back up data.

Our department compiled the statistics presented in our audit. They indicate that the equipment owned by the army is in good shape, that the navy is holding its own, but that the air force equipment is deteriorating and in general decline.

From 1989-98, the army was able to maintain the activity rates of its key combat and combat support vehicles and to increase the use of some of them. It has been able to keep deployed equipment available for use almost 90 per cent of the time. It is experiencing some problems in keeping up with preventive maintenance and in keeping vehicles available for training in Canada.

The navy has been able to maintain the number of days its fleets are at sea each year. However, it is also unable to keep up with scheduled maintenance and is facing a bow wave of deferred work on the patrol frigate. This could cause availability, life expectancy and cost problems in the future.

The air force picture is much more adverse: annual flying hours for the Sea King, Hercules and Aurora have all steadily declined over the last five years. Aircraft availability is low, ranging from 30 per cent to 60 per cent, except for the Griffon helicopter, which is new. Moreover, availability is declining for the Sea Kings, Auroras and Hercules, and mission aborts are increasing for all types except the Griffon.

We also found that the supply system is rarely able to meet urgent demands, and there is a shortage of maintenance personnel. Overall, 13 per cent of positions are vacant, and 15 per cent of those on the job have not completed all the training required for their rank. Almost 40 per cent of the training required to do specific jobs in individual units has not been taken.

Due to limitations of the data maintained by the Department of National Defence, we could not determine how operations and training have been affected overall. Nevertheless, there are strong indications that maintenance problems with Hercules, Sea King and Aurora aircraft have limited training and operations. Delays in obtaining spares, prioritization of transportation of spares and mission fatigue of maintenance technicians appear frequently in unit reports.

Money alone will not solve the problems identified by this audit. In our report, we note that there has been a lack of management discipline visible in the failure to set targets and goals and to ensure the quality of management information. There has to be the will to assess operations and training and to learn from them in a systematic manner.

The department is taking action through the roll-out of its Materiel Acquisition and Support Information System, (MASIS), and its new supply system. However, the new supply system will not arrive until next summer and MASIS not until 2004. In addition, the department has to set maintenance performance targets and start measuring how well it is meeting them. There is not enough slack in the system to allow for complacency. These deadlines must be met.

[Translation]

We have completed two audits in recent years of the Customs program at the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. In 2000 we dealt with travellers coming to Canada and this year we covered commercial shipments entering Canada. In both audits, we focussed on how the agency was managing the risks it faces at the border. Those risks include inadmissible people trying to enter Canada and people trying to bring illegal or restricted goods into Canada. About 111 million travellers and 11 million commercial shipments enter Canada every year.

In both of these audits, we raised concerns about the lack of information to fully assess risks and to ensure that the agency's activities were effective.

In the 2000 travellers audit, we found that the agency's risk assessment was incomplete. At the border, Customs officers conduct the initial interview with people entering Canada. Officers decide whether to let the person enter Canada immediately or whether the person needs to be referred to another department or agency, such as Citizenship and Immigration Canada. These decisions are based on an assessment of risk, and officers need information to make them. We found the agency did not have important information it needed from a variety of departments and agencies to fully assess the risks its inspectors face in these situations.

We also reviewed the training that officers received. We noted that Customs provides a mandatory intensive course to new recruits. However, after taking the initial training, many long-term officers had not received refresher training in several key areas. Training for term employees and students was uneven.

In the audit on commercial shipments, we found that the agency is using a risk management approach to determine which shipments present the greatest risk to Canadian society. The agency wants to focus on high-risk shipments and let the others pass through quickly. Keeping legitimate trade flowing is essential for the health of the Canadian economy.

The agency has worked hard over the past decade to improve its ability to identify high-risk shipments. However, we raised several concerns dealing with the efficiency and effectiveness of the agency's targeting of high-risk shipments.

The Agency has a stable and flexible inspection regime for examining shipments that it decides are high risk. Finally, the information the agency collects on its examinations is not sufficient to tell it whether its targeting activities are leading to more enforcement actions. Nor does the agency know if it is doing more, or more in-depth, examinations of high-risk shipments than in previous years. In other words, the agency does not know whether its approach to risk management is working.

We recommended that the agency strive to obtain the information it needs from other departments and agencies to do its job well. We also recommended that it improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its targeting processes, that it improve its employee training programs, and finally, that it assess the effectiveness of its risk management approach.

The agency has agreed with our recommendations, but has not committed to specific deadlines for implementing them.

[English]

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, I want to reassure the committee that I place a very high priority on the well-being of Canadians. Their safety and security figures prominently on the list of priorities I have set for the office. We have done much work in the past on defence, customs, immigration and policing issues. I intend to continue to inform parliament of the government's management of these important issues.

We would be pleased to respond to your questions.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Ms Fraser. You have kept the committee busy all weekend. We have been fascinated with your observations, and we look forward to the opportunity of asking you some questions.

Senator Atkins: Your report and your presentation are very interesting. A number of military personnel have appeared before this committee. I must say that I admire the fact that under extreme circumstances, they seem to have been able to manage. Your comment that targets are not being set is somewhat questionable.

When Mr. Caulder, who is the senior policy adviser to the Department of National Defence appeared before us he referred a number of times to the white paper. He stated that the military had met its obligations set out by the white paper. Do you accept that? He went on to say that he thought the military was in better shape than it was 10 years ago.

Ms Fraser: As we indicated in our report, we find it difficult to comment on comparisons that have been made when there is so little information available on the state of readiness. I do not know if that information existed 10 years ago. The audit office compiled all the information on readiness that appears in this report. National defence did not have that overall picture of the state of readiness. I do not know on what basis they make that comment.

On the question of the white paper, I ask my colleague to comment.

Senator Atkins: Would you comment on how the military could be in better shape than it was years ago? There has not been a large amount of investment in the equipment. How can it be in better shape?

Ms Fraser: Our report shows that when missions are deployed overseas, the forces go to a great deal of effort to ensure they are well equipped. Many of the problems are faced here at home with training exercises or other exercises that they do here. They do manage to get equipment deployed properly overseas.

As we note in our report, there are several issues that are troubling. How much more could they do on the state of readiness some of the longer term problems with reduced maintenance should be examined. Eventually, this will surface in additional problems.

We are quite concerned that the department does not have that overall information to know what the readiness is. They do not know what the cost would be if they needed to increase it. How do they make the best choices of spending the dollars that are available to them?

Senator Atkins: Do you want to comment on the white paper?

Mr. Peter Kasurak, Principal, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: We have commented on the white paper in previous reports. In general, we have said that the white paper outlines commitments and goals at such a very high level and in such general terms that it is very difficult to determine whether these goals are being met or not.

We have commented several times on how this might be improved. We have suggested that the Canadian Forces adopt an explicit scenario based form of planning so that one could judge whether they could meet their tasks or not. Indeed, they have moved in this direction quite considerably. They have now adopted that sort of planning internally, but it has not made it into policy design yet.

The other question is whether there has been a decline over the last 10 years. In terms of the material we examined for this audit, we were able to collect air force statistics for 10 years. It does show a downtrend on almost every indicator we could get, whether it was the number of hours you need to maintain aircraft or the availability of aircraft. There has been a consistent downward trend.

As far as the scope of this audit goes, which is equipment readiness, the trend is negative. As the Auditor General said in her opening statement, that is only part of the entire readiness picture though. We have not looked at the whole thing.

Senator Atkins: In your report you refer to the fact that you think that the budget would have to be increased by $1.3 billion annually. Is that a collective amount or is that just a fixed amount in addition on an annual basis?

Ms Fraser: That is an estimate that has been made by the department itself. We did not validate that. We used studies that they had done that indicated that they require an extra $1.3 billion.

Mr. Kasurak: That was an annual amount. It is the department's estimate.

The Chairman: If I recall correctly, that is just to stay even. That is not to move ahead. That is to maintain the status quo.

Mr. Kasurak: That is correct.

Senator Atkins: That was my next question. Do you think that is sufficient to meet the requirements of the military?

Mr. Kasurak: The biggest problem here is actually defining the requirement. In this particular chapter, we do say that the services redefine their requirements, at least until September downwards. The main problem has been "ready for what." For what are we objectively trying to prepare the Canadian Forces?

We have lacked the specificity that the Americans have achieved in their bottom-up review that goes back to the early 1990s and the later quadrennial defence review process. They said that they want to be ready to fight major regional conflicts. They were quite explicit what these major regional conflicts were going to be like.

Once you had that set as a scenario, you could then debate whether you could make it with the budget that you had and whether your force structure was going to be sufficient to do the job. That is one of the key aspects that to us has been lacking. I do not think the audit office can really respond to a question of how much is enough because nobody has laid out that objective in clearly defined detail for us to be able to work with it yet.

Senator Atkins: You would not consider the white paper as a benchmark?

Mr. Kasurak: The white paper provides a partial benchmark because it provides, for example, a goal for the deployment of a brigade group within 90 days. However, it does not tell us the context. Will that brigade group go to Bosnia and only have administrative casualties or will it to some place else and be involved in intensive combat? Until these things have been specified and the whole scenario is better fleshed out it is difficult to gauge how much is enough. It depends a lot on what your deployment plans really are.

Senator Atkins: Two recent studies have been published: "Caught in the Middle: An Assessment of the Operational Readiness of the Canadian Forces", drafted by the Conference of Defence Associations; and "To Secure a Nation: The Case for a New Defence White Paper", which comes from The Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary. Both reports are particularly critical of this government's approach to military spending. They link the issues of lack of funding to combat capability to the issues of morale and concerns about the living standards of the junior ranks of the military. In the chapter on defence budget, The Centre for Military and Strategic Studies states:

It is this lack of sustainability and depth in the expeditionary capability of the land forces that is the most damaging consequence of a decade of budget cuts and force contractions. The result is a military stretched to the limit, burdened by a rapid deployment rate (especially among specialists), and afflicted with numerous morale and reten tion problems. Furthermore, the Canadian military continues to confront the problem of "rustout" in some important equipment categories.

Would you care to comment on that statement?

Ms Fraser: It goes back to the point that Mr. Kasurak made that, until the objective is defined as to what level of readiness and what kind of missions these people should be able to take on, it is hard to determine what the level of funding should be. Many studies have indicated there is a gap at the present time. Obviously, that gap must be closed. Either you redefine "state of readiness" or you adjust your funding level. All of the studies and many of our audits have pointed to a serious gap between those two. You must start by defining what it is that you want before you put money into it.

Mr. Kasurak: This study provides some support for those statements in that the maintenance backlog that we report for the navy and also for the army indicates that long-term sustainability is a problem. To that extent, the data in here are consistent with that view, although the scope is quite different.

Senator Atkins: At one of our recent meetings, we heard from General Henault. He was asked by one of the panel members that if he were to receive more funding, where would he direct it? He stated the following:

I would direct them to three different capability require ments. The first area would be people. That is where we need to put our effort and that is where additional funding would be focused.

When asked: Does that mean quality of life, recruitment or training? His response was: "It means all the above."

Would you agree with his priority?

Mr. Kasurak: His second priority was equipment maintenance. I would not argue with the CDS on that one. He is also correct to put people first. Obviously, even if you have all the parts in the bins, if you do not have the trained maintenance technicians and managers to run the system, you cannot maintain the equipment. Our audit showed there are some problems there.

The first part of his comment, that you must address all the problems of personnel together, is also well placed. If you do not solve all those, you will still have more attrition than you can manage. The cost of maintaining, for instance, an aircraft maintenance technician is very high. For someone to reach journeyman level they not only must do several years of in-school training but also must serve apprenticeship of four or five years. These are extremely pricey individuals. Once you have created them, it is in your interests to try to retain them for as long as possible. In general, I would agree with those priorities; they are quite sensible.

Senator Atkins: Would you agree that the military does not provide the kind of salaries and pay that the recruits should be receiving?

Mr. Kasurak: I cannot comment on that. That was not part of the scope of this particular audit.

Ms Fraser: We are doing an audit right now on Human Resource Management in national defence, which we plan to publish next spring, if all goes well. We may have some answers to your questions then.

Senator Atkins: We will look forward to it.

Senator Cordy: Thank you very much for being with us this afternoon on what will certainly be a busy day for all of us. You spoke about the audit that you did in 2000 and of the travellers who were coming into Canada. The customs officers are the front line people. They do the initial assessment and the initial interview. You spoke about the agency not having important information that these officers, who are the front line people, may need. Could you expand on that for us?

Ms Fraser: I can give you a general response. I will then ask my colleague who did the customs work to join us. The problem is that many of the systems do not communicate between each other. For the many people doing look-ups on licence plates at borders, the readers were only accurate 70 per cent of the time. Certain data stored at different systems would not be communicated to other personnel. If someone typed in a name, for instance, they did not necessarily get access to all of those systems.

Mr. Shahid Minto, Assistant Auditor General, Office of the Auditor General of Canada: As the senator rightly observed, the front line people are the CCRA employees who meet an individual coming into the country. Their mandate is to enforce their own act, which is the Canada Customs and Revenue Act that looks after contraband and also to enforce the provisions of acts of a number of departments. They were missing information on a couple of fronts. For example, they had been working on a MOU with immigration.

The Chairman: You are referring to CCRA and MOU.

Mr. Minto: Canada Customs and Revenue Agency enforces acts for other departments, including immigration and Health Canada, and a whole lot of departments. They did a fairly good risk analysis of the risks to be found under their own act.

As far as the acts of the other departments are concerned, they did not have enough information. Immigration was a very critical part of this exercise. We found they had been working on a memorandum of understanding with Citizenship and Immigration Canada for a number of years, which had not been finalized in 2000 when we did with this audit. There are informal understandings between the departments, but again, you need some very clear understandings and very clear divisions of responsibility.

Ms Fraser was talking earlier about training. Part of the problem is that there were some long-term employees of the department who had received intensive initial training, but over the years had not had refresher courses. Meanwhile, the Immigration Act has changed and the requirements for screening immigrants have changed. They were saying they do not have information on the whole package.

To use the information, they have to have the proper tools, equipment and computer systems. What they are lacking is training, computer systems and the tools to do their work.

Senator Cordy: We have spoken to military people and to customs people about the need for international cooperation. However, we see that inter-department information often does not occur. How can we overcome that problem? You referred to a "memorandum of understanding." Is there anything more that we can do?

Ms Fraser: As we have mentioned, many areas in these audits and in many of the other audits point to a serious deficiency in the management of information throughout government. In many cases, even within departments there is poor exchange of information; the systems are either not compatible or are not there. In some cases the customs people are still using manual systems.

If we do not get that basic infrastructure to be able to manage the information and to share it, it will impact cooperation between departments. I think we see in some of our other audits that there is a serious problem of communicating and of sharing information to do the job effectively.

Senator Cordy: Is the problem just the technology aspect, or is it the individuals involved, or a combination of both?

Ms Fraser: I cannot imagine that it is only a technology problem. It would be interesting for us, if we can, to try to look at why. I would suspect it has to do with management practices as well, the way that people manage their operations and their processes. I cannot believe these people do not have information. They maybe have their own systems and ways of doing things, but information is not shared with others. I think that could be an interesting area for us to look at.

Senator Cordy: I think it would be a very interesting area for you to look at.

You made reference to people who would get intensive training when they first started, but in fact you could be an employee of 30 or 35 years. Legislation has changed and events such as September 11 have taken place; that would certainly require a lot of training. Is there any evidence of refresher courses or mandatory training every year?

Ms Fraser: No. I will ask Mr. Minto, but I would think our issue was that there were not sufficient refresher courses.

We also found that there was not a sufficient level of training for short-term employees. The sort of intensive training that was given was for the permanent employees and they got that training when they came into the agency. There were weaknesses in the refresher courses going forward, and as well for the short-term and casual employees.

Senator Cordy: It is wonderful that government departments are able to hire university students. However, were they in fact being put on the front line with little or no training?

Ms Fraser: Yes.

Senator Cordy: I want to discuss commercial shipments.

It is very important to the economy of Canada that we keep the borders open for commercial trade back and forth, particularly with the U.S. We are talking about bridges and travelling by truck.

Unless we are prepared to have line-ups miles and miles long, the officers have determined they would use risk assessment to pick out which trucks they would monitor very closely. Do they have enough information to do good risk assessment or do good risk management? Is there a better way to keep the traffic flowing but at the same time make sure that the border is secure? I am asking whether there is a balance.

Ms Fraser: We agree with the department's approach to risk management in this area. All of us would probably agree that the large majority of goods that come across the border are without risk, and that efforts should be focused to identify and use enforcement activities for instances where there is actual risk. The department is going there. We have identified areas for improvement in the information to target the high-risk goods that need more and better information.

It comes back again to things like systems that do not communicate with each other. They also need a better intelligence to identify them. When they do identify them, their enforcement and compliance activities have to be strengthened.

We make the comment in our audit that, going back to the target or the standards of performance, there is no standard set for the number of inspections at different border crossings. It seems to be more now on the basis of the resources they have available to them. The results of those inspections are not analyzed to see whether they should be increased, decreased or whether they are effective or not. There should be a comparison over time as well to see trends in all of this.

Senator Cordy: Much of this goes back to lack of information.

Ms Fraser: That is correct. The government is moving to customs self-assessment systems. We raised our concern that they are moving to this very quickly without having the compliance and enforcement activities strengthened.

A system like that really works if you are target well, and if you have enforcement and targeting activities to make sure your targeting is correct and that you are following up on those high-risk shipments.

Senator Cordy: I want to discuss the information in your report that concerns spare parts. I read about the Iroquois class ships that have enough spare parts to last for 20 years. We just came back from the west coast where they were talking about the lack of spare parts for their equipment. To know that the Iroquois class ships have enough spare parts for 20 years just did not seem to make any sense to me.

Is this a lack of inventory control? Is it a management issue, which you spoke about earlier in terms of customs? Were you able to find a reason for this? We had other cases such as the CF-18s that had to borrow batteries from the Spanish military, and yet we have the Iroquois with 20 years of spare parts.

Mr. Kasurak: The Tribal class destroyers were acquired a long time ago. At the time, the philosophy for provisioning was that you attempted to purchase lifetime spares. They would do that with a very low knowledge base of a brand new piece of equipment. It is extremely difficult to estimate how much you will need over a lifetime; the tendency was to overbuy spares. That is how they ended up with such a large supply.

The comment in that chapter is that they not only had all these spare parts, but they kept them on-board ship. That incurred a huge penalty in that the ship just burned up more gas carting around all these spare parts. Also, if you had a spare on one ship and it was needed on another, you did not have an effective way of moving the inventory around.

The British Royal Navy started, a number of years ago, to address this problem. We are slowly following suit; we off-load our spares from the ships on a risk basis and on a use basis.

In the future, ships will only carry the spares that they are likely to need or would cause a critical problem if they were without them for more than one day. That is how the situation was created, partly because there were low probability items being carried on board, that they really did not need to have at hand. It was also because of the old provisioning philosophy that was "just buy a lot, put it in the warehouse and use it as you go along." Today, the philosophy has moved away from that.

Also contained in your question was a suggestion that there may not be enough spares of other sorts. That is also true. As the Auditor General has stated at several points today, the information available to supply managers is not very good. In the supply system, the data tends to be fairly accurate, but it is difficult to access it. If a supply manager needs to service tens of thousands of line items, it consumes too much time. Some of those items will not be well stocked and well managed, because the data system cannot keep up to demands.

That is how you get into a feast for some lines of spare parts and famine for other parts. It is the management system that does not allow you to move the resources around and identify where you are short. To a certain extent, it is also because of the funding. Once you identify a shortage, you may not be able to restock to the level that you would like to.

Senator Cordy: You also mentioned the length of time that it would take to obtain a spare part. I found it interesting if a Hercules was flying and did not have enough room for the all the spare parts it was taking, there was no way that the individuals involved could prioritize which parts should be on the first flight, and which parts would remain for a later flight. Nor could they identify which items were actually being sent out on the first flight. That seems to be a fairly easy thing to remedy.

Mr. Kasurak: The technology exists today. When the new supply system comes on-line many of these problems will be addressed. The current supply system is a mid-1970s type of data system. It does not allow this kind of tracking. The poorness of the data tends to aggravate the problem. People, knowing they will receive poor service, over identify the priority items. That leaves you with a plane full of priority items that people in the logistics transportation cells cannot differentiate. They will load them on pallets, if they have space available. The data system still does not allow them to communicate effectively to the front line units about what they are to receive. At the heart of all this, is an old data system that is no longer effective and creates these problems. It bites all the hands that are feeding it.

Senator Banks: I have two questions and each one is in two parts. First, I want you to know that my tongue is at least partly planted in my cheek. I come from a business in which we gained a very healthy disdain for bean-counters that sometimes get in the way of the business at hand. It is the old gag: "If you have come to drain the swamp, it is hard to remember that is what the job is when the alligators are snapping at you."

I know this is not a new problem; the question of quartermasters, supply and ordnance supply probably applied to Hannibal when he crossed the Alps. They certainly applied to Queen Victoria's army. It is nice to know that some things never change.

The kind of management that you are talking about is relatively new, partly because of the increase in technology and technological equipment and mechanization. Do you think that, the management of material is happening in the right place? I imagine a commander of a tank squadron saying, "I know my tanks are ready to go. They are oiled, ready to go and everything is ready for the guns to fire. Do not bother me with these papers to fill out." I would like you to answer him, if he is the one responsible.

In response to Senator Atkins question about whether the white paper is a sufficient standard of measurement as to the objects that we expect the Canadian Forces to meet, you said that they needed to be more specific than that. I would say to that is wrong. To be more specific than that it would be imprudent, unwise, and almost certainly wrong. In any case, it cannot be done.

We have given the policy of the Government of Canada, which is to be able to field, at some point, a brigade group. That is the policy of the Government of Canada. If you want a different standard by which to measure that, then you must elect a different government. That is this government's policy. That is my first two-part question.

Mr. Kasurak: I am glad I am taking notes.

Senator Banks: I will remind you.

Mr. Kasurak: To answer the first part of the question, there was also an implicit question that maybe our expectations are to look for a new model of management. That is probably true. We are looking for best practice. We are hoping that the department will keep up with best practice.

Senator Banks: Is that a reasonable thing to expect of an army?

Mr. Kasurak: I believe so. For instance, if you look at the U.S. army and its supply management, it is doing materially better than we are. I was looking at some RAM statistics over the weekend, and they indicated their speed in getting parts out to front line units was possibly twice as fast as our speed. It is a reasonable thing to expect. They are using very sophisticated supply management techniques.

Ms Fraser: Defence is managing a budget of $11.0 billion. I would expect that there would be good systems and that there would be good financial management, although not many bean-counters. We are talking about a great deal of money that inevitably will require systems and management practices. I do not think we should underestimate the capability of our people to have state-of-the-art systems.

Senator Banks: The government has said that this is what we expect our Armed Forces to do. That is government policy. Do you think it ought to be changed?

Mr. Kasurak: I think it needs to be refined. As to whether it should be a brigade group, battalion group or division is not a question for our office. However, to provide a solid foundation for management in the department, our concern is about setting the priorities correctly. As you are undoubtedly aware, "brigade group" is an elastic term: it could be 3,500 or it could be 5,000; and it could be a parachute group or it could be tanks, at various levels of readiness.

All of that drives the downstream management decisions. Our concern has been, over the last five or six years, that without that kind of yardstick better defined, it is difficult to know whether you should be spending your last dollar training somebody or filling the bins, because you cannot set those priorities correctly.

We have asked military staff why they have made one decision and not another. They response was that they made a seat of the pants judgment because they lacked more specific guidance for making the decision. We think it is problematic. We do not question whether it should be a brigade or anything else because that is the government's job.

In terms of how you manage this, it is appropriate, if we see problems, to comment on them.

You also raised the question of the CO of the armour regiment who knows all his tanks are operating.

Senator Banks: It is a figment of my imagination?

Mr. Kasurak: This is a common model. As a matter of fact, when General MacKenzie testified to the Somalia commission some years ago he said that in his day the model of readiness reporting was that when the CO said they were ready then damn it, they were. General MacKenzie went on to say that got the airborne regiment into trouble over the Somalia deployment.

We see signs of where that approach can create problems in this audit. For instance, we found various army units all recording vehicle off the road differently. They were using different bases. As you probably are aware, the army is fitting new radios. Some units had deducted those vehicles that were off-line to have those radios fitted from their base numbers. When they said they had 50 per cent of their vehicles ready they had already subtracted those. Others had done things differently.

Some units, when they operate the Coyote reconnaissance vehicle counted the gun in their serviceability statistics, others did not. Even if you are a brigade commander, you need to have knowledge that your folks are all doing things in a consistent way and that, indeed, you as a brigade commander are reporting to senior headquarters in a consistent way with other brigades. At that level we think that there is improvement that can be made.

That is my answer to the CO question. Sometimes counting the beans does help.

Senator Banks: I have found that sometimes, much to my chagrin. I know $200 million is not going to go a long way to addressing the second part of my question. The department did undertake to save $200 million by contracting out things that do not need to be done by a soldier and can be done by someone else. What did you find in that respect? I think you found they saved $68 million this year.

Mr. Kasurak: We have done an audit and a follow-up of the Alternative Service Delivery Program, which is what the department calls "outsourcing."

Senator Banks: It makes for a longer acronym.

Mr. Kasurak: It does. It had aimed for about $200 million by last year and now it has lowered its expectations to about $150 million by 2004. When looking at these projects we found that while they have been successful in saving money in about the 10 per cent to15per cent range, they have not been the bonanza that the department initially expected; extracting savings has been much more difficult than they expected. A lot of the expectations had been based upon the bad old days, pre-1994 budget days when there was a lot of what is known as "low-hanging fruit" available. A lot of that was gone by the time they started to ASD.

Our audits have also pointed to the additional risks in contracting. When they enter into major service contracts, some of the contracts are not well done. The Meaford training area, where the department locked itself into a fixed fee contract and then had no trainees to produce, was under utilized and they had to continue paying for that facility. There are these other risks that erode your savings if you are not careful.

The department recognized the same problems and responded by doing fewer projects and putting them under more intensive management scrutiny. Now we have Supply Chain, which is just about to be launched; it is under much heavier management scrutiny and control than the earlier ASD projects that we audited. I still think there are savings there. Our opinion is that this is not the silver bullet that will solve the department's budget problems, but it is still worth pursuing.

Senator Banks: It sounds like if things continue as they are, and we may find out later today that they are not, we might hit a brick wall pretty soon. We might fall down and not be able to get up. Another committee, of which I have the honour to be a member, has just finished a study on the deferred maintenance of university facilities. It is pretty awful when you say we need to replace the roof but just pour another can of tar on it because we cannot afford to do repair the roof. Pretty soon there will be no roof left to fix. How long do we have before we hit that wall? How present is the danger?

Ms Fraser: I am afraid we cannot answer that. I am not even sure that the department could answer that. There is a backlog of maintenance. We do not even have accurate information on the substance of that backlog. I do not know whether the department has it either. There obviously is a problem looming.

Mr. Kasurak: It would certainly vary by equipment type as well. Obviously, if you look at the aircraft, the three aircraft that are in trouble from a point of view of availability are the three old ones. There is a capital program for two of them, but the third one is farther out. The Hercules is the one that the department should be most attentive to at this point in making sure that the capital plan will meet the needs of the aircraft. It is difficult to look at this overall. You must break it down to even finer grain than we have succeeded in this audit.

Senator Banks: Most Canadians would not be surprised, or would not think it too difficult to figure out that the three aircraft that are causing the most maintenance costs are the three oldest ones. Actually, it is sort of rocket science.

The Chairman: I take it there is an agreement that there is a brick wall there. We are just sure how soon we will hit that brick wall.

Ms Fraser: There is the potential for a brick wall to be there, depending on what the capital programs the military might put in or not.

Senator Day: I would like to start by complimenting you on the reports. They are very helpful. I can see this will be a good reference book for us until you revisit this subject at another time.

The part that struck me the most in chapter 7 and chapter 8 is the list of responsibilities of the customs agents at the border. It seems incredible that they should be expected to have all these various acts and regulations in mind. My immediate thought was the importance of continuing education for these employees. There are two and one-half pages at the back in this appendix.

The Chairman: Senator Day, please give us a rough number because I was astonished by that, too.

Senator Day: I find it astounding. The appendix includes firearms, World Trade Organization agreements, the marking of imported goods and narcotics. There are copyright issues, explosives issues, the transportation of dangerous goods, food and drug acts, wild animal and plant protection regulations, and so on. It is an incredible array. Presumably, the agents working at the borders are getting a good educational background on all of these things.

I read what you said concerning the students and the erratic education for the part-time employees. If that situation were rectified, would you be satisfied that the educational requirements, upgrading and the skills of teaching is adequate for the job that is expected of these individuals?

Ms Fraser: Thank you, Senator Day, for your kind comments on our report. I am glad to see you found it useful.

You are correct in noting that the customs officers have a very complex job to do. They serve many departments other than their own agency and must deal with a lot of varying a varied array of issues in any given day. We brought up the issue of training. We mentioned in our report that they go through fairly extensive training when they first become customs officers, but then the ongoing training is weak. They need to have better ongoing training. Just as laws and situations change so do their risks change and they must be trained to be aware of these changes. We think that is one area that the agency must improve.

Senator Day: You have made that recommendation?

Ms Fraser: Yes.

Senator Day: Another compliment for you and the role that you are playing as the Auditor General is that you have gone over your recommendations with the departments. They may agree or disagree, but you have at least commented on that. In most instances they agree and they are working on implementing your recommendations. That is helpful and constructive as opposed to finding fault and a year later coming back to see if things have been done. That is another good approach and I was not aware that it was happening.

I would like to stay with the agency side of things. Mr. Minto may be able to help me with this. Our committee has visited both airports and seaports, in particular seaports in Vancouver and an airport in Vancouver and the airport in Montreal and the seaport in Montreal. We get the sense that the customs agency's work is more effective at the airports than it is at the seaport.

Did you have the same sense in your review? If so, why?

Mr. Minto: I am going back now not only to this report but also to previous reports. I do not think we have ever done a comparison like that. The challenges they face are very different. What we were looking at whether or not they had the right skills and tools to meet those different challenges. In a lot of the work we did, we looked at the land crossings, because 80 per cent of our trade is on land. The majority of people coming to Canada come through land crossings.

Customs people face a huge problem on the seaports. There is organized crime; there are illegal immigrants, all of those things. They work hand in hand with a lot of departments. It is not solely a customs responsibility. I would like to bring you back to the issue of working with other departments. The issue of training their people is very critical.

Senator Day: We have had some discussions in relation to the points you raise. Have you made any assessment as to why this was happening in terms of airport versus seaport? Have you analyzed the administration or the labour situation at the port versus the airport? Is it because the geographic area is larger and less confined and, therefore, more difficult to manage? Have you got into those issues?

Mr. Minto: No, we did not.

Senator Day: In Montreal, we were told that if customs targeted a particular ship or a particular container on a ship coming in, it is quite possible that, by the time the ship got to the customs office, that particular container would have disappeared. In your investigations at the seaports, do you have any knowledge of that kind of activity?

Mr. Minto: I have no documentary evidence of anything like that.

Senator Day: Is there any anecdotal evidence?

Mr. Minto: You may want to be concerned about something similar in relation to the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor. Approximately 6,000 to 7,000 trucks cross that bridge every day. About one-third of those trucks are referred to a secondary inspection, about 2,500. Rarely are those trucks escorted, although the secondary inspection site is almost two kilometres away. There is ample room for tampering along the way, although customs thinks it is high-risk. Things can disappear. It is not only on the high seas. We have looked at the Windsor Bridge and we are concerned about it.

The Chairman: Did your inquiries include the police when you were doing your audit? Did you spend time with the strike forces that were targeting illegal activities?

Mr. Minto: No. We were looking mostly at illegal crossings that were under customs jurisdiction and what actions customs were taking. We looked at secondary inspections under customs jurisdiction. We did not cover what other forces are doing in this particular audit. That will be covered in another audit.

Ms Fraser: We would only have looked at information customs might get from those in order to target high-risk. We did not look at what the police forces were doing.

The Chairman: That may explain the discrepancy we are getting in information you are describing.

Senator Day: It might. Perhaps some of the information we are giving you will help you in your next investigation. You may decide to expand a bit.

I read your comments about inspecting trucks a mile and one-half or two kilometres away from the border and escorting the most highly targeted ones to the border. This whole concept seemed a bit inconceivable that this kind of thing can go on when you highlight that, because of NAFTA, there will be increased trade, not less. This kind of band-aid activity of inspecting two kilometres away and only escorting certain trucks to the bridge might be a short-term solution but it not a long-term solution.

Ms Fraser: You are correct in that comment. Over and above the issue of escorting, one must question why one-third of the trucks coming through are being referred to a secondary inspection. In other words, is it because they have inadequate paperwork? If it is that, then better should be information given to them before they arrive at the border to eliminate that problem.

There are issues in many of the border crossings of the physical layout of the border. I visited one of the land border crossings in Vancouver. Certain people had a Can-Pass that is used by frequent border crossers to have been pre-cleared, except to the actual access to the border. However, everyone was coming across via the same road. That system was almost useless because people were caught up in the traffic of everyone else trying to get through the regular customs. Eventually, there must be a look at control and customs entry, the flow and logistics, especially with increased traffic. You are correct; they cannot escort every truck to a secondary inspection site that is two kilometres away.

Senator Day: We are coming to that conclusion as well. Something will have to change. It is unrealistic to assume that our current system can keep expanding and do an adequate job.

Ms Fraser: I agree.

Senator Day: My final question is quite unrelated to these questions; it might bring Mr. Kasurak into the discussion.

It has been brought to our attention that female navy uniforms have not been designed with women in mind. Initially it seems a silly thing, but when you think about it in terms of potential safety issues, it becomes more serious. I thought that the policy issue to integrate the Armed Forces without any gender bias had been met long ago. Why would the clothing department not have caught up with that by now?

Mr. Kasurak: I do not know. I did note that the Chief of the Defence Staff, when he appeared before you, assured you that he was on the case. It is perhaps something we will look at in the future.

The last army-clothing project that we looked at was the Clothe the Soldier project. The army spent an extensive amount of time making sure that equipment was appropriate for both men and women and for people of all sizes. That is very important when you have so much load-bearing webbing.

The light has gone on for the Armed Forces as a whole. The army has done a reasonable job in ensuring that female soldiers have been taken care of. I simply do not know why the navy is behind.

Senator Day: We are not necessarily assuming it was only the navy that was behind. I am asking you this question, because I wonder if there were any financial reasons why a one-size-fits-all approach had been the norm?

Mr. Kasurak: We did not the looked into that. The army appears to have done a reasonably good job in addressing that particular question.

Senator Day: You looked at it from an army point of view?

Mr. Kasurak: That was a major project. We looked at that project, I believe, in 2000.

The Chairman: For the record, this issue also came up with the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency.

Senator LaPierre: I have no issues as far as clothing is concerned except that I would like to design them; I could do a better job.

I have several sets of questions. First, I am your spare part person. I know as much about spare parts as I do about everything else. I am interested in chapter 10, particularly paragraphs 10.61 through 10.67. In paragraph 10.64 you wrote:

While the performance of the current supply system is low for parts needed urgently, this is constantly high for 30-day requirements. Between 1995 and 2000, the rates remained stable, despite a drop in total demand in two of the three services. Low success rates reflected difficulty of procuring or repairing spare parts and delivering them to the needed location on the tight deadlines.

That is a valid reason why cannot deliver in the necessary time. Therefore, we should not become disturbed by that statement in regards to security and defence matters.

Ms Fraser: I would disagree with you. I refer you to the table in exhibit 10.7. When a part is required within 30 days, they can meet that request 92 per cent to 98 per cent of the time. When a part is needed within two days, they have limited success: 34 per cent in the navy, 37 per cent in the army and 45 per cent in the air force. I am referring to an urgent part, perhaps for equipment on deployment somewhere; they need that part urgently because it will affect the mission.

Senator LaPierre: What reasons have they come up with in order to account for this? They are, with all due respect, as intelligent as the members of your department. Consequently, they know that if they need a part urgently they need it urgently. The statistics do not tell me what they do.

Mr. Kasurak: This is the reason that we put some of these little case studies in the report.

Senator LaPierre: I have seen them.

Mr. Kasurak: If you look at the case studies, you will find that we were talking about aircraft parts. The supply system does not have enough detailed control over shipments that allow people to identify what should be shipped first. If you have a large number of immediate operational requirements, some of those are more urgent than others, unfortunately. There is not the capacity for them to track that through their system in order to find out where it is, what should go on the plane first and what will be shipped.

In general, we found that the largest problem is in the shipment phase of the logistics chain. That is where the breakdown is occurring according to the case studies.

Senator LaPierre: The department has 32 Hercules aircraft; 20 should be available for flying at all times. On page 15 you say that one-third of them are not. Further you state:

The situation was at its worst in 2000-01, when 35 per cent of the time not enough aircraft were serviceable.

Does that delay the shipment?

Mr. Kasurak: To the extent that they are dependent on the Hercules, yes, it does. They would be used for in-theatre transport. Many times it is not simply the Hercules, it is the other aircraft as well. Parts are shipped on the airbus aircraft and sometimes commercially.

Certainly not having the tactical aircraft available will make things worse. However, even if they were all available, the evidence indicates that there will still be a problem because those shipments cannot be tracked appropriately.

Senator LaPierre: Let us say that I am a commander, and I need a part quickly. Surely there must be a process whereby everyone is informed that I need this part immediately. I see this in the movies all the time. It seems to me there must be someone in the military that realizes that this is important and they do things quickly. Do our Armed Forces operate that way?

Mr. Kasurak: They have a version of that called "immediate operational requirement." However, if service tends to be poor, users will put too much into that category; it then becomes more difficult to manage.

If you look at exhibit 10.11 on page 20, you will see some of the problems that our forces encountered in Operation Palladium in Bosnia. The troops reported on several occasions, that they had ordered helicopter parts, and the parts had not been placed on the first available flight. There is a breakdown in the transportation system.

Senator LaPierre: Could that be bureaucracies?

Mr. Kasurak: Absolutely.

Senator LaPierre: That brings me to another bureaucracy. I will leave the Armed Forces aside for the moment.

[Translation]

Ms Fraser, on page 5 of your opening remarks you say that the decisions made at the border regarding travellers entering Canada are based on an assessment of risk, and officers need information to make them. You found that they did not have the information they needed to do that adequately. You mentioned that one of the reasons for that was because the computers do not talk to each other.

Ms Fraser: That is correct.

Senator LaPierre: How can that still be the case in 2001?

Ms Fraser: The systems are not new. They were designed to fulfil a specific requirement not necessarily in anticipation of today's requirements. Substantial amounts of money would have to be invested to standardize the system. It is a major project.

[English]

Senator LaPierre: Is it possible for you in the accountability process to assess the mindset of people? Information is power. Anyone who knows anything about the history of bureaucracies knows that the first thing you hang on to is information. That is where the power lies. The power lies with the electorate of your minister, et cetera.

I suspect all these systems were devised not to speak to each other in the first place. I understand that a system is now being developed that will make it possible for computers to talk to each other.

Mr. Minto: You have to go back into history a bit. Remember, the customs tradition has been that when the truck arrives at the border, you inspect it, and the person pays the customs and leaves. That has traditionally been the way of doing business.

However, NAFTA increased trade with the U.S. so much that a new way of doing business had to be developed. The lineups were getting longer and longer. What we are doing now is similar to what we do with income tax or self-assessments; the broker sends forward the information that a truck is en route carrying certain goods, asks to have it cleared, and makes arrangements for payments at a later date. It is a very good concept, with trucks coming in and identifying themselves. They come in and out of the system quickly, and the filing is done later.

The problem is that the computer system has not kept up with the concept. There was a quick move to implementing forced compliance verification, for example, but they have not developed the computer systems to help them do it. We were astonished, for example, when we started asking them for information. We asked how many years of information they had, and they only had three. We have been doing this for 100 years. The point is that this information was not kept and put together.

Senator LaPierre: We are talking about people as well.

[Translation]

The comments made in paragraph 17 of Ms Fraser's brief refer to individuals arriving at our borders. When Mr. or Mrs. X arrives, the officer does not have any information because the computers do not speak to each other. So the risk can never be assessed, unless they are targeted.

Ms Fraser: Yes. We also criticized the Agency with respect to its targeting activities that need to be improved. They did not have all the appropriate information and border officers were not sufficiently informed.

[English]

Do they have access to the information of a composite of a person who might be a terrorist?

Ms Fraser: I do not know if they do or do not. We did not look at that when we did our audit in 2000. For example, when you go through the land crossing there a reader.

[Translation]

We discovered that in one third of all cases, the licence plate reader did not work. The officers were not able to read the licence plates. And that is at the base of the current system. So more emphasis must be placed on the systems and on enhanced communication. I will bear in mind your very interesting comments on the culture and the individuals.

Senator LaPierre: You will have to look at that as well.

[English]

Mr. Minto: When we did the audit dealing with travellers coming over the border, there was a problem with key information systems there as well. We wanted to find the problem. The point is that in terms of the profile you are talking about, customs needs information on criminal records, drivers' licences, vacant plates, stolen cars, et cetera. The responsibility for compiling this information was with the RCMP. In the year 2000 when we wrote the chapter on customs, we did a chapter on the RCMP. We found that the information that the RCMP was putting into the system was delayed. I will read to you:

There have been delays of two months to more than five months in entering records of new criminals and new crimes of "old" criminals into the system.

Some files have taken over five months.

A study completed in 1999 noted that the system is accessible only about 89 per cent of the time

Remember that the customs officer is working in real-time. He does not know who is coming. He has to get into the system, make a decision and go on to the next person.

Senator LaPierre: I read all of this, and at first I was rather scared. However, in the end we always deliver. There is no brick wall. We deliver. We have always done that since the First World War. At the last minute, we jumped in and we did better than almost every country, except the two bigger countries, the United States and Great Britain. In a sense, Canadians take a lot of security in knowing that the Canadian Forces are able to meet their commitments. There are always maintenance problems that are really not that crucial to meeting the end of the day. How do you deal with that? It is a reality.

Ms Fraser: We have only looked at the equipment part. I cannot comment on the rest.

A great deal of effort goes into ensuring that the equipment that is deployed is adequate, but there are costs to that. Either maintenance schedules are not being met or training exercises are not being conducted at home.

What disturbs me is the number of vacant positions in maintenance personnel and the number of people who are working without the qualifications required of their rank. I do not think that builds a strong organization. We do not find these people on the coroner of the street. Money is not the only solution to this problem. The department itself has estimated that it will take several years to correct that human resource issue.

While the government is continuing and the Canadian Forces are continuing to maintain equipment that is being deployed, I do not think this is an optimal situation. Maintenance must be improved and people have to be recruited. These problems must be addressed because it will take several years to correct them.

Senator LaPierre: Two things may be missing. The first has to do with the political imperatives determined by the Canadian people through their electoral democracy. Second, there are budgetary imperatives determined by the Canadian people. The Canadian Armed Forces must operate within these imperatives. It seems to me that your report ought to operate within those imperatives as well. I find that you do not. Am I wrong?

You go to an optimal position as if the Armed Forces had all the money on the planet. They have to operate within very definite parameters of what they are told do, as Senator Banks suggested at the outset. Your report must reflect how well have they done within these parameters? I do not find that here. Should I have?

Ms Fraser: You are correct. We do not comment on policy. We will only look to see if the policy of the government as decided is being administered and implemented as such. For many years, the office has commented that there is a gap between the policy that the government is giving itself for the Armed Forces and the level of funding. That has to be resolved. That is not up to us.

We can only indicate to parliamentarians that there is an anomaly there and that it must be addressed.

When we talk about constraints within a system, I would expect in organizations managing $11 billion that there would be adequate management. I do not think any of us are asking for a great thing. I would expect them to know what is the readiness of their equipment. I find it inappropriate that the audit office is coming and saying what the readiness of the equipment is. I do not think we should be doing that job, quite frankly.

Senator LaPierre: As I was listening to you, I was thinking that surely we are equipping these people and training them to go and defend us somewhere.

We cannot arm them with a book as big as this building so that they can fill out the forms to satisfy the demands of these reports.

Ms Fraser: I agree with that, and I do not think that is what we are asking for.

Mr. Kasurak: As to your question about whether the audit office should use the Canadian Forces own standards of assessment, I agree. However, when we did this audit, they did not have any standards.

Senator Banks: They what?

Mr. Kasurak: They had no standards for equipment and materiel readiness. We measured them: we went around to the units and asked them what they would aim for and they said that, in the case of army units, they should have 75 per cent of their vehicles on the road when in Canada and 90 per cent when deployed. We have used those standards, as informal as they are, in our report. If the Armed Forces had provided us with standards, we would have been more than happy to use them in our audit.

In terms of the long-term consequences, closer management of readiness is a modern requirement. In World War I and World War II, Canadian forces spent a great deal of time training at Salisbury Plain in the U.K. before being deployed. Even then, they had problems. The next time, we may not have that luxury. I believe that it is incumbent on a modern military force to manage readiness more closely than what we found in the case of equipment.

Senator LaPierre: Who audits you, madam?

Ms Fraser: I am glad you asked.

Senator LaPierre: Who sits down and says this woman has made sense and the department has made sense. Are you audited to the same level as everybody else?

Ms Fraser: We have a financial audit done every year; we produce a performance report that is reviewed by a committee of the other place; and we have a hearing on our performance, where we have more than a few.

Senator LaPierre: Here in the senate? We will arrange that.

Ms Fraser: I will be quite pleased to come to the Senate and talk about our performance.

The Chairman: I have a couple of brief questions that have to do with recruiting and training. The first has to do with your recommendation that there be an increased recruiting of personnel in specialized and maintenance trades. If we increased the number of specialized trades, would the Armed Forces have the capacity and resources to do formal training and on-the-job training to meet this increased demand?

Mr. Kasurak: The short answer is: not for a while. The training system relies on taking people from operational units to augment the training system. It is the dog chasing its tail to a certain extent. You have to have people in the door to some extent; people to plug the holes. At that stage you can begin to ramp up training, but it will be sequential. It will not be quick and easy.

The Chairman: Your report states:

... that maintenance personnel may need up to two years on the job before they can work unsupervised, and another five to qualify in a specific expertise.

Are the standards too stringent to become a technician?

Mr. Kasurak: I do not believe so. They have high standards as evidenced by the willingness of industry to go in and raid Canadian Forces wherever they can. I do not believe the standards are too high.

The training burden, according to one of the departmental witnesses that appeared before you recently, has become too much. When we have done audits of that in the past, it was not that the standards were too high, but that they had become too broad. People kept adding other things for people to know, until finally the training burden became too great.

The Chairman: Coming back to Ms Fraser's earlier comment, I quote:

Overall, we found that military personnel had not taken 38 per cent of the specialty courses required for the positions they were working in. Broken down by service, the figures were 27 per cent in the Navy, 36 per cent in the Air Force, and 61 per cent in the army.

That is a frightening statement. Is all of this specialized training required? You said that it is either expand the size of the training system or require less training. Which is it?

Mr. Kasurak: We collected this information from 49 units. They felt the training was required and they suggested that there was additional supervisory training, first-aid training and things that we did not include in our audit because they were not core. My feeling is that the training system should police whether the training is required, and the people in the units told us they thought it was. That is the best answer we can give you with the information we collected in this audit.

Senator Kenny: You pointed out in your report that, in most maintenance organizations, there is a shortage of personnel and that of the personnel that are there, a large number are not qualified to do the job. Should they be shutting down? Should they simply say that they are unable do this because they are not qualified? Is that happening?

Mr. Kasurak: Well, the fact that maintenance backlogs are building up indicates that that is where it is headed. The supervisors have to work harder and the excess then becomes a maintenance backlog.

Senator Banks: This is not an insult to the people who are doing their best, but if there is 61 per cent who have not taken the speciality courses that they are required to take, does this not mean that they are putting people's lives in danger?

Mr. Kasurak: No. The training comes in several segments. One segment requires you to be qualified in your occupation and rank. I think the numbers that we present, say that about 15 per cent of people are missing some of that training.

Senator Banks: It is not that they do not know how to do the main job?

Mr. Kasurak: They may not have all the training necessary to do their main job unsupervised. This passes a burden on to the supervisors, who have to supervise more closely, have to work longer hours, and that is where this burden has gone. The 61 per cent you quoted are specialty courses required to do work in that particular unit, so they require a certain number of people to have that training in the unit. Once again, it appears to us that the burden is being passed on to fewer and fewer people. Thus, we end up with conditions of service problems and higher attrition.

Senator Banks: I have two short questions. I want to follow up with Senator LaPierre's question.

Let us say that this is a private enterprise, that I am the CEO and that you have come to report to me about the state of readiness and operability of a function of this factory. I need to know this. Are you telling me that I have not given that function enough money to do its job? Or are you telling me that they are not prioritizing the $11.0 million that I have given them?

Are you saying to me that I must give them $12.3 million, or are you saying they are mismanaging the $11.0 million? One or the other is true.

I gave them an $11-billion budget last year and they spent $12.3 in order to meet some perceived level of preparedness. Are you telling me to give them more money or that they blew the management?

Ms Fraser: We are telling you that what you are asking them to do and the budget you were giving them, do not jive.

Senator Banks: So we have to give them more money?

Ms Fraser: Or you have to redefine what you are asking them to do.

Senator Banks: Or lower our expectations?

Mr. Kasurak: Or make the factory more efficient.

Ms Fraser: Probably a combination of the two.

Senator Banks: The answer is all of the above.

Mr. Kasurak: It depends on the rate at which you can address the things that you can change. We talked a little bit about Alternate Service Delivery that is making the factory more efficient. It is working but not very quickly. The other difference here, as we have continued to state, is that you have not exactly said what you want the factory to produce.

Senator Banks: We have not said what you think we ought to say.

Ms Fraser: We would expect in readiness, for instance, that there would be targets and standards.

Senator Banks: Is that a reasonable expectation of our army, navy and air force?

Ms Fraser: People are working to set their own. It is better that somebody tell them what it should be.

Senator Banks: Let them who can first identify the target with some accuracy that is good for two years from now step forward.

You state:

10.26 Navy. While the Navy has the raw data, it does not compile statistics on the availability of its key systems.

And at paragraph 10.31 you wrote:

Given that data for 1999 and 2000 were incomplete, we looked at data from 1989 to 1998.

And in paragraph 10.34 you stated:

Statistics for 1 Canadian Mechanized Brigade Group were not available.

In paragraph 10.36:

The Air staff stopped producing reports on operational availability

Concerning the navy, in paragraph 10.43 you wrote:

Lack of data meant we could not determine the maintenance effort required to achieve these activity rates

Are you satisfied that these shortcomings will be addressed or will they continue? Are you satisfied that they will start getting this information so that proper management can be put into place?

Ms Fraser: As I mentioned in my opening comments, there are some new systems coming online that should address some of these issues.

Senator Banks: They are a long way down the line though.

Ms Fraser: They are a way down the line and we do not have detailed action plans for all the recommendations.

Senator Banks: In the mean time, have they said they will write them down?

Ms Fraser: No.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Senator Banks. Mrs. Fraser, you have been very helpful. You and your staff have provided the committee with a great deal of interesting information. I would like to compliment you on your first report. You have greatly assisted the work of this committee.

Good afternoon and welcome back, whether you are here in the room, watching on television or listening to us on the Internet. This afternoon we continue our study of major defence and national security issues.

My name is Colin Kenny, I am from Ontario and I chair the committee. I will introduce the other members of the committee.

On my far right, I have Senator Banks from Alberta. Sitting beside him is Senator Wiebe from Saskatchewan, and beside him is Senator Cordy from Nova Scotia.

On my far left is Senator LaPierre from Ontario. Beside him is Senator Day from New Brunswick, and I expect we will have Senator Atkins joining us again shortly.

Our committee is the first permanent Standing Senate Committee with a mandate to examine subjects on security and defence. We are conducting a survey of major issues facing Canada and we shall be reporting back to the senate at the end of February.

We began our meeting earlier today and heard from the Auditor General about two reports released last week: one on defence equipment and the other on border security. We shall now hear from the assistant deputy minister of Human Resources from the Department of National Defence. He will be discussing personnel matters.

Three weeks ago, our committee conducted a fact-finding visit to the West where we visited military bases in Esquimalt and Winnipeg to see for ourselves where our forces work, live and train. During our meetings on bases, as well as during hearings here in Ottawa, there have been questions raised about a number of personnel issues: recruitment, retention, quality of life, post-traumatic stress disorder, health services, personnel training and so forth.

Today we hear from headquarters about how the department is addressing these matters. Our next witness is Lieutenant-General Christian Couture. General Couture began his career with the Royal Twenty-second Regiment. He has served three tours of duties in Cyprus. In the former Yugoslavia, he commanded the Fifth Canadian Multinational Brigade that was composed of some 2,800 men and women from Canada the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom.

In April 1998, he assumed the duties of chief of staff to the assistant deputy minister (human resources) and, six months later, became acting deputy minister of human resources. He was appointed to his current post on July 1, 2000.

Brigadier-General T.M. Hearn and Colonel Scott Cameron accompany General Couture.

Lieutenant-General Christian Couture, Assistant Deputy Minister (Human Resources - Military), Department of National Defence: Honourable senators, I appreciate very much being called before you as part of your survey on defence and security issues. I note that you recently had an excellent session with the Chief of Defence Staff and the three service chiefs in which a number of HR issues were raised. I will be pleased to address these and other issues in more detail.

You have received copies of my speaking notes, so I will keep my remarks very brief. I will not read over the brief but will just stress a few points.

As the assistant deputy minister on military human resources, my business is people. I have the honour to lead a team that looks after them. The three of us here today are part of the team that is tasked to manage military personnel issues, including recruiting, education and training, policy and planning, careers, compensation and benefits, health services, spiritual issues, quality of life, personal support, and history and heritage.

To do this, we have shaped a vision that guides the day-to-day activity of my group. Our vision is to look after our people, to invest in them and to give them confidence in their future.

Looking after our people really begins with recruiting. As a fighting force, we work as a team to perform each mission. To look after ourselves, we need to keep our team up to strength. Thus we have implemented a plan to recruit an expanded intake of personnel. The major elements of our plan are in the documents that I have given to you.

This campaign has proven to be highly successful but there are some challenges, such as shortages in several technical occupations. We are in the process of establishing several monetary and promotion incentive programs to attract more technical recruits and people re-enrolling.

Although there have been some cases of delays experienced in both transfer from the reserve to the regular force, and re-enrolling ex-regular-force members back into the force, the process has been greatly streamlined and delays are the exception, rather than the rule.

[Translation]

However, it is clear that retaining people involves listening to their needs and providing them with an effective balance of compensation and benefits, career opportunities and a secure work environment.

As such, we are doing many things, beginning with the removal of deterrents at the front door.

[English]

Over all, I am pleased to report that we are making some progress on the retention front. Attrition has been reduced this year to between 6.25 per cent and 6.5 per cent. Obviously, this is encouraging.

Over the past several years the Canadian Forces have made improvements to health services. This is a major priority for the Forces. The latest project, called "RX 2000," is an ambitious effort. Some details are listed in the brief in front of you.

We are facing similar health challenges by groups everywhere, but we are actively pursuing initiatives to develop an equitable, affordable health care system both on base and where deployed. Our goal is to provide the same seamless health care to our personnel in both garrisons and operations.

My second theme is "investing in our people." The effectiveness of the Canadian Forces depends largely upon the individual and collective knowledge and skills of our members. To invest in them, the Canadian Forces devotes considerable resources, especially in training and professional development. Some of the other initiatives are also listed in your package.

By investing in our people with training and development, we not only develop and maintain our people and give them the tools they need to perform their duties but, in return, we hope they will invest in us by staying in the force.

My third point is "give them confidence in their future." We continue to work on looking after and investing in our people as the best means to give them confidence in the future, but just being called before this committee helps give our people confidence. It shows that there is genuine interest by this committee in our personnel and they know that you have their best interests at heart.

Although we are facing numerous challenges, our strength is in our vision: Looking after our people, investing in them and giving them confidence in their future.

[Translation]

I am now ready to answer any questions you may have.

[English]

Senator Cordy: It was our pleasure to travel to the West Coast to meet with military personnel; we will be going to the East Coast in January. We have met outstanding military personnel who are doing a terrific job for our country. I would like to pass that along to you and to Canadians who are listening.

We also heard from the military personnel about the progress that has been made in terms of pay improvement. One resource centre representative said that, despite the pay improvement, they still get calls from the media asking about the people going to food banks. That is not a reality because of improvements that have been made. I congratulate you.

I also spoke with people who were pleased with the regional cost-of-living allowance for housing. That allowed them to make choices on whether they wanted to stay in military housing or to get housing off the base. The cost-of-living allowance gave them choices.

The "Quality of Life Report" had 89 recommendations, 63 of which have been addressed by the Canadian Forces. That is a substantial number. What are the 26 remaining recommendations? Are they clustered together? What types of things have not yet been addressed and why?

LGen. Couture: Thank you for the comment on the quality and the dedication of our people. I am sure that those who are listening will appreciate that very much. I believe they deserve it.

Some of the 26 remaining issues are clustered in groups. Some are independent. The remaining issues will all be addressed over the next few months and years.

The government has accepted those recommendations. We feel that it is important.

I will give you an example of our commitments to improve and to maintain the quality of life of our people. When we started implementing recommendations, we created a project management office, which normally is something that is set up for a short period of time; once the project is finished the staff goes back to other duties.

I did not want to do that, so created a directorate of quality of life. We have transformed it into a permanent directorate that will continue to implement those recommendations. They will also monitor the quality of life and address other issues. They will listen to the chain of command. They will hear from the troops, and pass that information on to us. Quality of life is not just an adjustment to pay. It is a variety of issues.

One outstanding recommendation is pay every two weeks. We will be examining that recommendation, but it involves more work than we thought. Another outstanding recommendation is to have a committee to review the manner by which military compensation is determined. We are working on that. There are a few others. We still maintain the pillar we had. One of the pillars is the family, another is compensation benefit and the third is support. I have a team dedicated to each of those pillars.

Senator Cordy: I am glad to hear that there will be continuous monitoring of quality of life issues.

I want to bring up something that Senator Day discussed earlier with the Auditor General. That is the issue of clothing. It appears that the clothing is designed for men, and not for the women. One gentleman told me that his wife was in the military and could not get shoes small enough to fit her. Even if you were lucky enough to get the length, the width of a man's shoe is too large. Then you get into the other issue of wearing shirts instead of blouses and pants that are designed for men. Are you working on that?

LGen. Couture: Yes, we are. In fact, I am the father of two daughters and I am aware of the problem.

Senator Cordy: That will help us then.

LGen. Couture: I do not know why we never realized that. When we were looking at a pair of combat boots, we thought that women have smaller feet so they would only need a smaller size. That is not the case. It is the same with other official clothing. The rifle butt was shortened a little bit. We also needed to alter the rock sight.

You are absolutely right. We are looking into the problem and we will soon have clothing especially designed for women. General Hearn chaired the national clothing committee.

Brigadier-General T.M. Hearn, OMM, CD, Director General, Military Human Resources Policy and Planning: Thank you, senator, it is an important question. The message has come back to us from the field that there are a number of issues to be addressed; one of them is the shoe. There are some other clothing issues for our pregnant soldiers, sailors and airmen. The clothing is not fitting. We are moving ahead with a design of new clothing to address those deficiencies. We do have a project running right now that not only addresses the Canadian Forces clothing that we wear, like today, but also some of the operational clothing that our female members wear.

Senator Cordy: You talked about RX 2000 and some of the things that you are doing on medical services. I am on another committee that is studying the health care system of Canada. There are certainly a number of challenges within the system.

One of the glaring deficiencies in the system was related to mental health and care of people who are suffering from mental health illness. Within this realm of mental illness, I will talk about post-traumatic stress disorder.

Canadians have an historic reputation, well deserved, for being peacekeepers.

However, it seems that we have sent people into peacekeeping missions not necessarily prepared mentally for what they were going to see. We are now very much aware of the problems that people have when they return to Canada. Could you discuss what you are doing in that area?

It seems that some people are leaving the military before symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder become apparent. They have already retired or left the military for other reasons. Are you reaching out to people who have post-traumatic stress syndrome or disorder, but who have left the military? Are you still caring for them?

LGen. Couture: Thank you for the question. It is a very important issue for us, as well. Before I ask Dr. Cameron to speak on the medical aspect, I will address it from a policy and chain of command perspective.

Up until a few years ago we did not even know that PTSD existed. We have known for the last ten years that the places where our soldiers are serving are different from other areas of operation. We were ill prepared when our soldiers returned from these places. We were ill-prepared, because we never anticipated the kind of operation with which they would be faced.

However, we have learned since then. We have become much better. I am not saying that we are out of the woods yet, but we have invested a lot of effort, energy and money to address this issue. We have created a network of operational stress clinics across the country.

We have addressed also not only the treatment but the preparation for these people. We have learned a little more about PTSD. We know more than we did before. We can perhaps better address the preparation and tell people what to expect or how to react.

Another important aspect is that the leaders of those people need to be able to recognize the symptoms when they show up in-theatre. The leaders should, at least, be armed with enough knowledge to prepare the soldiers to face the horrors that they might see.

We have established a joint centre with Veterans Affairs of Canada, here in Ottawa that looks after casualty administration. It is a place where those who have left the service and have difficulty related to military service, can come in and find where to get proper treatment.

As you know, when someone leaves the service with a medical condition, he is taken care of by Veterans Affairs of Canada. However, we still keep in contact through Veterans Affairs and through the centre.

Soldiers that experience symptoms after they have left the service should contact an office of Veterans Affairs anywhere in the country. If they need to be evaluated for PTDS, our clinic will do that.Together with Veterans Affairs, we find the best way to look after these people.

As you know, the people suffering from PTST sometimes feel diminished. They do not want to talk to their friends because they are afraid of being called coward or yellow or whatever. They need to be able to talk to someone.

Last May we launched a project called the "operational stress injuries support network." It is a network that will be created across the country. It has three goals.

The first goal is to provide social support for the soldier, outside of the medical world.

The centre provides a social support for the victims of PTSD that so they can learn to cope with life.

The second aspect is to examine pre-deployment training. Is it adequate? Is it done at the right place? Can it be improved, and so on?

The third thing is to look after how we cope with what I call the debriefing or the after-deployment syndrome.

Senator Cordy: When you talk about training, are you talking about pre-deployment to a peacekeeping mission? Are you suggesting that you will have to change the way you train people who are about to embark on a mission.

LGen. Couture: A lot of training is done at the moment, but is it adequate? Is it appropriate? I do not know yet. That is what I asked the team to do. I asked them to examine whether or not the training is appropriate. If it is not, what needs to be done to make it more suitable for this specific issue?

Senator Cordy: You made references to people being nervous about coming forward. This is certainly true in civilian life. Whether or not we like it, a stigma is still attached to mental illness and we classify stress-related illnesses in there.

Is that compounded because of the close-knit community that there is in the military? People are afraid to go to their boss to say they are stressed out, or whatever terminology you wish to use. They are afraid that it will keep them from advancing their position.

Are you noticing that type of thing in the military also?

LGen. Couture: Yes, especially among the male population. Is it a male characteristic? I do not know; I am not an expert in the field. A lot of people have told me that they are afraid of coming forward. First, they do not want to be singled out as being the weak member of the team. They do not want to be seen as not being able to carry their weight. People do not like to be targeted nor do they like to be put into a kind of category. Yes, that could prevent them from obtaining the help that they need.

They believe that if they come forward and it is determined that they can no longer function within the military because of their state of health, there is a possibility that we might release them. Some people are afraid of that. We are trying to overcome that thinking.

One of the mandates of the group is education. Education is not directed towards the people who are suffering, because they know what it is all about to be suffering from PTSD, but towards the people around them and people in the chain of command. I am not talking about people at my level, because we understand what we need to do. I am talking about the lower level of supervisors; the senior non-commissioned members and the junior officers; the people who have a lack of understanding what PTSD is all about.

The social support group we are creating will have as part of its mandate education for that group so they can understand PTSD. Whenever someone is identified as suffering from PTSD they will be helped instead of being pushed away.

My goal in all this is to get them back on their feet as quickly as possible so that they can feel like real soldiers again and become part of the team. My intention is not to simply treat them and send them back to civilian life. I want them back in the force and functioning as a fit soldier.

Col. Scott Cameron, Director, Medical Policy, Health Services, Department of National Defence: General Couture gave you a complete answer. In February of last year, the military introduced a policy that is important in this regard, namely, that personal health information is now absolutely confidential and is not accessible to anyone but the health care provider. That has and will go a long way toward improving people's confidence toward accessing care.

Early access to care is important in these conditions. The earlier that we can get people to come and access care, the easier it is to manage these conditions and the better the chances of success are and the better the system will function. There have been several things in the last year and one-half that have improved that. The OSIS initiative that we in the medical world are a part of will be important in terms of bridging the gap between the medical and the non-medical pieces of these problems because there are two components that need to be addressed simultaneously and effectively.

The other initiative is the Canadian Forces Member Assistance Plan, which allows people to access help in an entirely confidential manner. Often, it will steer them in them right direction.

We have a long way to go with these conditions, not only in the military but also in North America in general. Some of the solutions that we are seeking are not known yet but we in the military have the particular interest in being at the forefront of these problems and in solving them for our people. The components you mentioned are very important. For example, identifying people who are at risk before they go and making people better able to cope with the stresses that they will face makes a lot more sense to prevent someone from getting sick than trying to treat them when they come back.

Senator Cordy: Medical information that is provided by the patient to a military doctor still has the patient doctor confidentiality?

Col. Cameron: Yes.

The Chairman: Would it be burdensome to provide us with a list of recommendations that have not been addressed? Could you include the ones that you have chosen not to implement? Please tell us about the recommendations that you are implementing and let us know how each one is proceeding.

LGen. Couture: Yes. We have implemented 63 out of 89 of the recommendations; 26 are outstanding.

I have that documentation available at my office. Within the next few days, we will provide it to you.

Senator Banks: Are you familiar with the report made to the senate last year by Senator Cohen, concerning that subject? The committee of the other place is presently on a cross-country trip looking at that question. The senate, as it usually does, got that job done earlier than the other place and made a report last year. If you are not familiar with that report, I am sure we can arrange to send you a copy of it. It was enlightening.

LGen. Couture: When you talk about "the other place," are you talking about the House of Commons?

Senator Banks: Yes.

The Chairman: Is it called anything else?

LGen. Couture: I do not know. I am a simple soldier. Yes, I am aware of the report.

Senator Banks: Did you have a chance to hear any of the questions that we were asking the people from the Auditor General's office and the Auditor General herself?

You mentioned in your remarks that this is a fighting force. It is the Auditor General's view that it should also be a well-managed fighting force, particularly with respect to accounting for the $11 billion that it spends. I know that you do not have that much directly to do with questions of logistics and quarter master stores. Do they still call it that?

LGen. Couture: Yes.

Senator Banks: On the other hand, you are responsible for spending half of the military budget. Are you content with the management, and was the Auditor General happy with your management of your part of that $11 billion?

LGen. Couture: A simple answer to a question like this would be yes, but I do not think it would be unfair to answer with an unqualified yes. We do have areas that need improvements, and we are working better management.

For example, there are the costs of personnel with respect to recruiting, training, retention, quality of life and so forth. Health care is increasing by frightening amounts.

Senator Banks: As it is everywhere.

LGen. Couture: Yes. The cost of training our people also is increasing. We need to train more people to maintain the force at the level of 60,000 as mandated by government. However, without extra resources, both human and financial within the training organization, we need to find better ways to deliver that type of training. Could it be managed better? Of course, everything can be improved upon.

Am I satisfied with what we are doing? No, I am asking my people to look at better ways of delivering training and producing more people with what resources we have at the present time.

It is the same situation with health care. We are changing our health care system and making it more appropriate to the demands of our personnel. We know it is expensive, but at the same time, I am asking our Director General of Health Services, to ensure we have the best bang for the buck if, I can use that expression.

The Auditor General will probably say that the cost of training is going up, and that the ratio for trainees to trainer could be improved upon. It is higher in civilian life than it is in the military, but I do not think we need to compare how people are trained in civilian life because we train a fighting force, and we train technical people within the fighting force.

Senator Banks: It is too bad you could not make it sufficiently different so that you would not be raided all the time.

LGen. Couture: We have quality people.

Senator Banks: I asked this question of the Auditor General. DND said a few years ago that it would save on the order of a couple hundred million dollars by outsourcing. Some of that, I presume, would be contract, but I also presume some of that would be personal functions, and I am presuming that that would come under your bailiwick.

LGen. Couture: Absolutely.

Senator Banks: Can you tell us how that is working? Is it working? Is it effective? Are you finding the kind of savings at your end of it that you thought you would? Is there a danger when we talk about outsourcing, whether it is from private business or otherwise, of leaping at that as a short-term band-aid solution, which turns out to be a long-term impediment? How is it going on the personnel end of things?

LGen. Couture: That is what I am afraid of, putting a band-aid on a long-term problem impediment, and a few years down the road, it will be expensive.

In the personnel world, there are ways of looking at what I call "alternate source," as opposed to "alternate service delivery." Let us take the recruiting function as an example. It is a complex function, and perhaps a portion of that function could be contracted out or done differently with people not necessarily in uniform. We are looking at that.

Senator Banks: Recruiting?

LGen. Couture: Within the recruiting process there are some elements that could be done by someone else. We are looking at that. There is no one better than someone in uniform to recruit another person for the forces. That will never change. However, someone other than a person in uniform could process the form. However, to attract people you need people in uniform.

With respect to technical training, I do not think we can outsource the training of infantry, the armoured corps, the artillery or the naval or air force trade, although industry, the air force and the navy sometimes have similar things.

A large number of community colleges in Canada train people in the same fields of expertise. We have examined their curriculum and we have compared them to our own requirements in the forces. We have a program we call accreditation, and we recognize the training that they provide to young Canadians. When we enrol these young Canadians, they bypass the technical training in our schools. We bring them in, and we send them to recruit school to make them military personnel. Once they have completed military personnel, sometimes we need to militarize their knowledge, and therefore we have a tailored course for them, which is four to six weeks maximum, as opposed to one year in a technical school. After that, they are posted to the unit. We get them in much faster.

Senator Banks: You also get them cheaper.

LGen. Couture: Of course, yes. We can produce more people with the same number of resources that I have at this time by recognizing what is being taught in the civilian schools. In some other trades, we send them right to recruit school, to the unit, because they have everything we need. That is another way of looking at it.

At the same time, we also ask those colleges if they could not do the training for us, or provide some instructors. We are examining that possibility as well. The thing we have implemented since last year is the accreditation of the community colleges, and we do enrol people right away from those colleges into the recruit school unit for the militarization of their knowledge. To attract them, we provide incentives, bonuses and money to compensate them for having looked after their own training and education. We save a lot of money that way.

Senator Banks: I am going to do a little commercial for the music business. You referred to how appropriate it is for people in uniform to do recruiting. There is a certain emotional thing involved in recruiting for the Armed Forces in every country in the world.

Practically all of the major nations of the world use their military bands as recruiting devices. Certainly, the United States, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand do. The Canadian Armed Forces, unless they have changed the rules in the last couple of years, use the few bands that are left to play mess dinners, military parades and not much else. There are more now than two years ago, so it is getting better.

I would just urge to you consider this. I know it seems frivolous, perhaps, to an officer who has been in the field, but in the same way and sense that it takes a military man in uniform to do recruiting, you can get an awful lot of people to pay attention to that man in a uniform if he is standing in front of a band. I have been urging for 25 years that the senior people who are concerned with addressing the shortcomings in the military complement do what every other country in the world does, which is to use their bands and, to some extent, design their bands for the purposes of public relations, recruiting and flying the flag, in general, to the public. That is a comment, not a question.

The Chairman: Senator Banks was making a serious point that I think most of us agree with.

Senator Wiebe: I would like to talk about the reserves for a minute. Is there still an officer training program within the reserve brigades throughout Canada?

LGen. Couture: Yes, there is a program called the Regular Officer Training Program. The name has changed but it is exactly the same.

Senator Wiebe: The ROTC applies to people at universities?

LGen. Couture: The REOTP is a subsidized university training plan at a civilian university or at the Royal Military College of Canada. We also have a few reservists at the Royal Military College of Canada under the Reserve Entry Officer Training Program. They follow exactly the same course curriculum and training as any other officer on the campus. I do not have the number, but there are quite a few officers being trained there.

Reservists going to civilian universities who are not directly subsidized by the forces but who are members of a reserve unit we have a plan that is called RESO training. Every summer they do a part of their training. After two, three or four years, depending on the program, they will be a fully-qualified lieutenant.

Last year, in order to encourage those young officers to remain with the reserve after graduating from university, we introduced a very small financial incentive. We pay back $2,000 a year, up to a maximum of $8,000 for four years at university, to officers who remain in the reserve. They are paid after every year of university. We do the same thing for the non-commissioned members as well.

Senator Wiebe: Yes, I was aware of that. Is there training for an officer at the brigade level? For example, if someone happens to be a doctor and wants to join the reserves, because of his or her education they would probably qualify as a second lieutenant.

LGen. Couture: Or maybe a captain.

Senator Wiebe: Is there that kind of training at the brigade level? I know there was back in 1954 when I served as an officer cadet. Is that same kind of training available today?

LGen. Couture: On the professional side, to use your example, a doctor could become a surgeon.

Senator Wiebe: I am asking about someone off the street who has had no military training or, if he had, was a private, can he join the reserves? Is there a program for him to receive officer training at the brigade or at the unit level?

LGen. Couture: Most of the officers go through the RESO training program. That is the one I know best, because that is the army program. In the navy, they join from the street and they go to the naval school which is in Quebec City. I think the air force proceeds the same way. Coming from the street they are being trained to become officers. They have a recruit course that is given in blocks on weekends and evenings during the year. Then there is a summer phase that consists of full-time training. When they go back at the end of the summer to school or to their job then they can serve at the unit. Then they follow the collective training program of that unit.

Senator Wiebe: I am happy to hear that.

BGen. Hearn: The brigades for efficiency recognize the formal course, but in reality every day that a reservist comes in he or she is in training. That is their focus in life as a reservist. During the summer and throughout the year there is formalized training that is managed at the brigade level. A lot of unit training is done after the initial courses.

Senator Wiebe: Across Canada, how many officers would you graduate out of the reserve training program in a year?

LGen. Couture: That is a good question. I do not have that number but I can provide it for you. I do not want to give you an incorrect number.

Senator Wiebe: Last week when we had the Chief of the Land Staff here, General Jeffrey, we talked about some of the problems he was encounters with the army reserves; there are not enough qualified officers at the reserve level to do some of the training. That leads to my next question. In your remarks you mentioned that this year 488 officers and NCMs were taken from the reserves into the regular army. Are we encouraging the depletion of the training at the reserve level? How are we going to address the number of reserve officers in both the brigade and the unit levels?

LGen. Couture: That is a very good question. The transfer from the reserve army to the regular army has increased over the years. We anticipate transferring more than the number that I provided by the end of this fiscal year.

Should we discourage that or not? I do not think so because, if we do not encourage the people from the reserve to join the regulars, we might lose them anyway. They might not want to remain in the reserve. What I would like to see is the crossing over from the regular back to the reserve at some point in time. We plan to address that in the near future.

The attrition level within the reserve, and it is a little higher in the army than in the other three reserves, is one of the major problems we face today. Every time we lose someone, they have to be replaced with a fresh recruit. We need to be very careful not to let the level of competency get too low because the level of training will erode. Then we will face even more difficulties.

I cannot comment on the problem that General Jeffery mentioned the army is having. However, I am aware of the problem.

When we discuss the transfer from one component to the other, we ask ourselves the question: should we stop it, should we control it, should we discourage it? I think the answer is no, because experience has shown that people will leave anyway. The majority of those who transfer over to the regular force are those who have served on a full-time basis with the unit in an operation or in another capacity. When they return they want to sign on for a little longer. That is the type of people we have.

Senator Wiebe: I imagine part of it is a full-time salary as opposed to a part-time salary. I agree that we certainly should not discourage a reservist from enlisting into the regular forces. Has the department considered leaving that reservist as a regular at that unit to continue on with the training until that unit or that brigade graduates officers to take his or her place?

LGen. Couture: That needs to be examined. However, with the shortage of officers and NCMs in the regular force right now when we have a new member we already have a spot for that person.

Senator Wiebe: Are you saying it is difficult to tell which comes first, the chicken or the egg? If we want to try to encourage 3,000 new recruits into our reserves each year for the next three years, you will have to have officers there to conduct the training.

LGen. Couture: Yes, and the figure is higher than 3,000. This year we have over 4,000 people who want to join the reserves. The army is looking at the number for next year. Before they give me the number of people they want, one thing they will examine is training capacity. It is one thing to get the people in but it is another thing to be sure that we will be able to train them. The commander of the army told me the other day that, before he gives me the final number for the next fiscal year, he needs to examine the training capacity. This is being examined. What solution will they be arriving at? I do not know at the moment.

BGen. Hearn: Senator, of the 488, 60 were officers in that number of components transferred. They were mostly army, as my boss has indicated. Yes, every loss of an officer in a reserve certainly does hurt. It is difficult to say no to a young man or woman who wants to be a member of the regular force.

Senator Wiebe: I would like to address my last question to Dr. Cameron. It concerns post-traumatic stress disorder. I was very pleased to hear the lieutenant-general talking about the armed services taking a look at the kinds of theatres where our forces are deployed and the kinds of training that will be given to them prior to going.

While it has been just a short period of time, have you had a chance to do any kind of study on whether the type of theatre has a bearing on the frequency of post-traumatic stress disorder when they come back?

Col. Cameron: We have not. As you know, our operational trauma and distress centres have been open for about two years now. We are building up a patient base on which to do some of these types of studies. That type of work has been done in other countries, not specifically dealing with peacekeeping operations. That is changing now, but most of the literature on post-traumatic stress disorder comes from armed conflicts.

There is a lesser but growing body of literature on peacekeeping statistics and studies, but most information comes from conflict studies. For example, the literature would indicate that the intensity of conflict influences the risk of participants getting post-traumatic stress disorder.

In peacekeeping tours, the number of tours likely has an influence on risk. The short answer to your question is that we do not have a lot of specific research on the characteristics of the theatre that would indicate greater or lesser risk.

Senator Wiebe: Are you in the process of undertaking such a study?

Col. Cameron: Not yet, no. We have just formed, the first working group to assess the types of research that can be done on the information from the OTSSEs. That particular study is not underway within the medical branch, although it may very well be. I am not sure if the personnel selection world is doing that type of work.

LGen. Couture: We are looking at the operational tempo.

Col. Cameron: Another branch of the military does research in this area, looking at things like operational tempo. They do questionnaires on our soldiers when they are deployed. The major study we are doing right now is to look at the actual distribution of mental illness amongst our Canadian Forces personnel. We want to identify the most significant problems in terms of incidence and prevalence and compare that to the Canadian population to see where we differ. That is where most of our effort is going right now.

Senator Wiebe: I should maybe inform you of the reason for my interest in this. I know of two situations from Bosnia. We started to hear about post-traumatic stress disorder from the first group of peacekeepers who went there when the rules of engagement were such that they would observe and report. They could only stand and watch the atrocities take place.

Under our new rules of engagement, our trained soldiers can go in and actually stop the atrocities. I visited our troops during the first and second parts and I noticed quite a difference in the attitudes of our peacekeepers after the new rules had been applied. I suggest the armed services should certainly be looking at that area.

Col. Cameron: Yes. We have learned the same thing. It is certainly an excellent idea for us.

LGen. Couture: The rules of engagement are designed to support the mission or the mandate of the force. Sometimes we need to look at the mandate and the way the force will be deployed in a specific theatre to see what is possible, what is doable and not doable.

Senator Wiebe: We know the rules of engagement and the mandate prior to sending our troops. If the study shows that different types of training or different personnel should be sent to those different theatres, I hope we can act on that information.

Senator Banks: Or if the government sets out the wrong rules of engagement. Did we not have post-traumatic stress disorder between 1940-46 because we did not know enough to recognize it, or because it did not exist, or had we not named it yet? Did we call it shell-shock?

Col. Cameron: Yes. Obviously it is not a new condition. It has been with us, I am sure, since before we kept records on people. People now look back at veterans' records from various conflicts and see, in some of the symptoms, this disorder.

In the last ten years particularly, research has been done to help us understand exactly what causes it and what is effective in treating it and what can prevent it. That information has been increasing exponentially, so our understanding is improving.

LGen. Couture: In the First World War, we called it "shell-shock." In the Second World War, they called it "battle fatigue." The term "post-traumatic stress disorder" has been brought into the literature very recently.

Senator Day: I read through your briefing notes of your presentation to the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence. You seemed to suggest that general recruiting problems had been resolved. Then I read your notes for your presentation here today. You have noted that there are challenges to be faced in relation to recruiting problems.

That suggests that, within that month, you had gotten word back from some of your colleagues who came before the senate committee. That encouraged me. That was a good indication.

While we were out in Esquimalt and met many full-time reservists that were working full-time in the Armed Forces and wanted to transfer to the regular force because they had worked awhile and realized they liked the life.

This was not long ago. We heard a general belief from these non-commissioned, enlisted people that it would be easier for them to get in the regular force by not telling anyone, but by quitting the reserve and then applying as if they were a fresh person.

LGen. Couture: Senator, I told SCONDVA that the recruiting campaign was going well but there are some problems. Some occupations are fairly easy to recruit. As I mentioned earlier, though, 19 occupations are at risk at the moment. In our colour coding, green is okay. Yellow requires attention. Red needs more attention.

All of those 19 occupations are highly technical.

We have the same problems today that we had a month ago. We have started some initiatives to target the community colleges that produce this kind of training. The major effort will be ongoing until January in order to target the people that will graduate in May.

It is true that at one time it was easier for a reservist to quit the unit, and then come to the centre and say that he wanted to enrol. If he mentioned his reserve experience, it would take us a long time to verify the records. We had to verify his rank et cetera. Once we learned that we could not always verify that experience, we changed the process. It was absolutely ludicrous. A young person will now tell his or her officer that they want to join. They fill in an application, which will be sent to the recruiting centre and then the process should be simple. I have evidence that sometimes there are long delays, but as I said in my remarks at the beginning, the problem has been addressed and is still being addressed.

My intent is to have the component transfer made as easy as possible. I want it to be done in a matter of days as opposed to weeks, but there will always be some exceptions. We sometimes have difficulty finding some records. In order to provide the credit that he or she claims to have, we need to verify the qualifications that they had when they left. We also need to verify their medical condition when they left and their medical condition when they join. If they left service under a medical condition, that may create some difficulty for re-enrolment.

We do not want to enrol people who have criminal records or ideas that we do not espouse in Canadian society.

Perhaps you will hear that it still takes a long time, but we are working on it. We have streamlined the process as much as possible. We are still looking at it to make it even better.

BGen. Hearn: As my boss mentioned at the other place, indeed we are quite successful in recruiting. One will see as one travels across our bases and stations across the country, people are still saying they are short of staff. It takes us about 18 months to train a recruit as a non-commissioned member. In some cases for a very specialized position such as a fire control systems technician, it takes 4 years to train. It takes two years to five years to train an officer. From the time we get an individual to the time he hits a squadron or an army unit, there is a bit of lag.

Senator Day: You mentioned the colour coding of specialty, military occupations. Do you have statistics that you could provide to us in terms of numbers and what you have listed in the different categories?

LGen. Couture: Yes. We can leave it when we depart.

Senator Day: In terms of quality control and testing your system, do you have any statistics on how long it takes an individual who walks through the door of a recruiting office to be sworn in and ready for basic training. Do you have any indication as to how long that takes?

BGen. Hearn: Yes, we do. I will put it in categories. For the majority of Canadians who are committed to joining as they enter our recruiting centre, it could take as little as two weeks. It could take four weeks. That is our program. If you do have a clean security record that only takes 24 hours to determine, and you are medically fit, in you come.

Many want to join but they come for information first. They will come back later. Obviously, that ends up in a delay.

If there is a medical issue, there is no question that we will take longer. We have speeded up the process. I would not want to say that for everyone it is four weeks. It is my boss' goal to hit four weeks.

If you had asked us that question two to three years ago, the answer would have been up to eight months. I would say reasonably between one to two months would be fair given the distribution of recruiting centres across the country.

Senator Day: In relation to the specific trades that you are now trying to recruit, you said that you would like to bring them in from community colleges where they have basic training and then you "militarise" them. Interesting word.

LGen. Couture: That is the only word that came to mind. We must provide military training.

Senator Day: I understand that. Is that a short-term policy or is it a long-term policy?

LGen. Couture: That is a long-term policy because we realize that some community colleges are producing people that are meeting the requirements we have, up to a certain level. If we enrol some of those graduates, why then should we start all over again? The people that we train will be bored because they will be studying what they have already learned. Approaching the community colleges is a long-term policy.

Senator Day: I do not understand how the Canadian Forces Housing Agency and the personnel support program work. Is this done through outsourcing or is this a new agency within the Armed Forces. If the latter, does the boss of that wear a uniform and report to you? How does that work in terms of the governance of these organizations?

LGen. Couture: Let me start with the Canadian Forces Personal Support Agency. We call it the CFPSA.

Senator Day: It is okay if you say the name first and then abbreviate.

LGen. Couture: The Canadian Force Personal Support Agency, CFPSA, belongs to the Canadian Forces. It is not an independent agency. The military family resource centres network, the CANEX stores and long-term disability plan that we have for the troops, plus a few other services are all to be found in CFPSA. This group provides for us the recreation program and the sports program. They do the testing for the physical fitness program. The chief executive officer and president report through me.

The agency is governed by a board of directors and is chaired by the CDS. The members of the board of directors are the commander of the army, navy and air force, me, the Canadian chief foreign officer, a legal adviser and one of the ADMs that work with us. It belongs to us. It is not outsourced.

I could organize a special briefing for you or any of your colleagues, if you want to, on the mandate and the objective role of the CFPSA.

Senator Day: I would take you up on that. I would appreciate having that.

LGen. Couture: We will organize it.

Senator Day: The chief operating officer is not in uniform?

LGen. Couture: Up until 18 months ago, it was a general officer, like me. We have hired a civilian. Members within the executive team of that organization are mostly ex-military.

On bases, we employ civilian personnel, personnel that are ex-military, or family members, the spouse of one our military personnel.

Senator Day: On a number of bases, particularly in the athletic side of things, I have seen members of PSP wearing uniforms or T-shirts or sport jackets, black and red, or whatever their colours are. Is this a branding from a non-military point of view or are they trying to create regimental loyalty the same way other that regiments do?

LGen. Couture: I would say it is the latter. When we created the agency, most of the people who were in uniform, before providing physical recreation and fiscal fitness training, came back to the agency dressed in civvies. They have that kind of loyalty. The new recruits that embrace the agency are very loyal to it. When they wear the colours they are being loyal to the organization. The motto of the organization is "We Serve Those Who Serve." That tells you about the mentality of the group.

The housing agency does not belong come under my supervision; it belongs to my colleague, the Assistant Deputy Minister, Infrastructure and Environment. Their mandate is to manage the housing portfolio of the Canadian Forces. That is, the PMQ, permanent married quarters.

Senator Day: Is there a contract between DND and the housing agency? The buildings belong to DND, but in terms of setting the rent, what kind of control does DND have on the agency? I understand it is supposed to be market place and then there are supplements and housing allowances. What kind of control on a year-to-year basis does DND have in relation to the rent, the repairs and the standard of housing for these personnel?

LGen. Couture: We provide a lot of money for health and safety repair. One of the recommendations from the SCONDVA report was to fix the PMQs. The rent is market value, based on the local market. It is a Treasury Board policy that we need to follow. It is established by a survey done by the Canadian Mortgage Housing Corporation, CMHC. There is some kind of provincial rent control that applies. If it is too large, then we ask the agency not to implement it. Until last year, we were capping the increase up to a certain number of dollars per month. This year is the last year that we will be doing that. By next September, except where there is provincial rent control for people who are residing in and still remain in the PMQ, there should be at market value everywhere.

The Canadian Forces accommodation policy calls for providing access to suitable and affordable housing to our members, wherever they serve. We encourage this through the local private sector and the Crown intervenes only if the private sector cannot provide suitable access. We do surveys on a regular basis to see if the private sector can provide access. If they cannot, then there will be Crown intervention. We have houses owned by the Crown. We call them PMQs. They are maintained by the housing agency, which also collects the rent and uses the rent revenue for operating expenses, including maintenance, and so on. For re-capitalization and upgrades, the department sometimes provides funding.

Senator Day: Is this housing agency a for-profit or a not-for-profit agency?

LGen. Couture: They have to balance at year-end but it is not-for-profit. They reinvest their revenue into maintenance. It is not a private agency. The people working in it are public servants. It is part of the portfolio of the Assistant Deputy Minister, Infrastructure and Environment.

Senator Day: When I get a briefing of the PSP, perhaps I can get a briefing of this other one, as well.

LGen. Couture: I will ask them.

Senator Day: I do not mind going to them.

LGen. Couture: Perhaps other senators would be interested in this information, too.

The Chairman: I have asked the clerk.

LGen. Couture: We will do it through the clerk, then.

Senator Day: Some of us have heard of some difficulty in relation to housing for military personnel at the Rockcliffe establishment. There are PMQs in that area, but some of the houses and some of the former PMQs that were owned by DND have been either sold or leased to another agency and they are non-military personnel. In other words, it is subsidized housing. There is some conflict going on. Are you familiar with that problem? Maybe I could brief you on that some time.

LGen. Couture: You should ask that question to infrastructure and environment.

Senator Atkins: As a matter of information, Senator Cohen's report was "Unsung Heroes: The Quality of Life Perspective on Canada's Military Families." If you are interested, she introduced an inquiry in the senate and I spoke to it last Thursday and closed the debate in this case.

You will probably be interested to know that the CDS, when he spoke to us here, was asked the question: What would you do if you received more funding?

LGen. Couture: Do you want my answer?

Senator Atkins: I think you would be more interested in his.

LGen. Couture: I think I know his answer.

Senator Atkins: I directed him to three different requirements. The first area would be people. That is where we need to put our efforts and that is where additional funding would be focused.

When he was asked if that meant quality of life recruitment and training? He said, "All three."

What has happened to the National Defence Medical Centre?

LGen. Couture: The NDMC building or the function of the NDMC?

Senator Atkins: The whole thing. What replaced it?

LGen. Couture: The National Capital Region Health Care Centre is a centre where a group of professional medical people provides health care to military members here in the NCR. NDMC used to be a full-fledged hospital. In 1994-95, as part of Operation Phoenix a restructuring of medical organizations began with the objective to be more focused to support the deployed operation, and to rely a little more on the civilian sector for health care. We felt that we could buy some health care services at a better cost on the civilian market. We got rid of every hospital that we had across the country. I think we had five, including the NDMC. The building needed millions of dollars of repair. It was a matter of deciding either to fix it and maintain the clinic or go somewhere else.

Senator Atkins: Was it a good decision?

LGen. Couture: Was it a good decision in 1995?

Senator Atkins: Yes.

LGen. Couture: It would be inappropriate for me to comment on that. I am a user of that service.

Col. Cameron: The best and the only way to maintain expertise in our people is to give them the types of patients that they need to keep their skills up. Our surgeons need to see trauma victims; our anaesthetists need to give anaesthetics to people with complex illnesses and with multiple traumas. This is true down the line, for our nurses, our general practitioners, our PAs, and so on.

In the last five or six years, we have moved the people who used to work in the operating rooms at NDMC to civilian hospitals to give them access to those types of patients to keep their skills up. We have done that so when they go to an overseas deployment, the physician that our person is seeing in Bosnia, or wherever, is clearly a superior person based on the experience he or she had here in Canada. Our system is getting so small that our ability to provide that type of patient just is not there any more in Canada. Independent of any other concerns that started the process of our closing our hospitals, there is an imperative now to do that.

LGen. Couture: You asked me if it was a good decision. I will not comment on that decision, but I will tell you one thing. Our health care system has come to a level where we feel it is not providing what we need for garrisons and operations. That is why we have launched the RX 2000, which is a renewal of our health care system. We are not going back to the past. We are not bringing back the hospital for the reasons Dr. Cameron mentioned. We are overhauling our health care system. It is a four-year project that we began last year.

Senator Atkins: What is the most significant change in the culture of the military?

LGen. Couture: We could debate that for a long time. What has not changed is that we still operate based on the Canadian values we believe in: democracy, law and order, good government, honesty, integrity and dedication. We build our training and socialization of our soldiers on those values when they come in. That aspect has not changed.

There have been some changes to the military culture because society has evolved a little bit. Today we see a much more individualistic soldier than in the past. There are many reasons for that. The Canadian Forces is reflective of the Canadian society, and our people are not defending the Canadian citizens that are in Canada right now. When we enrol recruits, our role is to develop their qualities to encourage their dedication to service for the country. The only liability that we have is the service itself varies by degree. What is important to see is the dedication that our people have when we look at them. We demand very much and they do provide very good services. I am very proud of them.

Senator LaPierre: There are more important matters than the witness hearing me ask why he produces so many engineers and not enough poets. Consequently, we should adjourn if we are going to do our duty and know what is going to happen to us for the rest of the year. I would like to pass. The questions that I have I will send in writing.

Senator Wiebe: It takes a fair amount of resources to train an officer, whether that officer is in the regular or reserve army. Once a reserve officer cadet goes through the Royal Military College is there any obligatory period he must serve once he is commissioned?

LGen. Couture: I believe so, yes, but for how long, I do not know. A regular force officer has obligatory service for four years. A reservist has no obligatory service. However, reservists pay for their tuition fees when they go to the military college. Sometimes we do provide books and scholarships, but I do not recall if the reservists have obligatory service.

The Chairman: If you want to clarify that in writing, that would be fine.

Senator Day: I can answer that. They do not, but they are all encouraged to stay affiliated with the reserve unit, and most do.

The Chairman: General Couture, on behalf of the committee, I would like to convey to you and the men who came with you the pride that we have in the Canadian Forces. It is deeply felt. We believe that you and your colleagues are doing an outstanding job for Canada, and we wish you would communicate that back to those who work for you. You provided us with a great deal of valuable information today. We appreciate it. We hope to receive more from you in writing, and the point of contact there is our clerk, Barbara Reynolds.

If I may, I have just a short, housekeeping motion, colleagues. Is there agreement that the material given the committee during its fact-finding visit to Victoria and Winnipeg be filed as exhibits?

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

The Chairman: There is a short debriefing and it will not take long.

The committee adjourned.

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