Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 14 - Evidence, February 28, 2005 - Afternoon meeting
VICTORIA, Monday, February 28, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 1:55 p.m. to examine and report on the national security policy for Canada.
Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Good afternoon and welcome to the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. My name is Colin Kenny and I chair the committee. We are very pleased to be here today.
Today the committee is receiving testimony on the national security policy. Before we begin, I would like to take the opportunity to introduce the members of the committee to you.
First, on my immediate right is the distinguished senator from Nova Scotia, Michael Forrestall. Senator Forrestall has represented the constituents of Dartmouth for 37 years — first as their member of the House of Commons, then as their senator. While in the House of Commons, he served as official opposition defence critic from 1966 to 1976. He is also a member of our Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs.
To his right is Senator Peter Stollery from Ontario. He was first elected to the House of Commons in 1972 and was re-elected in 1974, 1979 and 1980. He was appointed to the Senate in 1981. Senator Stollery is Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs and is also a member of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance.
Beside him is Senator Pierre Claude Nolin.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin comes from Quebec. He has chaired the Standing Senate Committee on Illicit Drugs that published a complete report recommending legislating and regulating cannabis in Canada. He is presently vice-chairman of the Standing Senate Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration. On the international level, Senator Nolin is presently the chair of the Science and Technology Committee of the NATO Parliamentary Association.
[English]
On my immediate left is Senator Tommy Banks from Alberta. He is Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources, which recently released a report entitled, The One-Tonne Challenge. He is well known to Canadians as a versatile musician and entertainer. He has provided musical direction for the ceremonies at the 1988 Olympic Winter Games. He is an officer of the Order of Canada and has received a Juno award.
At the end of the table is Senator Joseph Day from New Brunswick. Senator Day is Deputy Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance and also of our Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs. He is a member of the bar of New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec, and a fellow of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada. He is also a former president and CEO of the New Brunswick Forest Products Association.
Our committee is the first Senate committee mandated to examine security and defence. The Senate asked our committee to examine the need for a national security policy. We began our review in 2002 with three reports: Canadian Security and Military Preparedness, in February; Defence of North America: A Canadian Responsibility, in September; and Update on Canada's Military Crisis: A View from the Bottom Up, in November. In 2003, the committee published two reports: The Myth of Security at Canada's Airports, in January; and Canada's Coastlines: The Longest Under-Defended Borders in the World, in October. In 2004, we tabled two more reports: National Emergencies: Canada's Fragile Frontlines, in March; and, recently, The Canadian Security Guidebook, 2003 edition.
The committee is reviewing Canadian defence policy. During the next few months, the committee will hold hearings in every province and engage with Canadians to determine their national interest, what they see as Canada's principle threats and how they would like the government to respond to those threats.
The committee will attempt to generate public debate on national security in Canada and forge a consensus on the needs and the type of military Canadians want.
The committee is very pleased to be here in Victoria, the home of CFB Esquimalt, Canada's West Coast naval base. We have had a very productive morning visiting the base and we look forward to continuing our discussions this afternoon.
We have before us as witnesses RAdm. Forcier, who joined the Canadian Navy in 1971 and is a graduate of the Canadian Forces Command and Staff College in Toronto and National Defence College in Kingston. He has served in the Persian Gulf and in Bahrain during the first Gulf War. From 1994 to 1996, he was Deputy Commander of the Naval Reserve in Quebec City. In 1996, he assumed command of the Fourth Maritime Operations Group in Esquimalt. In August 1997, he was double-hatted as Chief of Staff of the Canadian Pacific Fleet. In 1999, he was promoted to commodore and invested as an Officer of the Order of Military Merit. He was appointed Chief of Staff Joint Operations at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa in September of 2000. In 2002, he was appointed Special Advisor to the Chief of Maritime Staff and then assumed the position of Director General Maritime Personnel and Readiness. RAdm. Forcier was promoted to his present rank in June of 2003.
With him is Cmdre. Roger Girouard. Originally a native of Montreal, Quebec, he began his naval service as a reserve boatswain with HMCS Carleton in Ottawa, before joining the regular force as a MARS officer cadet in 1974. He served in a number of command and staff positions, including Executive Officer of the HMCS Athabaskan during the first Gulf War, Commanding Officer of HMCS Iroquois and Commander Maritime Operations Group Four and deployed to East Timor as the Canadian Joint Task Force Commander of OP Toucan. Promoted to commodore in June of 2001, he went on to study full time at Royal Roads University, completing an MA. Cmdre. Girouard was deployed on OP APOLLO from January to June of 2003. He assumed command of Canadian Fleet Pacific on September 5, 2003.
I would like to welcome you both here, admiral and commodore. I understand that you both have a short statement. The floor is yours, admiral.
[Translation]
RAdm. J.Y. Forcier, Commander, MARPAC, Department of National Defense: Mr. Chairman, members of the Standing Senatorial Committee on National Security and Defense, I would like, on behalf of the 5,100 military men and women and civil employees of the Canadian Forces Pacific Maritime Command, to welcome you in Victoria. I am accompanied today by Commodore Roger Girouard, Commander of the Canadian Pacific Fleet, who will also make brief introductory remarks.
[English]
I appeared in front of your committee on July 18, 2001, but as the then Chief of Staff Joint Operations under the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff. Today, my fleet commander and I are happy to describe to you what MARPAC is and what our scope of operations encompasses.
Esquimalt has been the home of Canada's naval capability in the West since the creation of the RCN in 1910. Before that, the Royal Navy had a presence here in Esquimalt as early as 1837. It established the headquarters of its Pacific station here in 1859 and a permanent base in 1862.
We are one of the two fighting formations of the navy, but, as with all major formations in the Canadian Forces, our role is not single-focused. Probably due to the many force structure changes since unification, I have an interesting mix of five responsibilities: Four directed tasks and one additional, implicit one, which I will describe briefly to you.
First and foremost, I have the responsibility under the Chief of Maritime Staff for force generation. That is, the training and readiness of naval forces for both routine and contingency tasking. The former is usually a Chief of Maritime Staff task and the latter is for the Deputy Chief of Defence Staff on behalf of the Chief of Defence Staff. While my fleet school, naval officer training centre and fleet maintenance facility prepare people and ships for safe sailing, and the base provides all natures of support, Cmdre. Girouard, as my senior deployer, commands the fleet and maintains its readiness for operation.
Second, I have a mandate to provide presence and surveillance over a 1.7 million square kilometre area that goes somewhat beyond our territorial waters and our economic zone. Surveillance planning and oversight is done by ATHENA, my operations support centre, and historically has been executed by naval ships and aircraft from the forces. Over the past decades, we have added information from both the Canadian and the American Coast Guard traffic management systems, and recently we have taken advantage of the contracted air services provided to the Department of Fisheries.
My third mission is search and rescue. As Commander of MARPAC, I am designated as the Western Region Search and Rescue Commander for both marine distress and air incidents. Supported by a joint rescue coordination centre co- manned by the Canadian Coast Guard and air personnel, we respond to over 2,000 emergency calls a year, with over 10 per cent being identified as lifesaving events. The core of our dedicated assets for search and rescue comes from the Canadian Coast Guard and from 442 Search and Rescue Squadron in Comox. However, all federal marine fleets at sea support our efforts in search and rescue, as do large components of both civilian aviation volunteers and the Coast Guard auxiliary.
[Translation]
As the fourth element of my mandate, I have the pleasure of being regional commander charged with supervising the cadet program in British Columbia. The program involves more than 6,500 Canadians grouped in 123 cadet teams from the Navy, the Air force and the Army. I am accountable to the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, in cooperation with cadet leagues, for the implementation of this important and remarkable program promoting civic spirit.
[English]
The fifth area of effort is the establishment and maintenance of military relations in the Pacific. Since the Pacific has no forum comparable to NATO, to maintain awareness and influence in the Pacific, we must participate in a multitude of confidence-building fora and work with many navies through exercises often hosted by the U.S. Pacific Command or his fleet commander.
Having described my five areas of tasks and involvement, I would like to focus the remainder of my comments in two areas: Operational posture and our regional and U.S. relationship. Before Operation Friction in 1990, when the navy went to the Arabian Gulf for the first time, the West Coast seemed relegated to training our officers and some of the sailors. True, we did venture off the coast to show the flag, but we did not, in my assessment, have a cohesive surveillance plan, nor did we have surface ships with the true wherewithal to undertake operational deployments. The arrival of the Canadian patrol frigates in 1993 and the maritime coastal defence vessels in 1996 changed our posture and way of operating. Providing basic training at sea became a secondary task, more equally shared between both coasts, and our focus became readiness for patrol, surveillance and deployability. Our surveillance is based on a detailed plan and our fleet has acquired and sustained operational skills, as well as maintaining interoperability with the United States Navy and other allies. Cmdre. Girouard will have more to say about this later.
Let me address our regional and U.S. relationship. The new National Security Policy has been a welcome instrument to formally open and maintain the dialogue with all those departments and agencies that have a maritime security dimension in their mandates. We have been in the business of information exchange and cooperation for many years. A case in point is our close cooperation with our own fisheries department and Coast Guard, with whom we have had regular meetings for many years; and the RCMP, which has seconded a permanent liaison officer to my operations staff for a decade or so. I personally meet with many of my counterparts on a bimonthly basis through the forum of the Pacific Council of Senior Federal Officials, and my operations officer chairs a regional working group on marine security issues.
Our relations with the U.S. maritime agencies are excellent. We have daily working contacts with both the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Coast Guard. We have formal staff talks at least on a yearly basis, and frequent reciprocal visits of experts in data exchange and management also take place. To show you the depth of interaction, I have a senior navy captain as a liaison officer to the Commander Pacific Fleet, a four star admiral located in Hawaii, and the operations scheduling officer for the Commander Third Fleet, the principal force generator in the Pacific, is a Canadian officer on exchange.
In my position, I maintain personal contacts with the Commander of the United States Navy Third Fleet and the Coast Guard admirals in both Seattle and Juneau, as well as their overall Pacific boss in Alameda, California. The work of the binational planning team in Colorado has enhanced the dialogue at the national level and provided support to some of our regional initiatives, but we have been sharing elements of a common operating picture for a long time.
With these comments, I would like to turn it over to Cmdre. Girouard, who will address the assets he has at his disposal, the readiness of the fleet and his experience as a seasoned tactical commander at sea.
Commodore Roger Girouard, Commander CANFLTPAC: Honourable members of SCONSAD, good afternoon. As you have heard, I command the Pacific Fleet. As such, I have the honour to lead and the responsibility to oversee a variety of fleet assets, comprised of my flagship, an Iroquois class destroyer; five Halifax class frigates; a replenishment ship, the Protector; our one Victoria class submarine; six Kingston class coastal defence vessels; the fleet diving unit; two small headquarters staffs, mine and that of our coastal forces; Commander Ops Group Four; a sea training group responsible for assisting me in maintaining operational and war fighting skills and standards, as well as a mix of Naval Reserve elements such as port security units, dive teams and naval coordination and advice to shipping units.
In all, I am speaking of some 1,900 regulars, 350 reservists and 9 civilian men and women who serve in fleet as the pointy end of the spear for MARPAC. With these units and a $17 million annual budget, I am in the capability delivery business. By that, I mean that I am responsible for building and sustaining a spectrum of capabilities for MARPAC, for the CF and for Canada. Our goal has been to strike a balance between force development and force employment, to sustain a readiness posture that is sufficient within a climate of resource constraint, yet effective and deployable when needed. Similarly, we have been cognizant of the different domains in which we might be expected to respond, whether overseas, as we did during Operation APOLLO, closer to home in defence of North America, or within a Canada-only context of domestic operations, whatever a scenario of security operations or disaster relief might demand.
It has been my experience that the skills that we develop in preparing for the crisis or hot-war scenario are those that we are able to translate to deliver effectively and adaptively in even the most complex, though non-hostile, domestic situation, as well as everything in between. The communications and coordination capabilities, leadership and team cohesion demanded by one invariably serve as a foundation for success in the other.
[Translation]
Our first priority for the fleet for the past 12 months has been the contingency task group, for which we have assumed responsibility last November. It required a whole year of preparation for sailors, officers, departments, aviators and the staff and we had to develop a cohesive spirit between ourselves and all elements of this multi-vessel entity that is the task group.
Our efforts have been successful thanks to a robust command and control capacity, that is thank to the fusion of communications, detection and human intelligence.
[English]
Our arrival at the appropriate level of command coherence was best exemplified by our participation in the U.S. Navy's major RIMPAC, or Rim of the Pacific, exercise in July of last year. Canada provided not only four ships and several aircraft to the exercise, but also my staff served as the sea combat command to a multinational force of some 40 ships from seven nations, with direct responsibilities for surface and underwater warfare, as well as overall coordination of picture compilation and a major share of force allocation. This duty was effected from on board HMCS Algonquin, my flagship, as opposed to adhering to the traditions of past decades and embarking the staff in the participating USN aircraft carrier.
This denotes a competence not only within an international domain, but also illustrates the team's ability to deal with intricate and multi-faceted circumstances closer to home. It similarly speaks to the potential for independence of decision-making action in any forum. This results in greater support to, and a more measurable impact on, a coalition of allies; in an ability to "go national'' and either lead a regional effort or undertake independent national action; and in an ability to take charge of issues in home waters, if and when required.
As I said earlier, I am in the capability delivery business. My role is to offer tools, talents and capabilities that, in turn, present a menu of options from which my commander and the Government of Canada may choose.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, Commodore.
Senator Day: Rear-Admiral, Commodore, thank you very much for your comments and for the chance to get out and see the ships and the base this morning.
As you know, this committee and another committee of the House of Commons that is particularly involved with the Armed Forces and security matters have been concerned for a number of years about quality of life for your personnel. Our initial look today shows some considerable improvements and we are really pleased to see that. We have been making a number of recommendations, many of which we see are now being implemented.
Clearly, people are enjoying their time serving with the navy here in Victoria. It is obvious, from the sun shining and the nice weather, that it is a desirable place to be. I suppose that brings its own series of concerns. I would like you to explain to me how this mechanism works: A number of individuals talked about getting an additional amount of money when based here in order to meet the cost of living, and the cost of their accommodation, probably more than anything else.
They indicated that that has been going down recently. We worked hard to try to bring up the regular salaries of all Armed Forces personnel, including the navy. At the same time, is this adjustment for cost of living here going down? Can you explain how that works?
RAdm. Forcier: Certainly. There is no doubt that the attention that was paid to quality of life in the last few years has paid off. You quite rightly state that in one area there is still a challenge. It relates primarily to the lodging component. We have now done enough studies to see the quality of life, in terms of living conditions, the cost of buying your groceries at the local store and so on, is not that bad anywhere our members are posted. The challenge is the real estate component here in British Columbia.
Our members have access to several married quarters, but these too now have some fairly high rental rates. In fact, the average young sailor with a young family requiring two bedrooms, living in a modest 1,000 square foot house, would pay anywhere between $880 and over $1,000 a month in rent.
However, that is abated somewhat by the post living differential — that extra bonus that you mentioned — which has fluctuated over the years. Currently, it is sitting at $464 a month over and above their pay. It is a taxable benefit that we offer our sailors, regardless of rank or time in the service. If you work here at MARPAC, whether you live in married quarters or ashore, whether you rent or own, you get $460 a month more in your pay cheque, but it is taxable.
We have seen some frustrations over the years. For example, back in October 2001, which was shortly after the initial focus on quality of life, the allowance provided to our sailors was in the order of $664. Over the years, this has been ratcheted down by a couple of hundred dollars, based on two factors. We have seen two rounds of significant pay raises. In the latest one, we were told last week that our young sailors were getting back pay of 6.5 per cent, with two factor components in that, and another 1.24 per cent, starting April 1 of this year. Those are the kinds of mitigating factors. However, there is an inherent difficulty with that amount, namely, that it is hard to benchmark different parts of the country. The indications so far are that most of the money that has been allocated nationally for the post living differential has been fixed-base money if another area of the country — which has been the case since this process was put in place — also has a compelling case for an enhancement to their pay package. In the past, this has meant commensurate reductions somewhere else in the country. That is the frustration for our sailors. They do not see the abatement in the cost of living here and they sometimes see a small reduction because of national compensation.
Senator Day: Three or four years ago, it was felt that they needed an extra $600 for accommodation. The cost of accommodation has not gone down, but you say that because they received a pay raise, they can afford to pay more of that themselves. However, they still have less disposable income as a result of that increase than somebody living in Chicoutimi or Bagotville or Gagetown or in another part of the country.
RAdm. Forcier: Absolutely.
Senator Day: There must be a better formula than that.
RAdm. Forcier: We would welcome a better formula. I sympathize with all of my people. It is hard to predict your future, not for your basic cost of living but for your accommodation, when you have a fluctuation in income. You need a stable income for your lodging.
Senator Day: Is the formula controlled by human resources at National Defence Headquarters or do you control that here?
RAdm. Forcier: The formula is controlled by the centre.
Senator Day: We will follow up on that at the centre, then. It is easy for us to make our contacts there.
Is the rent for the married quarters determined by you or the base commander?
RAdm. Forcier: No. The housing structure now is managed on behalf of Canadian Forces by the Canadian Forces Housing Agency. They are an agency of the department. They set the rates based on market value, obviously with some adjustment. We have no control locally over the rates. Neither the base commander nor I control any of those rates.
Senator Day: Does National Defence Headquarters have control over this agency in terms of being able to say "You are charging too much at Esquimalt?''
RAdm. Forcier: I do not have details on the exact relationship between the agency and headquarters and how the costs are established. Perhaps Cmdre. Girouard had experience with that in his previous position.
Cmdre. Girouard: In one of my previous lives, I was on the policy side. The aim was to establish the housing agency as an independent business, a self-sustaining entity. It was designed to be a rather long arm's-length relationship. I know colleagues in HR will have an element of oversight and there is some discussion, but as a rule, they are reluctant to interfere in the setting of the market rates unless something is particularly skewed. The agency has a fair amount of independence.
Senator Day: You understand that your sailors believe that you, here in the Pacific Fleet, have control over what they are being charged for married quarters.
RAdm. Forcier: I would hope that is not the general understanding. Both the commodore and I visit the units extensively. We visit at least half of the ships and we have a town hall forum to discuss some of those issues. Obviously, we need to clarify that.
The one issue that I would like to amplify in this entire structure is that we have always tried to balance access to married quarters as a service we provide to our people with the option, of course, of weaning yourself away from having this tie to the military for the rest of your life. In other words, we prefer to see people go on to become homeowners and to establish themselves not only for the time of their career, but also for their future once they retire from the forces. The challenge here is that the cost is so high, but despite that, young sailors today will push the envelope. Rather than pay $1,000 or $1,200 a month in rent, they will join the economy. That is fine if you are a sailor from the West Coast who will stay home most of your career here, because you can establish that solid baseline and investment. Unfortunately, a large proportion of our workforce in uniform migrates around the country. Those are the people who are truly affected because they do not dare make the leap.
I came here once for three years and stayed for four. I have been here for two years and will be leaving again. I have not dared to make the leap into the real estate market because I did not know how long my tenure would be. I do understand their dilemma.
Senator Day: I appreciate your comments on that. My next question is for Cmdre. Girouard. It is with respect to what you indicated is your budget, namely, $17 million.
We are hearing from touring Esquimalt and the base that parts are being taken to ready another ship that has a higher priority and that the parts supply continues to be a problem. Is the parts supply aspect of operating the fleet one of your responsibilities that comes under the $17 million?
Cmdre. Girouard: If you will permit me, senator, I will describe what that $17 million comprises, and through that I will answer your question. The $17 million that I speak of is my discretionary chunk of the coast's overall budget, the notional budget delivered through the admiral. The big players in that are me, the base and the fleet maintenance facility. That $17 million represents the day-to-day exercise and ship-running element, but it does not include add-ons, for instance, the fuel costs. The cost of fuel has been so volatile that we took a strategic decision to take those fuel dollars out of my budget. The admiral manages that and takes a risk in terms of rising fuel costs. Though it looks rather small, that $17 million is a sufficient notional budget at the start of the year. I get a number of injections from the admiral and from the base and fleet maintenance facility to help me do my job, but that is out of their assigned dollar envelope.
As it pertains to the spare parts elements, those are largely for a national ADM (Mat) system. We in Fleet basically tap into a supply chain as required. For what part of that do we pay? We sometimes pay transportation costs or an add-on cost to have a technician come with a piece of equipment. To me, those costs are essentially hidden. Nationally, there is a challenge in the supply chain and the supply bins. That has caused a fleet to sometimes do that swapping of spare parts that you speak of.
Senator Day: I would like to talk more about that, but presumably the salaries of all the sailors are not part of that $17 million.
Cmdre. Girouard: That is correct, senator.
Senator Day: Do you have sufficient parts here in Esquimalt to meet your various mandates, or is it your view that you could do the job much better if you had more parts available here?
Cmdre. Girouard: Senator, you will understand a ship is a fairly complex beast. My supply chain is sufficient for me to get the ships that I need underway. At times, we have challenges with some of the electronic equipment. For instance, circuit parts are a challenge and sometimes the replacement cycle with contractors can be very long. There will be occasions when a certain piece of equipment, for example, a close-in weapon system or an electronic sensor, may be down on a particular vessel as she leaves port. Of course, we have redundant systems and we manage that element. The ship goes out and she is not vulnerable.
If I have a specific vessel that will deploy overseas, for instance, HMCS Winnipeg is preparing to do a DCDS OP this spring, we build her repair and overhaul process, as well as her team, to hit the high-water mark as she leaves harbour. We will focus on the need, using some risk management to hit the mark where required.
Does every ship in harbour that is under my flag have all the bits and pieces? No. That is a fact of life at the moment. It is a management issue and we keep working on it day in and day out.
Senator Day: What is the more limiting factor for you: parts or trained personnel?
Cmdre. Girouard: I would have to say at this point, sir, both. The coast is shy of a number of sailors as compared to its establishment. I spoke of 1,900 in fleet. I am in fact established for about 2,200. We do have a challenge in ensuring that every bunk is filled on every ship. Again, we manage that people equation to ensure that deployers are taken care of first and we deal with the shortfall in the other vessels as need be. We have a wave of recruits, young sailors and officers, coming in. However, on the trained level, we are not there yet.
As far as parts are concerned, there is the supply side and the bits and pieces. We are managing that. Our other challenge is maintenance capacity. That is, the ability for the workforce, including my sailors and fleet maintenance facility, to do all the maintenance, all the repairs, that I would ask for on a perfect day.
There, again, there is a shortfall in that capacity. It is something else that we manage on a day-to-day basis in a collegial way. It does take some adaptability. It means that at times we readjust ships' programs and that sort of thing. That entire resource equation, whether it is people, spares or the repair capacity, is something that, from my perspective as a fleet commander, I watch every day.
Senator Day: I would like to thank you very much for giving us a tour of the ATHENA Operations area for surveillance today. That, as you know, was one of the recommendations that this committee made, namely, that it was important to bring together all of this information from various sources. In the briefing that we got this morning, I am not certain how much of it was "This is what we hope will be in the future'' and "This is what is actually happening now.'' In particular, one of the sources of information was the unmanned vehicles; another was the surface wave radar, neither of which is in place yet. They are in the future.
I would like to know specifically whether the contracted aircraft and the Auroras, which are operated by the air force, are equally operational in terms of picking up information and passing it to you at this stage, or is this something that you hope to have in the future.
RAdm. Forcier: That is a good question. Both the contracted air services and the data coming from the Auroras are actual events now. We have been getting a benefit from the contract that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has undertaken. We negotiated with them to expand their contract to provide us with about 1,500 flight hours to directly supplement our needs versus just dealing with the inshore or the near-shore waters that Fisheries would be looking at quite often.
The Auroras will tend to do more legs. They can basically cross the entire Pacific when they have to. We tend to use that in coordination also, to deal with longer contact locations and certainly to go further away. Both of those have a stream of readily accessible information that is automatically dumped into our information technology pictures that you saw this morning.
Senator Day: They have equal electronic equipment on board.
RAdm. Forcier: They all have sensors, infrareds and so on. That is managed on board the aircraft and is dumped into a data stream into our surveillance capability.
Senator Day: There is not something more that is needed in order to make your surveillance and security operations unit at ATHENA more effective?
RAdm. Forcier: Part of the effectiveness is also the quantity. Clearly, having other data sources like the two types of sensors we discussed will certainly enhance that.
Senator Day: I understand about sensors, but I was restricting my question to the contract aircraft and the air force aircraft.
RAdm. Forcier: The contracted aircraft were very well reconfigured to our needs and provide the data that we wanted.
The Deputy Chairman: I want to ask a couple of questions, if I may, Adm. Forcier. In your statement, you mention that one of your responsibilities is to provide a presence and surveillance over a 1.7 million square kilometre area. Given the OPs tempo of the past three years, how has that mission been affected?
RAdm. Forcier: Clearly, with Operation APOLLO we have had to increase the tempo of operations of our maritime coastal defence vessels. It was envisaged that these medium-sized vessels would do a hybrid of jobs, including training and surveillance. It is fair to say — and the commodore probably has the figures closer to his fingertips — that typically, we have exceeded over 600 sea days a year working off the coast, averaging five vessels out in normal times to do some of that patrolling. We have also had to rely, as I mentioned earlier to Senator Day, on getting more support, that is, the contracted air services and our Aurora fleet from Comox. We have less of a large warships presence, but we had to substitute some of the other ones for more presence on the water.
The Deputy Chairman: Generally speaking, how many more days are you steaming now than prior to 9/11?
RAdm. Forcier: We have received a small increment on days. As the commodore explained, part of our resource constraint is fuel. For each additional day that we provide at sea, I have to balance out the commensurate cost of him running the ship versus the facilities readying the ship and sustaining it as they operate, like any other complex platform. For every dollar that I give the commodore for extra time at sea, I have to give the engineers an extra dollar to ensure that the ships are maintained.
We have increased our allocation dedicated to sovereignty operations by at least 50 days — and my first cut this year. We have been able to accomplish this already. We have reinstated dedicated patrols with both types of vessels, where the ships will go and survey the area off the coast. We developed a plan with our partners in the other government departments. I am not sure where it will take us in the future or how much I can afford, but certainly the direction is clear, to have more presence and more surveillance capability.
The Deputy Chairman: What impact has the reduction in Aurora hours had on meeting your responsibilities here?
RAdm. Forcier: We have been able to mitigate some of that. We have two pots of money for the Auroras. I have a pot of flying hours, if I can call it that, which I tend to use for training purposes, and not just for their training, because that really falls under the purview of the air force, but for our fleet integrated training. We have had to decide where we should put the emphasis. Sometimes we have reduced the direct support that Cmdre. Girouard would like for training and put more emphasis on operations. The other component, of course, is that we realized that no matter what we do, with the upgrade to the Auroras, they will be a down for period and we will not get as many hours as we would prefer. That is when we came up with the idea of increasing our contracted air services support.
The Deputy Chairman: Have you done any sovereignty missions to the North in the last year?
RAdm. Forcier: We have sent vessels all the way up to —
The Deputy Chairman: I meant air missions.
RAdm. Forcier: We have had a few missions conducted by the Auroras, yes, primarily under the guise of the air force tasking. I am aware of us having deployed some of the Auroras from this coast.
The Deputy Chairman: Were these aircraft deployed to do specific work for your command?
RAdm. Forcier: They were specifically there to do surveillance. This was their primary mission. I cannot go into the details of the components of missions. However, they were up North specifically to contribute to sovereignty surveillance.
The Deputy Chairman: Remember, we are a very nice nation. We do not have secrets from the rest of the world.
In your statement, admiral, you indicated that you maintain military relations in the Pacific. Given that there is no similar organization in the Pacific to NATO in the Atlantic, could you expand on that capability and provide the committee with an explanation of how you accomplish that?
RAdm. Forcier: Maritime Force did a self-assessment about 80 years ago and realized that, every time we ventured into the Pacific, we were relearning lessons because we built no lasting relationships with friends and partners. I am a child of NATO. I spent most of my seagoing days on the East Coast and I intuitively understand NATO, as most naval officers do. We studied NATO. Coming here, first as a captain, I saw that transition when one of the admirals of the day was trying to understand the Pacific better. We came to realize collectively that there was a desperate need for us to truly understand the area in which we might be operating.
Our engagement planning cycle starts every fall, when we bring in Pacific policy people from Ottawa, the fleet commander, my adviser on Pacific policy — a university professor who works for me full time and advises on Pacific matters — some of the staff from Foreign Affairs and so on. We look at a quick global overview of the Pacific pressures and issues. Based on this, we devise a three-tiered plan. One is a chance to participate in some confidence- building measures.
Senator Stollery: I have a supplementary question on that. I know that the major treaty arrangement in the Pacific is the U.S.-Japan defence treaty. We are close to the U.S. ourselves, in that they are just down the road. What is the relationship there? That is really the big treaty in the Pacific, is it not?
RAdm. Forcier: It does not really affect us in that direction. It is very much a collage of one-on-one or one-on-two relationships all over the Pacific. It is an amazing quilt of relationships. The main links that we built have been devised with Foreign Affairs and our ambassadors. As an example, I had a chance to be with all our ambassadors in the Pacific last October in Vancouver. We had an open dialogue about their view of where they thought we could assist them. We do want to have a dialogue with some of the nations. We do engage in some small exercises sometimes, with a few personnel going over. When we have the chance, as we just did with the exercise in the Pacific, we work side by side with several nations. Japan was certainly there, as were Australia and New Zealand. Nine nations were the core of that multinational exercise. There is very much a civil diplomatic role. We maintain and engage in relationships and try to understand the sensitive points of the Pacific. I find myself reading almost daily the assessment of what is happening around the Pacific as a kind of radar warning here about how we, the military and the navy, could be used in the future.
Senator Stollery: The Japan-U.S. defence treaty is a very narrowly focused treaty that does not affect other countries very much, then? It is the big treaty in the Pacific.
Cmdre. Girouard: As the admiral says, there are many bilateral and regional arrangements. Probably one of the more complex arrangements is ASEAN. It is focused on the Western Pacific. It does have an element of defence and de-escalation and is a forum for discussion. Those who are accustomed to NATO long for some structure. One structure that does exist, though, is under the ABCA, and that has its roots in World War II. That is one that, from a Canadian perspective, has great strength in terms of exchange and cooperation in both a technical and an operational sense. It was probably one of the drawing cards that brought us to East Timor.
The Deputy Chairman: How do you handle your dive unit? Assuming that this is the principle location on the West Coast, how do you do work that is required of you in, say, the harbour in Vancouver? Do you have a team there?
Cmdre. Girouard: The dive elements in the CF are quite varied, as you probably know. There are even combat divers in the army. It is not a navy-only enterprise, with the two mainly naval spots, the fleet diving units on each coast. It is a stand-alone unit with a commanding officer, a command structure and an operational capability, and it is deployable. It can do repairs and some combat diving, although you have to build that over time.
It has a strong element in bomb disposal and ordinance disposal. When we have gone overseas, for instance in APOLLO, the team will go over too. If we have a repair job in Vancouver or in Hawaii, we may send the right divers along with the right technicians. That is not to suggest that our dive capacity is of a high industrial capability — we would, in certain circumstances, refer to the industry if required — but they are a very adaptable team. We also have reserve elements with standing pit teams. They reside under Commander Ops Group 4. Coastal forces are sent to work off our coastal defence vessels or the destroyers and frigates. They have very adaptable capabilities.
Senator Banks: Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for being with us and for giving us the opportunity this morning to meet with many of your people.
I want to say, as others have before me, how impressed we are with your people. They are just absolutely terrific. The most important aspect of the Canadian Forces is people. Yours are stellar.
It is about people that I want to ask. When you were speaking a few minutes ago, commodore, you talked about managing the shortfall in personnel as it comes along. HMCS Winnipeg is about to leave for the Gulf. Frigates have a normal complement of about 240, I think. When we have been on frigates in the past, we have noticed that it is pretty transitory; that is, sailors move from ship to ship. With respect to that shortfall to which you were referring, has the fact that HMCS Winnipeg will leave here with, I assume, a full complement had an effect at all? If so, to what extent has it affected the companies of other frigates in your fleet?
Cmdre. Girouard: First, I want to say thanks for the compliments to my men and women. They are why I am in uniform, and that is obvious.
In ramping up for a deployment such as this, we put a great deal of effort into putting the team together, effective training and delivering cohesion in that team, because you build chemistry in a ship. People chemistry is what makes a vessel like that effective.
There is a price to building that up. As you suggest, there is also a price to pay in other places. The emphasis on stability in HMCS Winnipeg does mean that there are gaps in other places and that you have a bit of a rotation in some of the other non-overseas-deployable hulks. We spread that around. The aim is for a vessel that is entering a long work period of eight or nine months. She will take a hit and probably go down to a ship's company of about 60 per cent. People will then go off on courses, get their leave in and all of that. We will then build her up in the next cycle.
The standard readiness ships that we have — and there are two of them at the moment — will run day to day with about 80 per cent of their establishment filled. That does not mean that there will be empty bunks, though, because those young recruits and young officers will get sent out there to get their miles under the keel, as I call it. That means you will have a core crew. You will have good seamanship capability and it will be a safe platform, but I will not expect that vessel to go into harm's way unless I take the time to build her up again. It is an ongoing process. It means you have to look at your calendar and what is expected out there. It means that, if you get a surprise such as an APOLLO, you count on your transit time to fill out the bunks, find people from ashore sometimes, flesh out the talent and experience levels and build in the exercise and the cohesion time.
The nice thing about the Pacific is that it takes about four to six weeks to get anywhere, and you can build a solid war-fighting company in four to six weeks.
RAdm. Forcier: The commodore has been using nomenclature that may be a bit confusing. "Standard readiness'' is a ship that is expected to be capable of anything nationally but not expected to go overseas at the drop of a hat to be in harm's way. "High readiness'' units are those on a short trigger of 10 days to go overseas. They, like HMCS Winnipeg in this case, would be fully combat capable, 100 per cent manned. We do have an element that is always that way. It is not just one ship; it is the task group, as you heard this morning. We normally have up to four vessels in that mode. We then have the bulk of them in that standard readiness mode. They are arguably 80 per cent manned, 80 per cent ready.
Senator Banks: The man riding the subway in downtown Edmonton thinks that we have six frigates.
RAdm. Forcier: Five frigates and a destroyer.
Senator Banks: However, the average man riding the subway in Edmonton does not understand that we could not send five ships out to sea to do a job if something happens tomorrow. I want to make sure people understand that for the record.
I am presuming that the destroyer is a command vehicle. If you send a group out, you must have a command capability. Out of the five frigates, how many, at any given time, are ready to go into harm's way and respond to an international emergency? How many, in a normal circumstance, are out of commission because they are being fixed? How many are not quite ready to go and do anything?
RAdm. Forcier: The readiness posture we have adopted is a balance in which one coast is the national focus, the high-readiness task group that will deploy overseas. This year, it is the West Coast. Last year, it was the East Coast. We do have a rotating guard, if you wish, between the coasts to deploy overseas. In addition to that task group, each coast will maintain the single vessel in that same posture to deploy any time and anywhere overseas.
Unless they are going through some extensive maintenance — and you could probably count on having one, sometimes two frigates in that mix — the rest of them are prepared to go out of the door quickly on a national mission, or with maybe up to three months' warning, if they happen to be in refit, to ramp them up again and deploy them.
It is important for Canadians to know that there is a task group. Whether it comes from the East or from the West is not all that relevant. That can be deployed as a package, with a commodore and its flag ship, within 10 days of the call. This year, it is on the West Coast.
Senator Banks: Then I hope that whatever happens does happen on the West Coast.
RAdm. Forcier: If you look at the pressure points around the world, the difference between the East and the West Coast is a matter of maybe seven, eight days. It is not all that critical.
Senator Banks: Correct me if I am wrong, but I will posit that this is not a perfect situation, and that if the training pipe were turning out qualified people, you would be in a better state of readiness, with more facilities and the capability to respond more quickly. You said that sometimes you have to take the trainers from shore and put them on ships because you need people who can operate them. If you need someone who can operate something and you have to take that person from shore, but this is the only person you have to train more people, then no one can train anyone. Is this a shortfall in the training?
RAdm. Forcier: The difference is marginal. When we are talking about battalions rotating overseas, with one-in- three or one-in-four rotations, realities are that we do not have garrisons in the navy. We have operating cycles, and we have ships that, after so many hours of engine work or so many hours of radar operations, need to be replaced or taken apart and checked. Our maintenance-to-operations cycle, which we described in a rough order of magnitude, will not change that much. What would change is what the commodore described as a chance to build a cohesive team earlier and not having to move people around as much.
No amount of money will bring more ships online to deploy overseas with any real margin of difference.
Senator Banks: Say that again?
RAdm. Forcier: No amount of money will bring more ships online on a daily basis except for, perhaps, marginal change. Maybe we will have one more frigate in the entire navy that will be ready quicker, but the ships still have to go through that period where you rip them apart, replace engines and so on. That cycle still needs to occur. It is not a garrison.
Senator Banks: We heard this morning from Capt. Hudock that occasionally, a task group might include a destroyer, a couple of frigates and an MCDV, which surprised me. I did not know, but I since found out, that an MCDV from here went to Hawaii.
However, given that they have, for all intents and purposes, a flat bottom, those ships are surely not all that wonderful for sailing out into the middle of an ocean. You would not normally want to send that type of ship off to the Philippines or Pearl Harbour, would you?
Cmdre. Girouard: It depends on the job I had to do there. The coastal defence vessel is a pretty good sea-keeping platform from a safety-of-the-hull perspective. However, it is not always comfortable for the crew. She can cross the Pacific. If the task of coastal surveillance or support to a longstanding disaster operation somewhere in the mid-Pacific makes sense, she could do that.
What you heard about this mix of assets is really the roots of a force packet. What are the things that we expect to do there — and let us be adaptable in terms of what we toss into the vicinity to do the job. You will hear the Chief of Defence Staff talk in that jargon as well.
In an exercise this time last year, in a domestic scenario, my Ops Group Four command team embarked in the Oriole, using her as the command ship because the HMCS Algonquin was not available. The commander had a frigate as his racehorse doing surveillance, and three coastal defence vessels doing presence operations, with dive teams and all of that.
It depends on what the job is. We are trying to come back from, "I will just do any submarine warfare on the way to Europe or anywhere else.'' What are the other things that need to be done? It might be anti-submarine warfare. When I went into East Timor, two Indonesian submarines were coming to visit the forces that were trying to land people. That element is important to me, but so is the rest of the spectrum. My job is to look at the mission and the threats and to put the appropriate team together, not only from the Canadian perspective, but also in concert with the other coalition or allied elements. It is a tough nut to crack.
Senator Banks: The whole fleet sent a significant contingent to the Gulf a few years ago, which was a strain, we heard from across the border, on the resources. We all react to emergency situations by revving up. Since the return of that force, have you taken a pause or at least had a significant reduction in operational activity here? How has that affected things?
Cmdre. Girouard: We sent two task groups, because the East Coast sent theirs, and then we sent two after that, though we were not manned for it. Those last two were essentially ad hoc groups, including the headquarters staff. I did have the last rotation. The first tempo was huge, and so was the repair bill for the hardware.
On this coast, we tried to reduce the tempo. The last two deployers overseas were single ships. HMCS Calgary was the last. She came back at Christmastime in 2003. From the summer of 2003 to the summer of 2004, some of the ships took a bit of a pause.
Senator Banks: I am mainly talking about the time when we had five ships there at once. I am talking about after that. Surely it must have required a breather, given what you said earlier about the normal deployability of ships.
Cmdre. Girouard: Some people got it; some people got a bit less. The bad news is that we could not achieve it all in one fell swoop because there were other things going on. The good news is, as we look at this people equation and who is where, we are ensuring that none of those sailors who were the last of the deployers are deploying either on a big trip, say in HMCS Winnipeg, or on multiple exercises like RIMPAC last year.
Senator Banks: You talked about the toll that a very large deployment in Canadian terms took on the materiel and the equipment. Did it take a toll on the people to the extent that there were personnel problems when that group came home? I am talking about the first group, when we sent five ships at once. Did that have an impact on your people? I do not see how it could not have done so.
RAdm. Forcier: No more than other deployments. Obviously, they were going to a much tenser area than some sailors were used to. We did maintain the sanctity of the rotations. We had people out for six months and then they came home and did not deploy for at least another year. We had very few exceptions, and those were people who were absolutely keen on going and signed a waiver stating that we were not arm-twisting.
At the same time, to go back to your first point, the reconstitution of the forces, not only the repairs to the ship but also the break for the people, it has occurred. It was finished a year ago. As far as I am concerned, as of December last year, we had finished getting everybody in and out of the Gulf and now we have a fresh start. Clearly, we have to pay attention to, as we do, and are very conscious of our people's welfare. We do collectively hear a strong focus on making sure that the wellness of our people was looked after and that we did not have undue post-traumatic stress cases and so on. We both come from a fairly operational background and certainly we are concerned about our people.
We are back to business. That is the message. We have gone through the war. We have gone to the Gulf. It is a chapter of our history that is pretty well over with APOLLO. We are now spring-loaded again, should we be called upon.
The Chairman: When General Caron, the Commander of the Army, appeared before us, he described a paradigm that we thought was interesting. He said that, effective January 2006, he hoped to have the capability to sustain, on a permanent basis, two groups of 1,000 overseas and surge to 3,000 once every two years. The other side of the contract was that individuals in the army would be put in harm's way for a six-month period and would have an additional four months when they would be back as trainers or being trained, for a total of 10 months every 36 months away from their families.
It is a huge burden when you are spending a lot of time away from your family. We recognize the navy is different and must function differently, but between you, you have three stars. You have been around. What sort of paradigm should we be thinking about in terms of the navy that would make sense, so that we would still have a capacity to project significant force but would have a contract with our sailors that would provide them with some sort of assurance that in a given period — I do not care whether it is a three-year period or two-year period, or however you want to work it — they have a reasonable time at home so that they can keep their lives and families in good repair?
RAdm. Forcier: As you mentioned, one of our challenges is that we operate under different subcultures, is the best way to put it. Of course, having worked in international operations for two years, I am well aware of the three subcultures. When our sailors come home, they do not go to a garrison environment where they tool down. They basically do minimum sustainment of training, care and custody of the garrison.
Our sailors come home with a pride in the ship they just served in. One of the things they want to do, first, is get that ship back up to snuff — that is, ready to go. That is fine. That is something on which to focus their energy and skills. At the same time, we cannot maintain skills while being tied up to a jetty. If you speak to most sailors after they have been back for a couple of months, once they have had their leave after deployment and their annual leave that they have not had a chance to take, they get restless. They want to go back out there. Not necessarily across the Pacific to the Gulf, but they certainly would like to get back to the job that they like to do, which is to go in ships.
Our construct must take into account that we need to let the sailors go to sea to maintain their skills, but those sailors should not be put into long international operations for a certain cycle. There is nothing worse than being alongside a jetty unable to take your ship out or to show your skills. The garrison is the ship and the garrison floats. We do understand that there is a requirement to stay a little closer to the family for a time, but I do not think that we need to make it artificially clear-cut here and say, "No. You will not sail at all for one year,'' or six months, because then you erode your skills. It is like telling a pilot, "You shall not fly after you fly so many operational missions because you are tired.'' In the end, that pilot will lose his skill sets.
There is a subculture element. I do not think you will find any argument from any of us that the young men and women should not be sent back in harm's way overseas right away, but they should be allowed to follow their trade, which is to go to sea, whether it is to patrol around Canada or train other people while they are at sea.
The Chairman: I understand what you said about different cultures. We saw sailors today who were pleased as punch to be heading out. What do their spouses say?
RAdm. Forcier: I will say one more thing, because I know my colleague here is dying to speak.
At the end of the day, we are not in the business of training people to stay home. They do have a job to perform. I could not imagine a navy where you come home after one deployment and do not go back to work for six months.
The Chairman: No, General Caron does not say you do not go back to work for six months. He simply said that over 36 months, you will be away from home a total of 10: 6 in harm's way; 6 getting trained somewhere else. Again, it is a different deal. They wear green suits and have a different job.
RAdm. Forcier: It is hard to say. It is apples and oranges here. The sailors would go to sea for a few weeks at a time. During their reintegration period, we will not send that ship to sea for months at a time. Yes, there is an absence, but it is not the same burden.
Beyond that — I have to be quite candid — it is between the spouses. If a lifestyle is too oppressive, even after having to sail at all, then it is an issue that they have to discuss. We certainly will make an effort to make it as easy as possible and keep them as close to home as possible, but at the same time, the skill cannot be eroded and the sailors cannot get bored. We need to let them do their job.
Cmdre. Girouard: If I take your three-year construct and do some quick math, it is probably 12 or maybe even 14 months for a sailor and one major deployment in those three years. I live and die on sea days and 90 sea days is the barebones minimum to keep skills and my sailors alive. For a high-capability unit, 120 sea days is certainly not too much. In fact, I would like to see it pushed to 150. I will ask my sailors to leave home.
The Chairman: Every 12 months?
Cmdre. Girouard: In a 12-month period.
The Chairman: That is 120 days every 12 months?
Cmdre. Girouard: Yes, depending on the cycle. If I include early repairs, I will try to get 90 the first year. I will want 120 to 140 the second year. I am then talking about a deployable platform. I am talking about half the year gone. If I have to do transit time, it may be a bit more than that.
It is not just culture. It is the need to keep the skills alive. You have to get under way to make a ship a cohesive unit. I have been married 28 years, going on 30. It is a hard way of life for a spouse. It requires an independent-thinking spouse today, male or female. Even the most courageous of spouses will have difficult days. We ask a lot of those families. We try hard to give them everything we can in terms of support mechanisms. You have heard of Maritime Forces family support centres. We do briefs and we have teams that will back up families, not only in PMQs, but also in the larger community.
Is there a price in terms of those deployments? There is, of course. There is wear and tear on the soul when you have done a number of missions in a short stretch of time. However, I do not think walking away from that capability and the pride that comes from being a capable sailor or officer is the answer. I think the answer is including the families, including the spouses, in what it is that we do. If you have ever been to a ship's homecoming, you will see how proud those moms and kids and husbands and fathers are.
Is it a perfect way of life? No. Are there family members who are less than happy to see their husbands and daughters and wives go? Of course there are. That will always be the case. At the end of the day, my job is to get them out there, do the job and bring them home alive. To make sure they are able to get through the tasks that we ask of them, I need sea days.
The Chairman: Thank you, commodore.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin: We must thank you for all your efforts in making our life so interesting this morning. The benefit of such a meeting is that it allows us to discuss with officers, and with the people who are making things happen!
I would like to come back to the issue of lack of personnel, not so much the technical personnel but rather the support staff. How would you describe the quality of medical services?
RAdm. Forcier: It is difficult to convince people in today's climate, but I would say that the quality of medical services is probably excellent compared to what can be found outside the Canadian Forces. We have a small clinic, a former small hospital, and because we are members of the Canadian Forces, we have priority access to medical services in this province.
Unfortunately, we do not have the same services that we used to have when we had our own hospitals, our own surgeons and so on. We have services that are scattered everywhere in Canada and they are first and foremost available to deployed forces, to international operations. However, if I compare the services that are available to my family to those to which my neighbors outside the base can have access to, we are still well served as far as the daily access is concerned.
Senator Nolin: My concept of medical services is rather large. I am not thinking only about doctors that you consult when you have an illness. You have personnel, mostly young people, who are in a waiting posture because there is a lack of trainers. These young people are busy a few hours everyday, after which they are put on standby. Access to psychoactive substances is part and parcel of the Canadian Forces reality, just as it is part of the daily life of youth elsewhere in Canada. Indeed, Senator Kenny, Senator Banks and myself are in a good position to tell you about it because we have examined the issue very closely.
What kind of services do you offer? You are not telling your young recruits that after their two hours of work, you do not want to know what they will be doing until the day after. It could happen that the day after, you would not deal with the same young man or woman because he or she is affected by an alcohol or drug problem. My notion of humanitarian services includes this aspect of the problem. What do you do in this regard?
RAdm. Forcier: That is really a dimension of my work that I am very interested in.
Senator Nolin: I will send you a copy of our report.
RAdm. Forcier: Excellent. Naturally, we have made a quick survey of our command and we have tried to determine as soon as possible what the vulnerabilities were. We have looked at all files in connection with the quality of life issue. In spite of a few exceptions, such for example as the cost of housing, we came to the conclusion that our challenge was to make sure that our young people have good basic support within the fleet.
My predecessor created a committee charged with the well-being of the military community.
[English]
We have brought all the multidisciplinary experts around the base — that is, the social workers, the doctors and the family resource centre people — into a supra-organization that would make resources available to our people.
[Translation]
They have considered all aspect of the youth's life. For example, they have found out that their hours of leisure are not always in line with the availability of equipments and facilities for activities. For example, we have invested money in order to extend the opening hours of the gymnasium in order to facilitate access to leisure clubs and community centers where there are specific sport activities.
We have a committee that is working on answering these needs. I agree with you that young people coming from basic training, especially those who have not yet been integrated in the fleet and whose support is a ship manned by some 200 persons need a little more attention.
Senator Nolin: You are aware that the substance abuse problem does not involve the person who is an occasional user, but rather the person who make abusive use of the substance. Once that person has been trained, he or she can be responsible for some complex machinery that has the ability to kill. That becomes our problem, your problem, everyone's problem. That is the reason why the cure is so important and small details such as that which you mentioned are quite relevant. Are you concerned with this issue?
RAdm. Forcier: Of course. In this region, it is said that we have easy access, outside the base, to narcotics and drugs. We focus on education, both also on alternatives.
Senator Nolin: On another subject, this is a question that I have asked this morning and I would like to put it now for the record. I have been impressed by your facilities at the ATHENA center. The day when we have solved the issue of the final decision coming out of this complex machinery will be a great day.
What about the Canadian North? Are there people who are concerned with these little blue, red and yellow dots that are moving North of Canada? You are both familiar with NATO and you know that it is a concern of your European colleagues. They are more and more concerned by the environmental effect and the economic effect of the opening of the northern Russia passage. One of these days, you will be called upon to be an important link in this awareness. Do you have this concern?
RAdm. Forcier: Presently, no. There is a command post in Yellowknife, but its scope is such that they do not necessarily have the capacity to keep an eye on the target such as we are doing here. In a few weeks, we will see the results of the defense policy. I would not be surprised if there was a little bit more emphasis on this.
Senator Nolin: Your last sentence reassures me. It would be a good thing to deal seriously with sovereignty, and this, not only on both coasts, but on the third side as well?
RAdm. Forcier: We have had a dilemma in the past few years when we have really been concerned with the threat or vulnerability. There is a third dimension: national interest.
Senator Nolin: That is right.
RAdm. Forcier: There will be a little bit more emphasis put on this in the future. I am often asked why we do not have more Canadian Forces in the North. I used to say that there was no threat. If a few terrorists decide to land —
Senator Nolin: Welcome!
RAdm. Forcier: — and walk toward Yellowknife, let them go ahead and we will pick them up later on when they are frozen! In fact, we have a national interest. There will be a small realignment about the significance of the North. We will see what is in the policy.
Senator Nolin: This morning, you said that it might be inappropriate to ask our neighbors to the South to help us with submarine identification. We do our things, they do theirs and we exchange information. If we had a map similar to that which depicts the whole of the North Pacific, we might be surprised to see what there is up there in the North.
[English]
The Chairman: Admiral, commodore, it has been a terrific day. We are most grateful to you both for the program you organized for the committee this morning. We appreciate the testimony you have given before this committee this afternoon. It has been of great assistance in our study.
We have one message we would like you to take to the men and women who work for you here, and that is the great pride the Canadian people have in the work that they do, and the appreciation that we, as a Senate committee and members of the Senate of Canada, have for the work that you and the men and women working with you do for us as Canadian citizens. They provide us with safety and security. At great sacrifice, they go out of their way to organize themselves to do this. We are very grateful. We would be most appreciative if you could convey that to the men and women in your command.
Thank you very much for being here this afternoon. Thank you very much for doing the job you have been doing.
Honourable senators, we have before us someone who is not new to the committee. In fact, it would be fair to characterize him as an old friend of the committee, going back a number of years. RAdm. Ken Summers is a retired naval officer and senior executive with extensive experience in NATO and Canadian security and defence policy.
His career is laden with many significant achievements. He was responsible for organizing and preparing all aspects of the Canadian naval task group deployed to the Persian Gulf in 1990 and subsequently assumed command in the Persian Gulf of the 4,000-plus Canadians in naval ships, fighter aircraft and land forces involved in the Gulf War.
He acted as Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, responsible for all NATO operations and activities in the Atlantic. He was adviser to the Canadian ambassador to the United States on all military matters of mutual concern to both nations. RAdm. Summers has received numerous citations and orders of merit from Canada, the U.S., Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
VAdm. Summers, welcome to the committee. We know you have prepared a number of papers. We understand you will speak to us on one this afternoon. You have the floor.
Rear-Admiral (Ret'd) Ken Summers, Naval Officers Association of Vancouver Island: Senator Kenny, thank you very much. Honourable senators, thank you for the invitation to appear before you today. Welcome to, depending on the event or the day, the wet coast, the west coast, the left coast, but always the best coast.
The Chairman: I know you are a brave man, admiral.
Mr. Summers: It is indeed a pleasure to renew acquaintance with many of you. The chairman and I in fact did a cross-country tour in the United States a number of years ago with the combined Senate and House of Commons Defence Committee, the highlight of which was flying onto and off a carrier. It was quite a highlight for all the members, for sure. Senator Nolin and the chairman and I actually used to meet quite often in various NATO capitals at the NATO Parliamentarians meetings when I was there observing on behalf of SACLANT. Senator Forrestall and I met a number of years ago; we will not say ow many. I was the junior officer aboard the Iroquois, which was then commanded by a very dear friend of his, the late Cmdre. Doc MacGillivray. The senator had to be a very good golfer, because one time he borrowed my golf clubs. They came back all right; inside were several sleeves of very expensive golf balls, which I much appreciated.
Finally, it is good to see Senator Joseph Day again. Back when I had hair and you had more than you do now, we certainly played intercollegiate soccer and badminton together at RMC.
Thanks for the opportunity to speak to you today. I am sad that Ambassador Gordon Smith could not be with us this afternoon because I know his insight into NATO relationships and the question of dealing with failed and failing states would have been invaluable to all.
My opening remarks will be relatively short. I have provided, as you indicated, a number of papers that I hope will provoke ample questions to stimulate discussion. As well, I will try to refrain from exploring areas I know will be covered in much greater detail by subsequent speakers here in Victoria and also tomorrow in Vancouver, unless you so wish.
Let me start by applauding your efforts over the past few years to raise the issues associated with national security and defence in general. Your latest report in December was very much on the mark in all aspects and should serve as a benchmark for subsequent detailed investigations and action.
Indifferent as Canadians are on matters of security, it is a fundamental responsibility of the government to protect our way of life from outside threats. To define today's threats is difficult at best. Are they physical? Are they ideological? Are they environmental?
Where does something begin to become a threat? Is it on our landmass, our offshore air and maritime approaches, or farther away that the threat breeds and grows? I am not aware of any line in the ocean, in the air or on land that defines where our security needs begin.
Two things are abundantly clear in our post-9/11 world. Governments are expected to have a much more rapid decision-making capability and to be able to quickly take the appropriate national response, be it humanitarian, military or civilian in nature. The government must be able to react in concert with other nations. Given our national reaction post-9/11 and the recent tsunami disaster, I would simply suggest that we have to get much better.
Senators, what really is required is a Canadian security policy, one that has both a national and an international dimension. What is most important is that it be a long-term policy, one that goes beyond the mandate of any one government. National security is simply too important to be politicized. All too often in the past, defence policy in particular has been a political football. We cannot let national security be treated in the same way. Standing boards or panels with membership of experts from government and outside government should be formed to develop policies and consensus on security for Canada. These policies must have a long-range, overarching vision.
Nationally, much work remains to be done, as you have concluded in your December report. Home security measures and our vulnerabilities in airport security, coastal water surveillance, port and harbour security and border crossings are not being pursued with sufficient vigour. Military and civilian capabilities require closer integration, and mandated coordination of government departments needs teeth. Information sharing for our sea and air approaches, as well as reaction to incidents, must be improved between government departments and with the United States. I sometimes suspect that information sharing and gathering with the United States is far better than it is between government departments.
I am sure that RAdm. Yanow will have more to say tomorrow when he discusses maritime and port security with you.
Internationally, Canada is proud to be a member of the G7, the G8 and the G20 organizations, but these are not just economic gentlemen's clubs. Membership implies both accepting responsibility for and exercising global leadership in response to events such as terrorist attacks, humanitarian disasters and failed and failing states issues.
Several types of responses need to be available, from economic assistance to specific civilian expertise to a robust military response. At the upper level, Canadians must realize that peacekeeping is gone and we should not perpetuate this myth. Peacemaking and peace-sustaining, with combat-capable multipurpose air, land and sea forces, is today's reality. Moreover, joint — and I stress "joint'' — capability is now required: Forces from all three services that are mobile, rapidly deployable and responsive throughout the threat spectrum.
This joint capability can best be thought of using the Rubik's cube analogy. If you think of one side being the navy, one side the army, one side the air force — communications, transport and support — to meet a given threat, you have to move the Rubik's cube around until you have a face of capabilities that are designed specifically to meet that particular threat; not a response from the navy, army or air force. A combination of capabilities is required. Whatever response capability is required, up to brigade-size response would be appropriate for Canada.
The government's long-awaited international review is yet to surface. Rather than a comprehensive policy document of diplomacy, defence and development, I understand we can expect to hear a watered-down number of general statements on the three Ds. I believe the root of the problem is that we cannot formulate a global foreign policy until we have sorted out our relationship with the United States. Defence issues are central to this problem. There are disagreements, to be sure, and BMD is a prime example, but they are not unsolvable. I would suggest that our ties with the U.S. not only be looked at objectively from the north-south perspective, but also objectively from the south-north perspective.
I have provided a paper on this subject that answers four questions: What does Canada seek from the United States? What should Canada achieve from the United States? What can we contribute? What should we do in the short term?
I am aware that you are visiting the United States in the future and hope there is time to explore this issue, either today or some time before you go to the United States. There have been two significant announcements this past week by the government — the budget and ballistic missile defence. The latter certainly impacts on our relationship with the United States. I believe this issue was badly handled by the government, which, through inaction, gradually painted itself into a political corner. The government should have engaged in this debate from the beginning. It did not, and instead, the myths of weaponization of space and nuclearization of space of one political party became the Canadian public perception. The government gave them a clear field to sow this myth, and this perception became evident even within the government caucus itself. I have provided a paper on the issues associated with BMD that addresses the myths and facts. Sadly, the facts never came out, and BMD reality shows something much different.
A major part of BMD is information and intelligence gathering and sharing, the detection and tracking of missiles and potential missile-firing platforms, and the defensive reaction from land-based and sea-based systems, not space- based weapons, nuclear or otherwise. The impact of Canada's announcement has yet to be felt, but there surely will be adverse consequences. Our involvement in NORAD risks being compartmentalized and reduced. Our access to information and emerging technology will be curtailed, in all likelihood. Since the U.S. sees all relations through the lens of security, as recently stated again by the U.S. ambassador to Canada, there will be subtle reminders in other diplomatic, economic and trade dealings between our two countries. Do not forget that the big loser will be Canadian industry, whose high-tech companies like CAE, General Dynamics Canada and Telus will now be shut out of research and development associated with this missile defence effort.
The budget announcement was seen to be a major coup for the military — but was it? The public is aware that the military had been cash-strapped for years, and thus it could not be ignored in the budget yet again. Central to the budget announcement was $12.8 billion for the military. That sounds great, but a closer look reveals much less to be happy about. Over $10 billion of the budgeted money was in years 2009-10, with just $500 million and $600 million in the first two years. When independent experts, including yourselves, have been calling for an immediate infusion of anywhere from $2 billion to $4 billion in defence, $500 million and $600 million in the first two years falls well short of the requirement. For a military dealing with rusting-out equipment, inadequate spare parts and too few people, to wait another three years is disappointing, to say the least. The recognition of the state of the military was there and the commitment to correct it, but not until after the mandate of the present government expires. VAdm. Brodeur will speak to you tomorrow in Vancouver and will cover in much greater detail the history of underfunding of our military and propose a solution.
I will turn now to personnel. Personnel in the Canadian Forces, as you saw today, are among the best in the world. They are true professionals and are Canada's best ambassadors. I had the honour and privilege to lead them during the Gulf War and felt that they did our nation proud, despite the state, sometimes, of our equipment. Today, gentlemen, the CF is badly undermanned. The promised 5,000 regular force and 3,000 reserves will take five years to bring into service, given the training time involved, the state of the training infrastructure and the limited number of trainers available because of the requirement for higher-priority duties.
The Canadian military needs about 75,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen to do the tasks the forces are being given by the government. A concomitant increase in the number of reserves and militia is also needed.
In line with our national security needs, the reserves and militia should focus not on augmenting the regular force, where today they provide about 25 per cent of the deployed forces, but rather being the prime source of assistance in aid to the civil power. Capabilities such as vital point protection, communications, medical assistance, engineering support, port security, diving teams, et cetera, should be the raison d'être and hallmark of the reserves. These are all capabilities needed in response to a national disaster or terrorist incident.
Honourable senators, infrastructure is also a problem. The Canadian Forces simply have too much infrastructure that is unnecessary and an expensive overhead in their budget. The military review that I now understand is under way will look at the Canadian Forces in the future as a joint organization with joint regional headquarters. This should provide an impetus to the department in divesting itself of unnecessary infrastructure.
The U.S. approach to base closures might be useful, whereby the military identifies bases surplus to their needs and allows wide debate to occur between those affected and their politicians, leading to a government decision to close the base, substitute another base for closure, or provide offsetting funds to allow the base to remain open. Regardless of the method used, Canada needs fewer bases, even if the force personnel levels were increased.
The final area I would like to comment on is our capital acquisition process. I spent much of my career in this area. When I started, "Canadian Forces Publication 125,'' which was the bible for the process, was only several inches thick. Today, the equivalent document is several volumes thick and almost a foot high. I believe the present policy and process is based on risk-aversion principles that result in, quite frankly, paralysis by analysis. Not spending, or delaying spending money, on programs was seen in some quarters as being a good thing for Treasury Board or the government. Tomorrow, VAdm. Thomas will have more insight into this process.
Over the years we have paid a premium for building in Canada, and the best example is our frigates, where the government invested heavily in building a Canadian yard to build that fine ship. Gentlemen, they are fine ships. The premium was in the order of 25 to 33 per cent. This might have been acceptable had we had sufficient shipbuilding programs to keep it going, but we did not, and the yard, despite that tremendous investment, went out of that line of business. I would suggest that the lesson from this and similar experiences is that we should buy wherever we can get the best bang for the buck, demanding offsets as required, but maintain the necessity to maintain major acquisitions and systems here in Canada.
Gentlemen, I am sure that my five-plus minutes are up. I apologize, but there is much to cover. I will stop now and look forward to your questions. Thank you very much for your time.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, RAdm. Summers.
Senator Forrestall: Welcome to a real sailor. I remember the Iroquois for a particular reason. To the best of my knowledge, it was the first Canadian warship to take control — command and control, firepower, the whole thing — over a joint U.S. training fleet with the U.S. that included the USS America.
Mr. Summers: That is correct.
Senator Forrestall: That is probably one of the most modern and updated battleships, aircraft carriers, of the day. Thank you for recalling that. Let me add on a personal note in memory of Cmdre. MacGillivray — our chair is not fully aware of this yet; Senator Day, I think, is — we are very close now to following in the steps of Senator Phillips' Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs and their publication, and raising the bar with a more modest one of our own, but which I hope will be equally helpful. That will have to do with an examination and a restatement of what a veteran is.
I have three or four questions that I would like to ask.
What should the government's highest priority or priorities be when it comes to improving Canada-U.S. defence relations? What Canadian Forces capabilities and foreign defence policies or policy changes do we need to make, and make fairly quickly?
Mr. Summers: The most important thing would be to send a strong signal south of the border to the effect that we are prepared to walk the talk, a strong statement that we want to become involved in continental matters and that we are prepared to put our money and effort where our words are.
To get totally involved in continental defence I think was an important message. We are doing that. The goal faced to a large extent by the air forces and navies on the approaches to Canada needs to be integrated. The Americans do want to integrate that into a composite picture, and we can certainly help out in that particular area. Our history in NORAD and our operations on both coasts, whether in the air or on the sea, are naturally what we should be doing. That is something I know they would welcome.
We should also be looking at substantial increases in defence funding. Americans are looking for that. It is not just a question of saying we will do something; they want to see funding in the short term. They want to see the Canadian Forces achieve a level not unlike perhaps some of their European counterparts, something approaching 2 per cent of GDP, or that would equal the $4 billion you are talking about, the $3 billion to $4 billion above the present baseline for defence spending. That would send a clear message to the United States that we are serious about defence.
In return, there are many things we can get back into. Canada has said it wants to have its place in the world, its seat at the table. If we do things like that, I believe we would have that seat at the table, not only on continental defence issues but on security issues around the world.
I mentioned that the U.S. sees everything through the lens of security. I cannot emphasize that enough. Be it economics, diplomacy, trade, whatever, they see it first through the lens of security. In Canada, 9/11 has faded away. If you go down and talk to the Americans, as you will, 9/11 is still there. It is there today and they are afraid something else will happen. When they talk about security, they are not talking about an event in the past — 9/11 — they are talking about today. That colours their thinking on all matters. If we want to talk about economics, trade and diplomacy, we had better make sure that we are talking the same language. Right now, that has to be the language of security.
Senator Forrestall: What should the government's attitude be with respect to NORAD? It comes up next year. How much would it cost, in your judgment? How am I to understand, for example, the expansion of NORAD into the land and sea environments? Do you believe, first, that Canada should expand NORAD as a matter of priority and in these directions, so that it might, to use your own terms, begin to meet the objective? Again, I say it is thinking, of course, about border security.
Mr. Summers: I would suggest, senator, that in fact it is fairly easy. It is just a question of opening up the valves and mechanisms to make that information available. Already, because of agreements between the navies and the air forces, the information is being exchanged on a daily basis within those compartments. To take these data and fuse them all together, be it in NORAD or Northern Command in the United States does not make much difference. It is a fairly easy process to make arrangements such that that information all flows into one area. I think it is in our best interests. We should be doing that. Discussions have been going on this past year among teams looking at this area, who would argue that this is all quite easy and makes so much sense. BMD unfortunately clouded the whole exercise. Information sharing and knowing what is going on is a question of our own sovereignty. We have to know what is going on off the coast and in the air. That is our Canadian national sovereignty. If we have a better understanding because of our liaisons with the United States, is our sovereignty then not improved? I would argue it is. This is something that would be all too easy. I do not think it would be expensive either.
Senator Nolin: Thank you very much for accepting our invitation, RAdm. Summers. This morning, we have asked questions about the ultimate responsibility; you are familiar with the Athena installation here in Esquimalt. We do not know who is ultimately in charge, is responsible, because many of the departments are sharing information. Given the answer you just gave my colleague, referring to an expanded NORAD mandate, do you think the military would be the preferred candidate to be ultimately responsible for that intelligence and coordination system?
Mr. Summers: The ultimate responsibility for a response to a threat would probably be with the military. Leading up to that response, the degree of coordination is the most important thing, not who is in charge. It is the coordination that is required. In Athena, you see many government departments coming together with information. Some of them have information that they do not readily share with other government departments, but that type of coordination is fundamental to exercising our national sovereignty.
The approach on the East Coast, where they are fully embedded in the facility in Halifax, actually works much better, because in Nova Scotia, all the government departments are centralized in Halifax. On the West Coast, we have the military here in Esquimalt or in Victoria, and most of the other government departments are in Vancouver. You will be hearing from them tomorrow morning. When you want to have the decision-makers involved in departmental coordination, they have to send people over here, and they may not be the top people. There is a difference here. However, the key point is that Athena has to be fully coordinated. I would suggest that DND and the military are in the best position to do that. They also bring in information from outside Canada through military ties.
Senator Nolin: Would it be easy to link that to NORAD? Would it expand the mandate?
Mr. Summers: Yes. The navy has links, for example, with the United States. There is no doubt in my mind that the information that is passed back and forth could be in NORAD in a split second if they wanted to do that.
The Chairman: RAdm. Summers, just to be clear on this, when the question came up, we asked who is in charge. Actually, Senator Forrestall usually says, "Who is driving the bus?'' At the end of the day, we think that there should be an individual with the responsibility for both Trinity and Athena. Do I read you correctly, that in your judgment, that would appropriately be a military function?
Mr. Summers: That is correct.
Senator Forrestall: There is no question that you have long been a proponent of joint operations under even earlier nasty phases, such as integration, which I thought about for a long time, until I heard the word "unification,'' and then it became suddenly very clear. I did not want any truck or trade with unification until I understood just what it meant. There is much history there, so I will not ask about it, but I still have an open mind about joint operations, even if "joint'' means more than two; even if it means three, four or five. However, times change; our challenges change; our responsibilities change. We have to make the greatest use of our limited resources, though I do not share the belief that there is a necessity to have limited resources.
What do joint operations mean to the Canadian Forces in this context? From your long association with the force and the personalities within it, do you have an opinion on that? Are joint operations important, and if so, why? What is the future of joint operations with respect to Canadian Forces and, more importantly, with respect to Canadian Forces as it represents Canada in the world?
Mr. Summers: I will try to answer those 20 questions by talking about joint operations in general.
Jointness was legislated first in the United States by the Goldwater-Nichols Act. It forced the services to give up their rice bowls and start thinking of themselves and being trained as joint. Subsequently, the U.K. has gone that route. It is now seen as not only the most cost-effective but most efficient way of deploying a military force.
Again, I go back to Rubik's cube. In Canada, we did not do that because we had rice bowls as well. Each service did not want to give up the army, navy or air force per se on their watch. That is true, but I think the resident capabilities — and there are so many capabilities within each of the services — can be combined when required to meet a specific threat. It is that combination of capabilities — nothing more, nothing less — that allows one to create an economy of scale when trying to deal with an issue like that.
Joint operations should not be seen as a threat to any one of the services. We should be transparent about whether the commander is army, navy or air force when we get into a joint operation. The services themselves are always responsible for making sure that they train and equip service-specific people. Sailors must be proficient sailors. Airmen must be proficient pilots and technicians. It is the same with the army, with soldiers and engineers. However, when you then get beyond that service-specific training, they need to be able to be exposed to joint thinking, so they can understand the strengths and the weaknesses of each of the services and be able to combine them correctly in the right solution to meet a given situation. It is particularly acute at the officer level. This is why there must be joint training as you go up the ranks. The officer corps now is such that they are able to partake in a joint staff and to bring the right force to bear.
To me, joint is not threatening; it is the way of the future.
Senator Forrestall: It is not unification.
Mr. Summers: No, it is definitely not unification.
Senator Forrestall: Thank you very much. I appreciate your kind words.
The Chairman: I have a point of clarification. You talked about 2 per cent of GDP. The mean of NATO spending is 1.9 per cent. This committee recommended a $4 billion increase, which would by now, given inflation since we first recommended it, be $18.5 billion; 1.9 per cent, which is the mean of NATO, would be $23.2 billion. Would it be fair to say that you think we are too modest and should expand our horizons a little with a more aggressive approach to military funding?
Mr. Summers: A year or so ago, people would have thought you were dreaming if you even mentioned the figure of $4 billion.
The Chairman: "Dreaming'' was a kind word, from what people said to us.
Mr. Summers: You are absolutely right. The figures are going up. If I recall correctly, government discretionary spending this year is $190 billion. The figures are going up again. If the department is sitting at $13.2 billion right now, to have any substantial increase, clearly they have to be up around $17 billion or $18 billion; but it is more important to see consistent funding over a number of years and plan on that. Adm. Brodeur will argue that that should almost be legislated. It should not be up to the whims of the government. National security is too important. If it were legislated, you could count on a level of funding that would allow you to put programs in place to meet national security needs.
The Chairman: We will deal with the difficulties of one Parliament committing another Parliament with Adm. Brodeur, but the question I was asking you was whether we are being too modest. We came to the $4 billion by starting with zero and adding up what the government was requiring of the military. It would be a more theological approach to say that Canada should place itself at the mean in NATO and that would be $23.2 billion. I just wondered what figure you liked.
Mr. Summers: In fact, I would look at the NATO figures. Again, I do not have the actual GDP figures here, but my understanding is that the NATO level is something like 2.1 or 2.2 per cent of GDP.
The Chairman: I believe the mean is 1.9 per cent.
Mr. Summers: Whatever the level is, that would be appropriate. That would be probably about $4 billion to $5 billion more than they are providing right now.
The Chairman: No, sir, it will be $4 billion to $5 billion more than what we recommended, which was $18 billion.
Mr. Summers: I am sure you could make many people happy if you recommended that.
The Chairman: Starting with Mr. Goodale.
Mr. Summers: If you see some of Adm. Brodeur's graphs, which I do not have here, you will see the comparison of the levels of the European NATO nations — leaving the U.S. aside — with the level we are at. He would be arguing that we need to bring those levels closer together. It does not make any difference to me if it is 1.9 or 2.2, but we should be paying much more than we have been when we are in the category of Canada and Luxembourg.
The Chairman: We understand your direction.
Senator Stollery: I would like to turn to our relations with the Americans. It is obviously our most important foreign relationship.
I would like to read something to you that I clipped out of yesterday's Financial Times:
When Mr. Greenspan said that the U.S. trade deficit was "increasingly less tenable'' last November, financial markets took fright. The Dow Jones Industrial Index fell 115 points and the dollar fell by 0.4 per cent against the euro on foreign exchange markets.
When a Bank of Korea spokesman last Monday implied that Korea wanted gradually to shift its reserves away from the dollar, it sent markets into a much larger tailspin. On Tuesday, the Dow plunged by 174 points and the US dollar fell by 1.4 per cent against the euro.
The statistics tell the story. The U.S. must attract roughly $2bn capital a day to finance its current account deficit...In the past two years, the reliance on official purchases of US assets from Asian central banks has been enormous...
Japan's official exchange reserves now exceed $800bn; China holds more than $600bn; Taiwan and South Korea each holds more than $200bn; and Hong Kong and India are not far behind...The U.S. Bond Market Association estimates that foreigners held 46.8 per cent of US treasuries in 2004 compared with only 20 per cent in 1990.
I heard the U.S. ambassador say that Americans see things through the lens of security. Of course, that has been true. Are they not starting to see things also through the lens of exchange reserves? By my calculation as chairman of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, the United States is spending $167 million per day in Iraq. They have a major financial disaster on their hands.
How do you think that will affect their relationship with the rest of the world and, of course, with Canada? More particularly, what will that do to their ability to finance their own military expenditures?
Mr. Summers: Certainly, senator, I am not an expert in economics, but you are on the mark. One does not have to be an expert to appreciate the points you have made. Iraq is costing the Americans a lot of money. It is not something they can sustain for ever and ever. It is having an effect on their economy and will have an even greater effect in the years ahead. I think that is one reason why they are pushing so hard now to get other nations more involved in providing for the solution in Iraq. It would perhaps not come as a surprise to you, but when you talk about trade deficits and Japan and some of the Asian countries, the biggest trade deficit the U.S. has is with Canada, by a long shot. Those with Japan and the rest of them are small in comparison.
Senator Stollery: That is because of their energy imports.
Mr. Summers: Yes, and because of the amount of trade that goes on between the two countries. The bottom line is that we should be concerned, because the health of the American economy will also affect the health of the Canadian economy.
Senator Stollery: Do you have any more specific views on just what it will do to their ability to finance their tremendous military expenditures? I do not just mean in Iraq.
The Chairman: Senator Stollery, the witness we have before us is not a financial expert. He is a military expert. There is no disputing the validity of the points you are putting. However, we can bring another witness before us to discuss financial matters. We have a brief that deals with military matters here and that is the objective of this panel.
Senator Stollery: We are talking about Canada raising its contribution to the military, with which I agree. That seems to me to be all about dollars and cents and economics, with respect.
Thank you very much.
Senator Nolin: It is a pleasure to see you again. Let us return to our old love affair with NATO. Maybe it will not surprise you, but Norway will strongly push the allies to amend the NATO strategic concept because of the passage north of Russia. Global warming is probably the cause of that. The reason Norway is concerned — and it is not only Norway, but mainly Norway — is that most of the commercial traffic through the south will now find it much less costly to go through the north. Obviously, that can affect Norway. I know that for a fact because I was there when the foreign affairs minister from Norway raised the issue at a conference last summer. I know he raised the issue with his colleague from Canada.
My question has to do with our involvement in the North. Is it important to focus more on our sovereignty and security in the North, and if so, to what extent, having in mind continental defence?
Mr. Summers: It would be fair to say, certainly during my time in uniform, that we paid lip service to the North. We created a northern command in Yellowknife and there were some people there, but in reality, they were not given too much in the way of resources or equipment to do anything more than be a presence.
Senator Nolin: The Danes knew that. They came here just to tickle us a little.
Mr. Summers: Absolutely. Certainly, other nations — and Denmark is one — are interested in the North for all sorts of reasons, military and otherwise. There have been, as the Eskimos would say, iron whales sighted numerous times in the North.
Senator Nolin: We sent our own last summer.
Mr. Summers: Yes. It is fair to say that there is a recognition that the North is part of our sovereignty requirements. I sense from the people I talk to in Ottawa that they want to pay more than lip service to the North. They are looking at means to give effect to this type of sovereignty.
We talk about maritime sovereignty or air sovereignty, and all too often we talk about the East Coast and the West Coast, but we really should be talking about the northern coast as well. I believe the planners are looking at a more robust northern presence, so there will be Canadian flags up there.
Senator Nolin: My thinking goes a little further. If the Norwegians are ready to bring to the table of the heads of state the idea of amending the strategic concept of NATO to include their northern passage, do you think that we should do the same with our North?
Mr. Summers: We could try it. It would be interesting. I think the lawyers would love it.
Senator Nolin: That brings the table of 26 all together with concerns about the North.
Mr. Summers: You would probably end up with a tremendous amount of discussion, because when we talk about the North, we have our lines up there; the U.S. have their lines; other countries have their lines too, and you are into a territorial dispute as to who owns it. If they ever tried to take the strategic concept, which is a very good document — and I know the Norwegians want to do it and I know why — and apply it to the Canadian North, I think there would be discussion for years as they try to sort out some of the legal ramifications of doing that. It is hard enough, quite honestly, to sort out the legal boundary between Canada and the United States at the end of the Straits of Juan de Fuca.
Senator Nolin: That is my point. When they are discussing the North and trying to convince the allies that they should be much more concerned about the security of Northern Europe, it forces us to react.
Mr. Summers: It would be for economic reasons.
Senator Nolin: It would be for economic reasons, environmental reasons and national security reasons. That forces us to do the same; perhaps not to raise the question at the table, but at least to do our own homework to secure our sovereignty and security up North. Do you agree with me?
Mr. Summers: I do indeed. This would be a good subject, and in fact they may be doing that already, but when you talk about continental defence or security you start looking at these issues — environmental, economic, et cetera — because everyone realizes that the Northwest Passage will be an economic highway in the future. It behoves us to put the mechanics in place now and the protocols on such things as environmental disasters.
Senator Nolin: That is the real way to China, going back 500 years.
Senator Day: RAdm. Summers, I find very little to disagree with in the points that you make. I thank you for that. It will be a very helpful basic document for us.
I have two points of clarification, and several other points that you did not mention on which I would like to get your reaction.
I refer to the point about the frigate program and subsidizing the buildup of a naval yard to build these ships; and once the frigates were built that shipyard closed down and all of that investment was lost. It is a good point. Your conclusion is that we should purchase our assets where we can get the best bang for the buck and should not worry about purchasing in Canada. "Demanding offsets as required,'' is what you suggest here, but then you go on to say, "but maintain the necessity to maintain major acquisitions and systems here in Canada.'' I am not sure what you meant by that concluding phrase.
Mr. Summers: To begin with, the subsidization of the yard was substantial and of the order that I quoted in the paper there. It was not just dollars, though; it was also in people, capabilities and the ability to manage large programs. That was a national asset. Unfortunately, because that type of program does not continue, you lose that capability. We have lost engineering capability, design capability for high-tech, high-end frigate-type vessels, and of course the ability to construct and put them all together, as Saint John Shipbuilding did at that time.
The Chairman: Just to be clear, there were two yards involved.
Senator Day: The lead was Saint John Shipbuilding.
The Chairman: Three of the vessels went elsewhere, which drove the costs way up.
Mr. Summers: That is also true when you start looking at the total cost. We will not go there, but you are absolutely right. We did the same thing with the 280 program, which was built in two yards, with the same type of premium put on it, so you had two yards involved, not one. Regrettably, though, we have lost that capability — not only the industrial capability but also the expertise level. That is the other thing.
The Dutch have produced one warship a year. In terms of planning, they always had a rollover of capability and could count on keeping a sustained force and expertise going the entire time. We do things in batches, like an accordion. We go and go and then stop, and then we go again. It would probably not be wise to again pay that premium unless we are prepared to maintain it over a longer period. That is why I suggest that the best approach in the future would be to buy where you can get the best deal, the biggest bang for the buck. However, if you buy something in France, the U.K. or the United States, you get all the industrial offsets you want at that time to ensure that even though the money is going offshore, their money is coming into this country. I believe it is critical that the major system or the unit be able to be totally maintained here in Canada, whether that is a shipyard or an industry, high-tech or whatever. The maintenance of that asset you have bought from a foreign yard can be maintained and kept in service here in Canada, along with the expertise of people.
Senator Day: I understand. Let us take your comment about the frigate program and talk about the new multi- purpose supply ship that is on the books. We keep hearing that another design feature, another function for this ship, is being suggested. This will be the most multi-faceted, multi-purpose ship in the history of shipping if we do not stop soon. Is this a logical approach, or is this just another way of putting off ultimately making a purchase somewhere else?
Mr. Summers: I hope not, but you are right. It depends what day you are talking about as to what this ship is supposed to be able to do. Essentially, it started out as an OAR replacement. The Protector and Preserver and Provider classes are getting to the stage where they are no longer functional. They are getting too old and we need to replace them. We have kept two of them going, but their days are truly numbered. You cannot deploy forces abroad unless you can keep them fuelled and supplied with ammunition, food and medical capability. That is what the AOR provided. That is certainly one of the features of this joint support ship that they talk about. As well, they are looking at enough of them that they would be able to take a modest-size force somewhere in the world — East Timor or wherever — so they would not have to rent aircraft.
The question that arises is that it is a multi-purpose vessel, the joint support ship that can do that, but in reality, it could take no more than a third of the brigade, if I recall correctly. Thus, you either must have all three of them if you want to take a brigade-sized force to East Timor or wherever you are going, or you will have to rent something or get something else. What is now being talked about, which makes sense with this joint force concept and being able to put a brigade aboard, is something a bit bigger in my mind than the joint support ship, something that could be a small amphib of some sort. These are built by the U.K., France, the Netherlands, the U.S. and another European country. They all have these types of ships. That is what we should be looking at.
I believe we have the design capability, and I have given you a paper that shows that we could take one of the existing designs of the appropriate size and tailor it to our particular needs. Because it should be a commercial-type design, this is something that could be built and maintained in Canada.
The question of which one is appropriate remains to be determined. There are two requirements overall, sometimes seen as competing, sometimes not. You have to have a fleet replacement, oiler replacement, a replenishment ship. You must have that capability somewhere. You must have a ship, as I understand it now, able to take a significant-size force, up to a brigade, somewhere in the world, with the command and control capabilities to sustain it until it can set itself properly ashore and provide the backup medical and other type of support to that group until it gets going. Those are two competing capabilities.
Senator Day: Why do we try to combine the two necessities in one hull design? Why do we not, as you suggest, go out and get the best bang for the buck to perform the job that we need and get on with this? In your experience, from the many years you have been in uniform, is this being driven by political considerations, or is the procurement group within National Defence just driven to try to make a Swiss army knife out of everything?
Mr. Summers: Things are changing. That is the best way to look at it. A year or so ago, the joint support ship was the only thing on the books and it was approved in principle by the government. That makes a great deal of sense. It had a very modest capability to deploy forces somewhere in the world. It certainly provided, as was its main role, the ability to keep the fleet well supplied. As things evolve, with this discussion about jointness and how things will come out, you will see two separate requirements emerge. It could very well end up in getting an AOR replacement to provision the fleet, to ensure it can sustain itself, and also leasing another vessel that would be large enough to take a significant-sized force somewhere in the world.
Senator Day: This is like a San Antonio class ship?
Mr. Summers: That is about as large as you can possibly imagine. San Antonio would be, in my mind, a Rolls Royce. I do believe there is something less than a San Antonio class. You are obviously aware of the Sea Horse proposal. I was one of the people behind the thinking on that, along with people such as the good Gen. Lewis MacKenzie and others. There is general acceptance that this makes sense. If you are talking about joint forces and being able to operate in the world, to go somewhere and be able to effect something, you do need something of that order. Whether it is a San Antonio, an Albion or some other type of vessel remains to be seen. I am sure defence planners and other people in NDHQ will be working on those particular options right now to decide what is best for Canada, but certainly the concept is valid and what is behind this joint approach.
Senator Day: My final question is about the alternate service delivery concept that we keep hearing about. In terms of delivering troops by air, does it make sense for us not to have airlift capability within Canada but to go out and get it on the market when we need it? Can we do the same thing with sealift? Is it possible to hire a ship to take our troops over there rather than try to get it ourselves?
Finally, as part of that question, you were here when the commodore and vice-admiral were here. They indicated that rather than trying to get more Aurora aircraft for surveillance on the West Coast here, they are quite content to expand the role of contracted aircraft to do the job. It seems as if what in the past we would have considered to be core activities are no longer so. Can you comment on that?
Mr. Summers: That is true. There is room for alternate systems delivery. In some cases, it is used to effect; in some cases perhaps misused, I would suggest.
In the case of airlift, we have been flying the wings off those Hercules aircraft for many years now. You know of far too many examples of where we cannot do things just because we cannot muster enough aircraft to sustain the number of chalks required for an airlift. They need a replacement. Do we need strategic airlift in that regard? Yes, we do. Whether it is more Hercules aircraft or C-17s is to be determined by the planners, but the bottom line is that we need strategic airlift.
Senator Day: This is airlift that we can control.
Mr. Summers: This is airlift that we can control. You do not have to go and see if the Antonovs are ready, or if the pilots' union will allow them to go into hostile air space. If not, you are out of luck. We need strategic airlift that is run by, flown by and maintained by military personnel.
Sealift is identical in that regard. You need whatever the vessel might be that would be used to take the brigade somewhere. Whenever you look at any of the major conflicts, you will find — and I am not pushing the air service because Keith MacDonald is behind me — that over 90 per cent of equipment transported abroad when going into a combat zone goes by sea, not by air, so having a combination of sealift and airlift capability is very important.
You mentioned the patrol aircraft. The admiral's comment is absolutely on the mark. CHC Helicopters on the East Coast out of St. John's, with I forget the aircraft type now, have been doing stellar work off the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, reporting icebergs, fishermen, and providing information that flows directly into the operations centres on the coast. Out here too; King Air was the aircraft. Out here the contracted aircraft are very useful and can release the Aurora for more sophisticated types of operations, if you want to call them that. As well, as the admiral indicated, as they do the transition to the Aurora update, there will be a time frame when you do not have enough Auroras and you will have to rely on more contracted-out time with these civilian aircraft working for the departments.
Senator Day: Would you see the new defence policy as focused primarily on expeditionary force generation, with other activities such as national security being dealt with at a second level by alternate service delivery and other groups?
Mr. Summers: No. I see that expeditionary capability as something that may end up being used for national purposes. If you have a problem on the northern coast of Labrador, you may want to use that extra capability to get something up there. Certainly, the assets of any expeditionary capability would be available, be it personnel, be it the vessels and those that go with them, for national purposes as well. They are not mutually exclusive; nor would I want to say that the expeditionary capability is the prime raison d'être and the national security is the other way around. I would suggest in fact that you start by going outward. We need more capability for national security and sovereignty off the coast. The expeditionary capability certainly will enhance that. It is not unlike Lewis MacKenzie used to say: You have to have a combat-trained soldier to be a peacekeeper. You cannot send a guy over there who does not know how to fight if he has to stand between two people with rifles, saying, "You have to behave now.'' You need combat- capable forces no matter which way you go. National security, sovereignty operations, and expeditionary capabilities need to be in balance, and the same forces can do both.
The Chairman: I have several supplementary questions to follow up on the points you raised with Senator Day. You talked about Hercules. This committee has been to Trenton, where we saw 19 of our 32 Hercules unserviceable on the same day. The average is somewhere between 13 and 14 on a typical day, but Hercules are not a tactical aircraft. They cannot go where you are talking about. They also do not fit the new kit that we have; if we want to put a Stryker in, we have to take it apart before it will fit. I am a little puzzled that they would be on your list because they do not have the range or the lift capability that we need to move equipment. Can you comment on that?
Mr. Summers: If you are talking about many national operations, then you need the Hercules aircraft to get equipment around within the country. If a tsunami hit Port Alberni, as one did a number of years ago, there could be a requirement for lots of equipment on Vancouver Island. I would suggest that the Hercules aircraft would be one means of getting that out here.
The Chairman: You can think of other aircraft that have the range and size, and can land anywhere a Hercules can, can you not?
Mr. Summers: Yes, but given the assets we have right now, there is a balance between the Hercules and strategic action. If you had only C-17s in the fleet for airlift, then you would probably be somewhat limited in where you could go, and would have to have other assets to get it from the main airhead to somewhere else. There is a balance required.
The Chairman: In fact, we have had demonstrated to us that a C-17 can land anywhere a Hercules can in Canada. There are two platforms that are up right now. One is the fixed-wing search and rescue, and that could certainly accommodate some tactical lift if you expanded the size of it. Does that mix make any sense to you?
Mr. Summers: I was not aware that the C-17 could land in as limited a space as the Hercules. That is pretty short, but if that is the case, that changes things. I will certainly have to look again at my thought process. However, the bottom line is you must have sufficient airlift capability for national as well as international operations. To my mind, whether that is C-17s or a combination of C-17s and Hercules remains to be seen.
The Chairman: You were talking about shipyards. This committee is not just concerned with defence; we do national security, writ large. We have looked at the needs and demands of the Coast Guard. It is in worse shape than the navy in terms of the age of its fleet and the problems that exist. If we had a rational policy like the Dutch, we could probably lay two keels a year and still not keep up with the future demand as we see it going forward.
Having said that, we do not see the capability in Canada to do it. Given the way governments have tended to function, we think it would be playing a bad joke on shipbuilders to gear up a yard, have it function for four or five years, and then tell the people that that is the end of the program and they can go back to pumping gas or whatever else they were doing before they were trained.
Do you think a shipyard in Canada is viable? If so, how would you ensure that you had a competitive process?
Mr. Summers: Unfortunately, we have had a history of ramping up for high-end vessels such as the frigates, or the 280 class before that in the 1970s.
If you are looking at non-military spec vessels, essentially a commercial vessel that could be used for military purposes, a number of yards in Canada can do that, such as Halifax Shipyards down East, Washington Marine Group out here, and CS Engineering up the river. Davie could, with an infusion of money, build those types of vessels.
The Chairman: Davie is playing a bad joke again. How many times do you want to shut it down and lay the workers off for seven or eight years and then ask them to come back?
Mr. Summers: There has to be a rationalization of the shipbuilding industry. We should be talking to those people about creating a national centre of expertise, if you want to call it that, to retain the capability. I would suggest one on either coast, able to build commercial-type vessels, and funnelling the fleets from all of the departments through those particular shipyards.
The Chairman: When we had four or five yards, they all played a game. They took turns being the low bidder and then made their money on the change orders. The government ended up with the short end of the stick. It was essentially a means of providing regional development funds to different parts of the country through the subsidy that went with the ship. That was on the backs of the Canadian Forces.
Mr. Summers: It is the same thing with the bases. I mentioned the infrastructure, and how bases that are no longer required are kept open. That is for regional economic reasons alone.
The Chairman: We are violently agreeing.
Mr. Summers: We are.
The Chairman: Good. As for the San Antonio class, we looked at that some time ago because we thought that the proposal coming from Adm. Buck was stretching it, along the lines that Senator Day was talking about. We could not understand why Canada needed a vessel that was unique in the world. It made sense to us that if at least a few other countries were buying it, then maybe we should buy it as well. When we looked into the San Antonio class, we were advised, first, that it would have problems docking in Halifax; second, that it sailed too slowly to keep up with the fleet; third, that it did not carry enough fuel to adequately refuel a task force; fourth, that it would not carry enough soldiers for the battle group that was needed. Therefore, we crossed that off the list, went back to square one and said that we should get a couple of ships that do refuelling and some ships that carry troops, recognizing that that is the way most equipment moves around the world in any event.
Mr. Summers: I cannot disagree with that. I know there are some people in uniform who say the San Antonio class just cannot be housed in the dockyards. I will take that with a grain of salt because I think those things probably could be made to happen.
The basic tenet is that you need something substantial. The San Antonio, when it was put forward, was an example. The only one you can take is the San Antonio. There are plenty of designs out there of varying degrees of capability in terms of taking people and other capabilities on board that you can look at.
If we buy into the concept, which I hope we do, of having that expeditionary capability, with a proper vessel that can take troops and battle forces abroad, then you have to look at what is available, the designs, and pick the appropriate one for us. It may be the San Antonio. It may not be. It may be a British, French or Dutch version that is being developed.
The Chairman: The counterargument we get is that if you just bought some oilers, and then had some transport ships to go with them, you are into too many pieces of kit and too many sailors and it will not be cost effective. I would like to know your views on that.
Mr. Summers: I think the opposite of that is trying to get one vessel, as the senator pointed out, to do everything. That will not happen.
The Chairman: That would be designed from scratch.
Mr. Summers: Exactly. We are probably talking about two different vessels here that have to be purchased or acquired. Fleet replenishment is a requirement unto its own. It has a limited capability to do anything other than replenish the fleet and you can take that into account. However, if you want something substantial in terms of expeditionary capability, you cannot do that with an enhanced fleet oiler. That means you are looking at something else.
There are two different requirements, in my mind, and that is the way they should be approaching it. That gets into the dollars in the budget and everything else, but the reality is, if this is the way the Canadian Forces intend to go, and I believe they should, let us start recognizing that two different capabilities are required. If that means having two different types of ships, so be it. That is what you need. Those joint ships, I would suggest, are not navy ships. They are in fact Canadian Forces ships. Their raison d'être is to take a brigade, or something close to it, somewhere, along with the command and control capability to allow it to operate and maintain national con activity, as well as provide medical and other support required to keep that force on the ground going for some time.
The Chairman: Are you telling us that the best route to go is to buy some existing oilers, put them in the navy, buy some roll-on roll-off transport vessels and, if necessary, attach the command and control to the deck?
Mr. Summers: That is one of the options. I do not know all the options that are out there, but I would suggest that is one that needs to be looked at seriously.
The Chairman: My final question is regarding the shipyards. The committee instinctively has some discomfort with the premium that goes with building a vessel here. Having said that, serious people have told us that that is the price the navy has to pay if it wants political support for more vessels. What do you have to say about that?
Mr. Summers: I do not think that should be the case, quite honestly. It is a false economy. I cannot speak for the navy. I am no longer in the navy, but I have seen too many examples of where perhaps that should not happen.
The Chairman: Do you think, during your time in the navy, you would have seen the shipbuilding programs that you did had there not been the trade-off whereby the navy essentially bought political support for the ships by saying "They will be built in your neck of the woods?''
Mr. Summers: If the navy had had its druthers with the frigate, for example, they all would have been built in Saint John, pure and simple. The 280 class all would have been built in one yard, not two, because there were additional premiums and complications.
The Chairman: If the navy had had its druthers, would they not have built them in Korea for 30 per cent less?
Mr. Summers: That is another option. That was one of the figures that was thrown out at the time, if I recall correctly. In the 280 construction process there was a yard, and I think it was in Korea, that could have built it for about 30 per cent less than here in Canada.
The Chairman: That brings me back to my question: Do you think the only way we can get support to renew the fleet is by paying that premium, which is essentially a regional development premium, on the backs of the Canadian Forces?
Mr. Summers: No.
The Chairman: Would it not be better just to send them a cheque?
Mr. Summers: The time has come when people and the government see through those types of false economies, trying to sustain shipyards for those reasons. In reality, given the limited number of dollars, buying where you get the best bang for the buck, whether that is abroad or locally, is the way to go. Do not pay a subsidy.
The Chairman: We are singing from the same hymn book, but we are sitting here looking at the AORs and their best-before date is 10 years ago.
Mr. Summers: That is correct.
The Chairman: We are looking at the destroyers and their best-before date is right now.
Mr. Summers: Yes, it is.
The Chairman: We know it is a 13-, 14-, 15-year process to replace them. We are at the mid-lifetime of the frigates. Now is the time to start planning for their replacement. You and I both know there are no such plans in place. We are taking a look at the coastal defence vessels. They do not defend the coast and they are not well suited to staying out in high-sea conditions. The time is approaching when we should be thinking about what we should have in their place, and there are no plans for that.
We are faced with virtually every platform in the navy requiring significant investment, and we do not see any proposals coming forward, except for the Swiss army knife concept.
Mr. Summers: In fact, Mr. Chairman, I have to disagree. There are plans in place for some of these. There is one fallacy you must watch out for. Some people say you replace hull for hull — you have the four 280s; you have to replace with four more 280 command ships. It is the capability that needs to be replaced, not the hulls per se. The navy's thinking used to be, and I believe it is still valid, to look at replacing the capability downstream. They can see utility in replacing the frigates and the 280s with a common hull, a common vessel, so it is one design, if you want to call it that, whether it is built in Canada or elsewhere. You can then put the proper capabilities into the right number of ships. That program, unless things have changed, is certainly on the books and in their thinking. The problem is, given the size of the defence budget to date, they have to keep moving it further and further out. You would probably not see anything on the frigate replacement until some time around 2012 to 2015.
The 280 replacement command capability is of personal concern to me. That capability must somehow be catered for when those ships get to the stage where they are unable to go to sea for sustained periods. Again, it is the capability, not the hull.
The Chairman: I hear you. That is a fair statement. I think the committee accepts that. The issue is that there is no commitment; there is no suggestion that these are moving forward. Absent that, we are looking at a whole series of Sea Kings over the next decade.
Mr. Summers: The capital acquisition program exists on paper. It can move around.
The Chairman: How far is it from funding?
Mr. Summers: The commitment is very short term, as you will appreciate. There are all sorts of good plans, but only when you actually have program approval do you have money to spend.
The Chairman: Exactly. Even in this budget, there is no money until you get five years out. It is a minority government, so we know how seriously we can take that.
Mr. Summers: I would suggest, too, that given that tremendous ramp-up from $500 million, $600 million, to all of a sudden $4 billion or $5 billion extra, they will be working pretty hard between now and then to actually have major acquisition programs in place to spend that particular money.
The Chairman: That is unless you are buying hot vessels that are actually sailing and functioning right now.
Mr. Summers: Absolutely.
The Chairman: Thank you. I have taken up too much time.
Senator Banks: You never take up too much time, chair.
Good afternoon, admiral. We are politicians and not designers. Adding up the list that we have just been talking about, within the next 20 years, between the Coast Guard and the navy, we will need another 50 new ships. We need the Sea Horse capability. We need two, if not three, JSS. We need some new Hercules and something of the capability of the C-17, because, for example, DART took 26 loads in Hercules. That is just not practical. If we are to have DART or any expeditionary capacity, we must have the ability to move them. If you add up 50 new ships, the Sea Horse capability, three JSS, a couple of dozen new Hercules and five C-17s or something similar, that will not happen. It will not happen. I would like it to happen, but it is a complete fairytale. We cannot acquire all of that capability within 20 years because there is not enough money, unless we start robbing health care. I am playing a mug's game now.
Do we not have to make some pretty hard choices? For example, in terms of moving expeditionary forces, it is nice to say that we must have C-17s or something like them to land at airports, and at the same time we have to have an Albion, let us say. I am bearing in mind that Canada has never gone to war by itself. We have never simply said, "Okay, we intend to declare war on you.'' We have always gone to war with allies. Should we not start to be practical instead of saying we need this entire list? That will just not happen. Do we not have to make a choice and say that we will have an expeditionary force that can land at an airport that somebody else has secured for us, or we will not have an expeditionary force that can land at an airport? We will not have an expeditionary force that can land on a coast somewhere and secure an airport, and somebody else will. Do we not have to make those hard, practical choices? Am I wrong about my list of about 50 ships? I do not think I am.
Mr. Summers: You are perceptive in that area. I think you are absolutely on the mark, but this is where people will have to start thinking outside the box on how to meet those requirements.
You mention the other government departments such as the Coast Guard, Defence, Fisheries and everything else. They need a large number of vessels. Certainly, there is a thought process going on now that a common-type vessel that would be bigger than a maritime coastal defence vessel and certainly smaller than a frigate, a common-vessel hull, would in fact meet the needs of a number of the departments. Maybe the government, instead of buying one vessel for Fisheries, another one for the Coast Guard and another one for Defence, should look at buying a common hull that can be used by a number of government departments and create savings that way.
With respect to billing, you are correct. There is not enough money in the world to do everything in 10 years' time. That is why people must look carefully at this option to lease. That could be done quite easily. Oiling capability through the British with the RFA is a semi-civilian approach to providing fleet replenishment. That is not something that I would advocate, but it is another option.
Senator Banks: That presumes you will use merchant seamen of some kind. We do not like to do that.
Mr. Summers: The other one, of course, is on airlift capability. Given the number of nations getting involved in the AWAX program, quite conceivably, there could be a joint program with the United States or with European allies to provide a heavy-lift capability as well.
There are other options out there rather than just buying our own. Those options have to be investigated. You are correct. There is much to be done. Adm. Brodeur will certainly show you tomorrow the bow wave that has built up because of the lack of funding. It is not just a question of 10 years. He will go back much further than that. I would say certainly 10 years, where you are at 30 per cent less, and that does not take into account inflation. This bow wave is getting so large. Take your service. You can then start listing off major equipment in the army, navy and air force right now that is almost critical and needs to be replaced within the next five years.
Your point is valid with regard to the money that may come in, and there will have to be some innovative thinking on how to satisfy those demands. I would also suggest a prioritization of the roles and functions that are needed. Some of the things we are doing today we may not be doing in the future because they may be a lesser priority.
Senator Banks: I seek instruction from you on questions having to do with interoperability, not the capacity but the likelihood.
On the East Coast, Canada's navy operates regularly with NATO forces. It is completely integrated with NATO forces. On the West Coast, there is no such thing. I do not mean we do not interoperate with the Americans, because we do, but there is nothing formal as with NATO.
You talk about expanding NORAD to include land and sea capabilities. If we were to do that, would that not bump up against NATO and one would obviate the other? Can we do both at the same time?
Mr. Summers: Since Canada is in NATO, we have often said here that the western flank of NATO is actually the west coast of continental North America, so we say it goes all the way out here. However, being serious now, the navies and the air forces, as well as the land forces, work extremely hard at interoperability. As you know, Gen. Hillier was deputy commander of an American division. That is the type of interoperability that was not extant in the army 10 years ago. He was the first to do that type of tour. We are seeing more interoperability between the individual services.
That type of interoperability — and NATO is the best — allows our forces to come together quickly, be very effective and know what they are doing. The Gulf War, which I commanded, was a prime example of where ships came from all over the place but had a common way of operating. It worked out well.
Senator Banks: I understand the advisability. My question is can we successfully be in NORAD and NATO at the same time?
Mr. Summers: Absolutely.
Senator Banks: If that would work, that would be great.
Mr. Summers: The same kind of interoperability goes on north and south and across the border. Cmdre. Girouard would tell you that even though it was on the Pacific side, essentially the same navies were there and used the same common approach to acting command and control in running operations. There is no dichotomy between how we work with the U.S. on international information exchange and agreements and NORAD. That is not a problem.
Senator Banks: The U.S. is obviously our most important partner.
You were talking about the advisability of BMD and the general advisability of active cooperation with the United States on defence matters. Again, we are politicians, but we do not have to get elected so we can ask what we like and say what we like. However, other kinds of politicians do have to get elected, and it is arguable that there is, to use your phrase, a bow wave of resistance to the idea, based on misinformation, on mythical problems, perhaps. Nevertheless, there is a certain resistance. I do not know what it would be if you took a poll. You can prove anything with a poll, depending on how you write the questions, but if it were true that there is a demonstrable reticence on the part of Canadians about becoming involved in BMD, even if they all really understood it, do you think that a government has the responsibility to do something that would defy public opinion? That would, in the view of some, be profligacy, and in the view of others, leadership.
Mr. Summers: That is a very deep question. I understand the political imperatives the government faced with regard to the misperceptions out there. I would go back to my comment that it was really of their own doing in not trying to convince the Canadian public. Perhaps if they had had the luxury of time, as governments in the past have done, to educate the Canadian public on an issue, there might have been a chance to sway the numbers one way or the other with respect to ballistic missile defence. Unfortunately, it came to a head long before the government, if it wanted to, could institute a policy of educating the Canadian public on what BMD was all about. There were some political imperatives within the party as well. I think we are all aware of why this had to be sorted out all too quickly.
Having said that, the government cannot do things on the QT if they have made a policy statement, but I do believe that downstream, as they look at the real question of Canadian sovereignty, they will realize the necessity and the validity of doing things not associated with their very narrow definition of BMD — weapons in space and all of that. I go back to the necessity for information sharing and exchange. I go back to the response being from land-based, sea- based systems. There may be some validity in something like that.
Senator Banks: I want to remind you of the Bomarc crisis.
Mr. Summers: No thanks.
For example, we have talked about information sharing with NORAD. That is all too easy to effect. It may well be that some of the variants being designed and promoted for sea-based missile systems could be quite effective at countering an incoming ballistic missile. If the U.S. looks at, as they are, stationing some of their ships armed with these missiles near to main ports and civilian population areas where they can intercept the inbound missile, should we in fact have those missiles on board our ships? Is there any reason why we should not park HMCS Vancouver halfway between Victoria and Vancouver in the case of a threat if they have that capability? Over time, the sovereignty question associated with ballistic missile defence will be revisited and, hopefully, put into proper perspective.
The Chairman: The difficult question relates to the sense that this committee has that the governments over the past two decades have been giving the Canadian people the sort of defence capability they want. How do we go about changing the views of the Canadian public so that the government can respond to a different set of demands? As we wander around the country holding hearings, we see a Canada that essentially does not feel threatened. There is a large ocean on the East; a large one on the West; snow to the North; friends to the South. There is a "Why should I worry?'' attitude. Do we put the solution entirely on the backs of the political leadership and say that there is a lack of political will and we will have to wait until somebody comes along, as Senator Banks was talking about, and says "Follow me''? Is that the solution? Do we have to wait for the catastrophe to happen, and that will be the solution? Is there another, more rational way that we can develop a constituency in this country that understands the risks and the needs? If so, could you help us articulate that?
Mr. Summers: You said, Mr. Chairman, Canadians get the military they want. I think that is not correct. In fact, the perception of the Canadian military has always been very high. Every time a public opinion poll is done, the Canadian military rates quite highly. This time around, there was no question in my mind that the government realized that the Canadian public was well aware that the military was rusting out and really needed help. The government could not ignore that. That was a given.
The Chairman: With respect, RAdm. Summers, the polls that count are the ones that ask: If you have one dollar left, does it go to health spending or education or the military? The military loses every time. If you think that the government has responded to the public's cry for help in the last budget, you and I must be reading different budgets.
Mr. Summers: No, you are absolutely correct. This is where the problem of defence comes in. When you start looking at it in comparison with all the other priorities — health care, education — the military does come in second best. That is why in my comments I talked about the security of the country being fundamental. That is one of a government's primary responsibilities. One perception we have suffered from is that national security or defence is not something that overarches any one particular government. That is why I would argue strongly that that is what is needed in this country. It is a question of educating the Canadian public, but also, governments should not allow themselves to be trapped. I can understand why they put the dollar into health care as opposed to the military, as health care touches people more than the military. However, there has to be a greater sense in areas like defence, national security and diplomacy that there is a bigger national plan that we can fall back on. That is not evident in our country. That is what needs to be done.
Senator Banks: That is what is needed, or an attack.
Mr. Summers: Yes, and this goes back to 9/11. We have forgotten about that. The Americans have not, as I told you. I almost wish — God forbid — that there would be just a minor one here that would bring home to Canadians that this is important.
The Chairman: This committee is on record that national security and defence is the first obligation of government. That is why we have governments. You build health care and education on that basis and on that foundation.
Having said that, most Canadians simply do not share that view. That is why we have seen governments going in other directions. We are asking you for assistance in articulating a message that would have resonance with Canadians, whereby they would see things differently. We can go back several decades now; it covers both parties. This is a non- partisan exercise here. I am not sure if anyone in the audience knows who is a Liberal and who is a Conservative.
Mr. Summers: I know.
The Chairman: However, we have a common dilemma. Your testimony is not very different from things we have written in our reports. We agree very much with what you say, but we have a common challenge, which is how to articulate this to Canadians so that they will agree with us.
Mr. Summers: One of the problems is that perhaps we do not have any statesmen any more. I always thought a statesman was someone who could think at a higher level, beyond the mandate of the government, beyond the next election and what the important issues are and what the polls say: "I had better support this or I will not get elected in my riding.''
Statesmen think beyond that. Statesmen take views that are not necessarily popular but are necessary for the well- being and the good of the country. Maybe what we need is a statesman.
Senator Banks: Can I be argumentative for a moment?
The last time a politician, and a good one, stood up in Canada and said, "This is what we have decided to do. It is the right thing'' — and it has turned out in retrospect to have been the right thing — his party and all of the smart people said, "If you stick to those guns, if you insist on doing what we have determined is the right thing, we absolutely guarantee that you will lose the next election.'' That person said, "I did not come here to win a popular opinion poll. We came here to govern. We have determined what the right thing to do is and that is what we will do.'' He did it, and he lost the next election. His name was Brian Mulroney, and he was talking about the GST. He was right about that, and the public turfed him out of office. Is that the cost of doing the right thing?
Mr. Summers: I rest my case. It is tough being a politician.
Senator Day: I have a much less esoteric and all-pervasive question. I would like you to tell me what you think, having listened to all the discussions, the role of the reserves is. As you point out here, when the forces go off on various expeditions these days, 25 per cent of them are reservists. Do you see that as a continuing role for the reserves? There are many people in the reserves who say they want the same kind of training as the regular force, whereas you seem to be suggesting that the reserve should go in a different direction and be more concerned about national security and first-responder-type issues. Will that fit in with the concept of the reservists held by those who serve there now?
Mr. Summers: I do not know in which direction they are going. I have thought this way for long time. Certainly after spending considerable time in the United States and seeing how it worked there, I am of that opinion. We have 25 per cent of militia and the reserves abroad because we do not have enough soldiers to send, so they have to augment the regular force. They are augmenting the regular force very well, so that is not the problem. However, I would suggest that the solution is to give the army, and the other forces as required, the people to be able to operate properly so that they have a full complement, instead of having to run around to militias and regiments and other reserve establishments to beg, borrow or steal people in order to have a full number to send abroad. That is one half of the argument.
The other half, which I strongly believe in, is that if we are talking about national security we should talk about the sea approaches and air approaches. I am concerned about the internal reaction when we have problems here. You will be talking tomorrow, if I recall correctly, with a number of the emergency preparedness people from the civic, provincial and federal levels. I hope that is well coordinated, but I have a funny feeling that if something should happen, they will be scrambling to try to find help in sorting out the problem. I believe that a militia or reserve could have capabilities tailored toward providing exactly that type of response. They would in fact exercise that in vital point protection, in providing medical components and engineering that would be part of something like a national DART capability in various parts of the country. Maybe we should have two or three DART capabilities throughout the country. The naval reserves already do port security. That certainly will be required if there is ever a problem. There are diving teams in all the naval reserve divisions. That capability could be brought into play.
Most important, there is always the requirement to communicate. With all due respect to the other organizations involved, in my experience, the only people who can organize anything when push comes to shove in a real problem is the military, so I would suggest if we get the reserves working in this area, when there is a problem, they can be almost subcontracted or brought in to help out whatever level of government is coordinating the response. That is the role I see for the reserves and militia.
Senator Day: In addition to that role, would the reserves also be trained so that they could step into a regular force billet and position when they have to? Having in mind our reserve concept of individuals who are doing other jobs and are only training a certain number of days per year, how can they do all of these things?
Mr. Summers: They probably can. This is where some of the capabilities are directly transferable between the reserve militia and the regular force, even if you look at national security from an international and a national response capability aspect. Others are not. It is a question of time. Maybe they will not be able to augment the regular force as much as in the past. That is not a bad thing at all, because there is a more pressing requirement. Certainly, when push comes to shove, if there is a real problem, it will become all too obvious that we do not have the internal capability to be able to sort something out. That is when politicians will be in trouble because they have not been able to deal with a crisis. They will be asked, "Where were you? Who was making the decisions? Where is the capability? You are supposed to be looking after us.''
Senator Day: Would you abandon the total force concept?
Mr. Summers: I would abandon that approach.
The Chairman: Thank you, RAdm. Summers. It has been a stimulating and useful discussion. They are difficult questions to address, but we value your contribution to the committee greatly. We are looking forward to reading your other papers and hopefully continuing a dialogue with you on them. We are grateful for your assistance to the committee today in dealing with some of these thorny, awkward questions.
On behalf of the committee, thank you very much for appearing before us.
The committee continued in camera.