Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 14 - Evidence, February 28, 2005 - Evening meeting
VICTORIA, Monday, February 28, 2005
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 6 p.m. to examine and report on the national security policy for Canada (Town Hall Meeting).
Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. This is a meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence. My name is Colin Kenny. I chair the committee. 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 day with a tour of the base and with a number of witnesses who have been of great assistance to the committee over the course of the afternoon.
First, I would like to introduce to you the members of the committee. Senator Michael Forrestall is a distinguished senator from Nova Scotia. He has served the constituents of Dartmouth both as a member of the House of Commons and as a senator for 37 years. While in the House of Commons, he served as the Official Opposition defence critic from 1966 to 1976. He is also a member of our Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs.
Senator Peter Stollery is 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 the Chairman of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, and he is also a member of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance.
[Translation]
On Senator Stollery's right is the Honourable Pierre Claude Nolin from Quebec. He is the former Chair of the Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs which released a report calling for the legislation and regulation of cannabis in Canada. He is currently the Deputy Chair of the Senate Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration. On the international front, Senator Nolin is the current Chair of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly's Science and Technology Committee.
[English]
Senator Tommy Banks is from Alberta. He is Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. It recently released a report entitled The One-Tonne Challenge. He is known to Canadians as a versatile musician and entertainer. He has provided musical direction for the ceremonies of the 1988 Winter Olympic Games. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, and he has received a Juno award.
Senator Joseph Day is from New Brunswick. He is Deputy Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance and also of our Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs. He is a member before the bars of New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec and a Fellow of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada. He is also 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 has asked our committee to examine the need for a national security policy.
We began our review in the year 2002, with three reports: The first, Canadian Security and Military Preparedness, was tabled in February; the second, Defence of North America: A Canadian Responsibility, in September; the third, an Update on Canada's Military Crisis, A Review from the Bottom Up, which was tabled in November.
In the year 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 Front Lines in March, and recently, The Canadian Security Guidebook 2005 Edition.
The committee is reviewing Canadian defence policy. During the next few months, the committee is holding hearings in every province to engage Canadians to determine their national interest, to see what they feel are Canada's principal threats and how they would like the government to respond to those threats. The committee will attempt to generate debate on national security in Canada and forge a consensus on the need and type of military that Canadians want.
Before I introduce our moderator this evening, I should like to say that this is a very important night for us. We are here to hear your views. The purpose of the committee travelling here is to learn how Canadians feel, and we are very anxious to do precisely that. We will accept any documents people would like to leave with the clerk, Dan Charbonneau, but the purpose of tonight is for us to listen and for us to learn how you feel you would like to have your country defended.
We are very fortunate this evening to have as our moderator Rear-Admiral Ken Summers. He is a retired naval officer and a senior executive with extensive experience in NATO and Canadian security and defence policy issues.
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 he subsequently assumed command of the 4,000 plus Canadians and the naval ships, fighter aircraft and land forces involved in the Gulf War. He acted as the Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic responsible for all NATO operations and activities in the Atlantic, and he was the adviser to the Canadian Ambassador to the United States on all military matters of mutual concern to both nations. Rear-Admiral Summers has received numerous citations and orders of merit from Canada, the United States, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
Rear-Admiral Summers, would you please be good enough to read out the ground rules for this evening?
Rear-Admiral (Ret'd) Ken Summers, Naval Officers Association of Vancouver Island, Moderator: Thank you, senator. Thank you all for attending this evening's meeting. The ground rules are simple, but strict. There are two microphones in the hall. If you wish to make a comment, line up in front of them down either side. You will not be asking questions. You will make a presentation that will not exceed three minutes — so three minutes maximum. Our clock here will show the time remaining. When the red light goes on, your time is up, and I will be forced to ask you to sum up, or a question will be asked of you. One member of the committee will then ask a question of you to clarify your comments. You will then have up to a minute and a half to respond.
The committee requires the speakers to identify themselves for the record so they can create an accurate record of the evening and follow up with you, if necessary. Since this is a parliamentary committee, you will understand that an accurate record is needed. On the way to the meeting, you were given a registration card. Please make sure that you hand your card to the clerk once you arrive at the microphone. If you did not get one, there are more available at the back of the room.
This meeting is being interpreted into both official languages. Transceivers are available at the registration desk.
Major (Ret'd) Gary Del Villano, as an individual: The tank is the single most important and strong weapon on the battlefield. Canada, after recently completing a $210 million upgrade of its main battle tanks, put them in storage, leaving a few in Gagetown and in Alberta for demonstration purposes only. There is no ammunition. The tank is merely there for people to see what an army tank looks like, hopefully not from an enemy point of view.
We have a myth here of peacekeeping. I am a peacekeeper. I have served long in a peacekeeping role and also in NATO. The Canadian public must not believe that peacekeeping is the be-all and end-all of the military. It is one of the easier tasks of the military.
Oddly enough, there has been so much emphasis on air portability and rapid reaction forces that this actually becomes a danger to our ability to function on even a medium intensity battlefield, much less a low intensity battlefield. It indicates that we do not need some kind of a direct fire support vehicle. We do.
The answer for the army is sealift. We must be able to support the army through sealift. We moved all our tanks from Germany to Halifax and watched them drive off one after the other, interspersed with Volkswagens. They do come off, and they move quickly.
My recommendations: We must decide what our foreign affairs and trade roles are and how the Canadian Forces support them. We must decide if we will continue to take a free ride from our allies on military matters. We must decide if we need a competent armoured vehicle with good armour protection, mobility and fire power. We must decide if the air portable role will be the exclusive basis on which our army structure is designed and the consequences of that for us in the future. The importance of sealift, in concert with our navy and air elements, must be considered as the bottom line when it comes to future structure. Without robust sealift, the army will be inadequate to our needs.
Finally, the tendency to accept expensive, inadequate equipment of orphan design because it is made in Canada must be judged on the basis of operational necessity, not political expediency.
Senator Nolin: Good evening, sir. You have talked about rapid response. What is your perception of the new way of engaging in peacemaking collectively, using multinational forces? How do you see our role? Do you still think that tanks are the main tools that we must provide to our forces when they are asked to go across the globe to be part of a collective mission?
Mr. Del Villano: A collective mission is, of course, vitally important. Canada is far too large a country and its resources too small. We must work in concert with allies. We have done it beautifully in NATO and in NORAD. We have supported the UN very well. Now we do not support the UN very much. We are 32nd, even though we have the second highest casualty rate — dead — of any country in the world. That is real.
In respect to going on a battlefield, you must have a powerful enough vehicle to support you. If the Americans or the Royal Marine Commandos of the Royal Navy go into battle, they have those resources. We do not, unless we can put into the field a vehicle with the power and protection of a tank.
There are new vehicles coming on line. Right now, Senator Nolin, we are talking about a vehicle called ``Stryker.'' We will put it on top of our successful eight-wheeled armoured vehicle. That vehicle will be about as high as this ceiling: too big to hide and too small to fight its way out of trouble. Indeed, it is said that if it fires broadside, it capsizes. It also is so high that it will not go into one of our C-130 Hercules without being disassembled, in part.
We need a bridge item that will get us through to the next generation of tanks which, in fact, will weigh less than 25 tonnes and have the firepower of a modern main battle tank.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, sir.
Mr. John T. Marsh, as an individual: I would like to tell Canadians that you have 33,000 miles of unprotected coastline. If I were one of the principals of the Taliban, I would come through the Arctic in the summer or try to come through in the winter, because you have no icebreakers either. The two icebreakers are old-type icebreakers that have been used principally by the Coast Guard.
We really do not have a Coast Guard either. The Americans have a Coast Guard with guns. They can stop their drug runners. They can stop immigrants, et cetera. We do not do that. What is our military supposed to do? It is supposed to defend the country. God help us if something happens in Winnipeg, and they have to come from as far away as Cold Lake with aircraft in the middle of Christmas or from the harbour in Esquimalt. The ships themselves are not fast enough.
I agree with the army colonel. Just go back to World War II. What did we carry on my ship? I have seen 15,000 men in three and a half days go to the beaches of Normandy. Had Britain not been wise enough to have those ships as backup, we would have been in serious trouble.
What do we need? We need a multi-purpose vessel, basically. We need an aircraft carrier that can carry 6,000 men. In this army business, we could have carried 25,000 off the beaches with landing craft, et cetera. We need an air force that has and is capable of taking off from an aircraft carrier, something that most of the planes that we have would be unable to do in hostile conditions.
What about the army? We can load and we did load for Korea, et cetera. We loaded 15,000 men in 18 hours.
I am just saying to Canada that we should be waking up. If this is once every 10 years, please, in the next 10 years, kindly get us the matériel to finish the job.
Senator Nolin: I listened to your point of view. We are only 32 million people. We have choices to make. I want to go back to your first comment about the vast water frontier we have in the North. I have raised that question with various witnesses. What should we do in the North? What kind of investment should we as Canadians make?
Mr. Marsh: I can answer you from the point of view of the North, because I was in charge of marine operations in the North, operating out of Yellowknife for the government. Quite frankly, we used to wave to the Russians coming along in the ice floe. We had one Hercules taking off from Yellowknife. We used to wave to them, and they waved back.
The North is a total misconception. Do we own it, or do we not own it? The Norwegians and Swedish are moving in there. Eventually they will take over Cambridge Bay as far as up to Alert, Baffin Island. There are minerals on Baffin Island. We have nothing. We have oil. Eighty wells are ready to go in the North, but we do not remove any oil from there.
Anybody who is adaptable, and the Russians were, could have come in. The Russians used to come to Yellowknife to learn about the building in Yellowknife and then say, ``We have been doing that for the last 30 years.'' That is a very good example.
There must be military that will move fast, on a very large ship, double hulled, probably like we had going to Sweden in World War II, with tennis balls or ping pong balls in them so that if a torpedo hit them, it did not interfere with the remainder of the hull.
We do not do anything. We do not have a Merchant Navy, for one thing. We have one or two oil tankers going out of New Brunswick with Irving, but that is about it.
In my personal opinion, we need a hell of a lot of backing.
Mr. Robert J. Cross, as an individual: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. I am a former mayor of Victoria and past president of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce. I should like to speak to you tonight on the economic impact of our navy in our city.
The Canadian Forces base in Esquimalt is the third largest employer in the capital regional district, with over 4,200 military, 2,000 civilians and 1,000 reservists and cadets. The civilian payroll alone is over $100 million, with recent ongoing construction totalling $210 million, providing jobs for the local economy in our community. There are over 1,500 buildings on 4,100 hectares of real estate in the south of the Island and in the Lower Mainland. Visiting ships and guests from other countries inject an average of over $3.9 million a year. I am sure you have heard some of those numbers before, but I would like to give you a few that you may not have heard.
For several years, the personnel of CFB Esquimalt have given the highest amount of any corporate donation to the United Way of Greater Victoria. This year the total was $425,000. On top of that, they volunteered over 400,000 hours in our community, coaching sports, Scouts and Girl Guides, church and charity events. They are blood donors: 713 units made Maritime Forces Pacific the leader among the Life Link program.
This year, the Christmas ships lighting contest raised $28,000 in food and cash for the Spirit of Giving, and 8,300 visitors toured HMC dockyard. This event is a partnership between local business and the base personnel, and it demonstrates the community support and teamwork from both sides of the gate.
On any given day, our partners in the forces can be seen working and volunteering to improve the quality of life in Greater Victoria. These are just a few of the examples of the importance of MARPAC to our community. I hope you will continue to support the viability and funding for a strong Canadian Navy.
Thank you for allowing us to speak tonight.
Senator Stollery: That was very interesting. There must be exchanges with ships from other countries and various visiting ships that come to Victoria. Are the people who come because of the base here an important part of your economy?
Mr. Cross: In the last few years, leading up to 9/11 when things tapered off, the visit of an American carrier was equivalent to about five cruise ships on Victoria's economy, so, yes, it was significant and still is, with ships coming from any countries that border mainly the Pacific Rim into Greater Victoria harbour. It is also an attraction. It creates excitement within the local community. We found that people in Victoria go out of their way to welcome visitors who are coming to visit us in our harbour.
Senator Stollery: Do I get the impression that that has died off? You said before 9/11.
Mr. Cross: It did die off after 9/11, but it is now picking up again. We are seeing more and more ships coming back.
Mr. John Robertson, as an individual: My wife is ex-Sergeant Clare Majors. She was fired from the Canadian Forces using fraudulent medical documentation. They are currently jacking around with her pensions — thousands of dollars. It is in arrears. They paid other things in arrears, large sums amounting to over $10,000, with no interest, after a long struggle to get it. This is known right to the Prime Minister's office. The head of the public works knows about it, and also the Minister of National Defence.
Your grievance system is totally dysfunctional in the Canadian Forces. You should can the grievance board, the grievance authority and the ombudsman. Get rid of them. You are wasting millions of dollars. You are not resolving anything, and you are probably ticking off one heck of a lot of Canadian Forces personnel, and you cannot afford to lose them. What you need in the Canadian Forces is an inspector general. The military does not want it; they need it.
How did my wife wind up getting fired using fraudulent documentation? She objected to some third party going into her personnel file. She knew better. She was a clerk for 25 years — actually 29 and a half, because she had reserve service. This led to classic harassment with all the usual things, being downgraded and assessed. They ultimately used medical fraud to fire her. The guys who did this all had decades of experience, being senior people. We are talking about medical doctors. We are talking about experienced senior officers. It was known right down to officers in Ottawa.
Solution, short term: I have offered to mediate this with the Minister of National Defence if and when he ever gets a serious mandate. I am not interested in chit-chat.
Long-term? Inspector general. The person, whomever it is, should be selected and report to Parliament. They should have a mandate to investigate, subpoena, put people under oath and sanction them. No ringers, no ex-military old boys. It should be a person known and respected, with impeccable credentials.
The bottom line is that this issue is not going away. We have been out here. My wife was released in the year 2000. It is not going away. That handout I gave you initially had a couple of pretty pictures of me. It is far more serious than that now.
The real solution for the people serving in the military is an inspector general. The system is very frustrating. You will lose the people, and you cannot afford to lose them. You need the people.
Other issues. Ethics? I have not even touched on them. Accountability? There is not any. Nobody is accountable. Due process? It is a joke. The Canadian Forces —
Mr. Summers: Excuse me, but your time is up.
Senator Forrestall: I have a brief comment to make. I have never seen this letter, and I have never heard of you nor your good wife. Obviously, you have a serious problem.
I may be in the position I am in because I come from Dartmouth, the other coast, a long way away. I would suggest to you, and I would be interested in your comments, that this is not a problem for a committee of the Senate of Canada; it is a problem for the ombudsman. Do not shake your head. Let me put it on the record. It is a problem for the ombudsman or some other authority, but not the Senate's Standing Committee on National Security and Defence. We are just not the right body. I am sorry to say that, but I think that is probably as close as I can come.
Mr. Summers: Your response, sir?
Mr. Robertson: I disagree with that totally. You are talking about the capabilities of the Canadian Forces. What if you do not have any morale and if you do not have any experienced people because they all quit because they do not like the treatment and they do not like being stonewalled over serious issues? Joint Task Force Two. What are they coming out with? They do not like what is going on with their medical documentation. My wife told them that four years ago, so it is appropriate.
The first time I saw the ombudsman, Mr. André Marin, I gave him a whole pile of documents. My wife was standing there. We had a nice little chit-chat. The second time I saw him, I told him to resign, and I see he is finally going. He is not a real ombudsman. Do you want to know what a real ombudsman is? Phone up the Manitoba ombudsman, and he will explain to you what a real one is. You do not have one. He is an ombudsman in name only.
That joke that you call the grievance board? Ha. You know what they actually told my wife? They told me that they were going by the principles of natural justice. Natural justice? She complained about something that should not have occurred. There was a finding by the Privacy Commissioner against the Canadian Forces, and she lost her job over that; they used medical fraud. That is a disgrace.
Senator Forrestall: Mr. Robertson, there are two sides to every story. We have heard yours in brief, but not in any substantive detail. In any event, we will not be able to resolve it here tonight. I suggest to you that you pursue it again with the ombudsman, and tell them that is the advice you received from one member of this committee.
Major-General (Ret'd) Brian Vernon, as an individual: Senators, ladies and gentlemen, I am a retired Major General in the army. I spent 39 years regular and reserve in the infantry.
Our Prime Minister has stated that Canada will enhance its capability to intervene more aggressively abroad. From my perspective, there are two elements in this: The first one is that you must have the necessary forces and, second, you must have the means to deploy them and to support them, in some cases to far-off corners of the world.
The second one has received a fair bit of attention. There has been a lot of rational discussion about the need for both sealift and airlift. The first one, on the other hand, is assumed to be okay, but that is not the case. I know from personal experience that since 1992, we have thrown together composite units consisting of regulars and partially trained reservists to meet our operational tasks. This was a last and risky resort that we undertook to man forces in Yugoslavia. We have been doing it ever since, and it has now become the norm. It is now an unpleasant habit, if you like, within the Armed Forces.
Today, the nine infantry battalions that make up the sharp end of the army have been eviscerated. A number of their functions have been transferred elsewhere, and they are grossly undermanned to the point where most field units now have an operational strength of less than 50 per cent of what they require. In hockey terms, we have a hockey team that has two forwards, one defence man, a goalie that cannot skate, a coach that is on stress leave and a bus that is broken down.
Accordingly, the effects on training, morale, retention, effectiveness and operational readiness have been negative. This deficit could be corrected quickly if the problem is recognized by the Ministry of National Defence. There does not seem to be an indication at the moment that that is the case.
Most situations where we have deployed abroad have called for a rapid intervention, but we have been less than rapid, to say the least, over the last dozen operations. Other countries maintain specific rapid reaction forces — Britain, France, America, for example, and others. To be effective, we should emulate our allies and create a battalion group size force, one that is combat capable, ready and strategically deployable at short notice.
If we are searching for a title, we could use the term ``the First Canadian Parachute Battalion'' and perpetuate a fine unit that had distinguished service in World War II. Thank you for your attention.
Senator Banks: You must have read our reports. If you have not, I urge you to, because we, for all intents and purposes, agree with practically everything you said. I also commend your attention to the present plans that have been booted by General Hillier about a project that he has called ``Sea Horse,'' which is a rapid deployment force. There has been considerable talk about that. I think we are heading in that direction.
I have two questions. I gather you do not agree with the integration of the regular and reserve forces.
Mr. Vernon: I have been in both camps. I do not disagree with it, but I would say they are apples and oranges, to some extent. You cannot take a reservist who has had a couple of weeks of training and expect the same results and the same level of fitness and battle skills as someone who has undergone six months of intensive training and another year or two of practical experience.
Senator Banks: Agreed. The training must be fixed.
Capacity to intervene: The Prime Minister was talking about what has been called ``R to P'', the responsibility to protect — the right to go into another country when something needs to be taken care of. That abrogates and breaks, flat out, article 1 of the United Nations. Are you in favour of that?
Mr. Vernon: I would say that if you take the example of Rwanda, where an effective intervention by a fairly small force could have prevented or ameliorated the massacres that occurred, that would have been against the interests of the Government of Rwanda at that time, which was causing the massacres.
I do not agree with the Prime Minister on a lot of things, but on this particular point, I think I would agree, but it calls for a sea change of attitude.
Senator Banks: Certainly. It is a dangerous slope. Thank you very much.
Ms. Dawn Boudreau, as an individual: I am a junior logistics officer in the air force. I am also a student at Royal Roads University, and I am attending a Masters of Arts in Human Security and Peace Building. One of the questions I would like to address this evening is what are the threats and how are we to address them, which was the question posed by the chairperson earlier.
I believe that intra-state conflicts in places such as Sudan are the types of conflicts and security threats with which we need to be completely engaged. We must prevent state failure.
Thank you very much, Senator Banks, for bringing to the fore the question of R2P, The Responsibility to Protect. This is an extremely important document. I would like to state without any ambiguity whatsoever my complete and absolute belief in that particular philosophy; however, I would like to say that the responsibility to protect is not necessarily confined to intervention once things have gone wrong. We must also consider responsibility to protect as a responsibility to prevent. In that regard, Canada has a tremendous opportunity to emerge as a world leader. We need to demonstrate our commitment to the global community that we are willing to come forward and make change, spend money, but do so in a way that cannot be mistaken as interventionist or imperialistic. We can only achieve that by being proactive. We have the tools and the ability to do so. At the moment, we are not doing it, and we need to.
We need a fundamental paradigm shift as to what security threats are. I did state I am in the military. I have an absolute belief in hard power. We need to be able to protect ourselves. As we go overseas, we need to be able to protect our country; however, we also need to embrace other ideas. The military, and Canadian society, perhaps, are in a period of distinct change. We need to manage that change so that we end up on the other end where we want to be and not so that we are buoyed there by events and wake up one morning saying, ``This is interesting.''
I believe in human security as a paradigm. I believe our foreign affairs policy needs to reflect that. I believe that The Responsibility to Protect is an extremely important, compelling, essential document.
Senator Day: Thank you for your comments. Obviously, you have been doing some serious thinking about this.
You are talking about threats. Threats to whom? Do we act based on threats to whom? Would the threat be threats to Canada's international trade? Would we act unilaterally and then just look for a coalition of the willing to go along with us if we see something going on in a particular country around the world that might threaten our supply of oil, for example?
Mr. Summers: Just one question, Senator Day.
Senator Day: Sorry, I was getting all excited here.
Ms. Boudreau: I like to see excitement. To answer your question, intra-state conflict, which is what we are seeing more and more, such as in the case of Rwanda, which was previously mentioned, spill over and create regional threats, which in turn destabilize whole areas of the globe, which affects Canada. Whether or not it is immediately obvious, globalization has made it a global village; we have heard that expression before. Things like SARS and what can happen when one cow gets a bit sick shows you how dependent we are on others.
We need to determine what the new paradigm is. How do we prevent these conflicts from happening? The Rwandas and the Sudans affect us, and we need to address that.
Senator Day: How do you address that? Through the United Nations? Through some other organization?
Ms. Boudreau: Responsibility to prevent, sir. We need to show commitment in advance of everything going wrong. We achieve that by supporting governments. There are indicators out there that indicate states in danger of failing, for example. Once they fail, we have already failed. We want to stop that from happening. The United Nations is our global institution right now. Flawed as it is, it is what we have. The United Nations is extremely important.
Canada, with its foreign policy, has the ability to go forward and make changes. I will also mention Jeffrey Sacks, author of a very fine publication put out in January 2005, that gives us the tools to address the UN's millennium development goals, which is all about human security and everything I am talking about. We need to look at that one as well.
Senator Banks: Think about it. Good guys can do it. Can the bad guys do it as well?
Mr. David Ross, as an individual: I am from the primary reserve. I would like to talk about the land forces reserve restructuring, and in particular the requirement of that for 3,000 new members of the militia.
The biggest impediment to getting 3,000 new soldiers in the militia is, ironically, the Canadian Forces recruiting system, in which it is not uncommon to take six months to get through the process. We are competing with other employers for the target audience we have, which is primarily students from university and high school. A young individual can go to McDonald's and be hired the next week. We will be the better part of the year to get him through the system. Quite frankly, we are losing them, and it is killing us.
The simple solution — well, perhaps not simple — seems to me to be to allow conditional enrolments, where a person comes through, has not completed the enhanced reliability check, has not gone through all three stages of the medical, as is currently required, but comes down onto the armoury floor, has signed some waiver forms and gets inculcated by the military and becomes part of the regiment. Then, if down the road he fails the enhanced reliability check, which is very unlikely, or more likely the medical, he is simply released. This will give us the people on the ground. We can get them going and get some concurrent activity, because we are dying right now.
Senator Nolin: Let us go a little bit further in your reasoning. Do you agree with the actual mix of the regulars and the reserves as it is now? If you agree with what we have now, do you think we should increase the formation, the requirements? I agree with you that we need to be much more open and rapid in our process, but at what cost? Do you see my concern?
Mr. Ross: I think I understand, senator. Right now we are going through exactly the same recruiting process as the regulars, which is correct.
Senator Nolin: On that, I agree with you.
Mr. Ross: The problem is that it needs to be sped up and given some current activity for the reservists. If you are looking at a long-term career, you are willing to wait six months to get it done. The recruiting centres right now have 20,000 people in their data bank waiting for regular force positions. The system seems to be working reasonably well for the regulars, but it is killing the reserves, because people are not willing to wait six months for a part-time job. They are looking now. The ones who are thinking are looking for summer employment now, and if someone shows up on the armoury floor today, we will be lucky to have them in time for the summer.
Ms. Jane Brett, as an individual: Thank you, members of the committee, for presenting this opportunity. I wanted to ensure that you know where you are. This place is different from Ottawa. It is not only the home of CFB Esquimalt. I would like to acknowledge the Aboriginal territory we are in tonight as that of being the territory of the Coast Salish, the Songhees and Esquimalt people. They are still generous and welcoming in spite of the terrorism they have experienced from those occupying their lands for the past 150 years. They are people who have suffered a great deal, a people defenceless against the ongoing theft of their resources. The First Nations of this area have continued to use peaceful and legal means of resistance in the face of arbitrary and unilateral actions. Undermining their sovereignty is a stance deserving of much attention and respect from the rest of the world, including other Canadians. I think it is important for our survival to pay attention to that.
I cannot do this in three minutes, so I have written something for you, but I will hit the highlights.
I am a member of the Wednesday Night Peace Vigil. It began with the bombing of Afghanistan in October 2001, and I was relieved to hear Roméo Dallaire say a few weeks ago that it was wrong for Canada to participate. We have believed that going into our fourth year. I have highlighted for you the flawed process, the expropriation of the sea-bed at Nanoose, and mentioned names, some of which you will know — Alphonso Gagliano, Art Eggleton, David Anderson. I want you to look at that, because this is a place where Chernobyl, Bhopal and Chicoutimi are words that have no meaning, where nuclear-powered aircraft carriers that trail mile-long fuel spills on the way to Nanoose are exempt from environmental review, where the damage from tsunamis is calculated, yet accidents with nuclear ships in the same waters are considered impossible.
I want to pay tribute, from our neighbour across from Tsawwassen, to the pilot, Captain Miles Selby, who died in the crash of the Snowbirds. We have the Snowbirds flying over our buildings, not just on the street. They come over the legislature, over the museum, over this building. For two years we have had them fly over the city when it was not permitted. How did that happen? How did those pilots just get it wrong?
I think that by tacitly supporting U.S. nuclear policy through ship visits to our ports, we are supporting the greatest theft in history: the funding required for common human security. I will be ever so pleased if you read my whole submission. If any of you respond to it, I would be so delighted. Thank you very much for this opportunity.
The Chairman: Thank you. We will read it.
Senator Stollery: I am from Toronto; I am not from Ottawa. All I can tell you about Toronto right now is it is snowing very heavily and it is going to snow until tomorrow, I think. I have not read the paper, and I will know when I see it.
Is there a land claim conflict going on around Victoria? I do not know. I did not know there was. Would you like to elaborate?
Ms. Brett: Yes, I would, because this is what I wanted you to realize that is different about British Columbia from the rest of Canada. They stopped making the treaties when they got out here, so there are serious concerns out here. The governments, both federal and provincial levels, are dealing in very duplicitous manners. Currently, two blocks from here, the Land Title Office is being pillaged by the provincial government, which is destroying documents and making them unavailable to First Nations researchers who need that information for land claims.
A war has been going on here for 150 years. We have some survivors. The good news for us is that we are a little country. There is a lesson for us to learn about how these people have continued to survive and exert their sovereignty. Out of respect for the people on whose territory we stand tonight, I hope that you will learn more about it. All you have to do is write me, and I will send you tons of information.
Ms. Katrina Jean Herriot, as an individual: Thank you very much for coming to Victoria. I am going to be the official candidate for the Work Less Party in Victoria. ``Workers of the World Relax'' is one of our mottos. Is it not wonderful? We are actually trying to implement the 32-hour work week. I personally work about four days a week. I have some mental disabilities, so that is about as much as I can deal with. Some people may not have mental disabilities and can work 60 or 70 hours a week, but that is a lot of work. I just wanted to say that we should give everyone a little bit more time to relax, a little bit more time to reflect and spend time with their family. That way we would be less stressed; there would be less stress on our economy, and there would be less stress on the environment.
I think for the military, we should have a little bit more growth oriented toward the environment, and we should have more goals toward being involved with universities and whatnot. If you would like the younger generation to be involved in the military, we need to be more environmentally friendly or else people will not be interested. They also would like to be more peace oriented rather than defence oriented. We realize that we are all going to die. We have to drop our fears and realize that we need to live peacefully in order to have peace. That is something I firmly believe.
Someone gave me a beautiful suggestion: that we should have more involvement in the UN cultural preservation force, the Blue Berets. I am not sure if you have heard that, but I think it is a great idea. That is a wonderful, wonderful idea.
I also like the idea of prevention. A young woman spoke earlier about prevention of the conflict rather than going in after the fact. I think that is a wonderful idea too.
Canadians are about peace. We are a peaceful country. We have many, many people who live here and are from all sorts of different countries, so if conflict happens over there, chances are someone in Canada knows someone who is involved in that conflict. We should have more emphasis on education and prevention as well. Thank you.
Senator Banks: Thank you very much for coming and telling us what you think. I am going to introduce you to our chairman, because we will, at the end of this day, have worked 14 hours today, so I would like you to have a word with him.
Ms. Herriot: Definitely, it is ridiculous.
Senator Banks: A lower work week is a very good idea all around; however, I am going to ask you a rude question. You have heard about R to P, the responsibility to protect. It involves peacekeeping. Peacekeeping sometimes is not just having, as the admiral said earlier today, a nice man stand between two belligerent men and say, ``Come on, guys. Settle down.'' I am going to make a very bad joke. Sometimes you have to say, ``Be peaceful, or I will kill you,'' and you have to be able to.
Ms. Herriot: I understand that.
Senator Banks: If you are going to have peacekeepers, you have to have peacemakers, and they have to have big guns.
Ms. Herriot: I completely understand. I have trained in martial arts for seven years. I understand defence.
Senator Banks: I wanted to ensure that you understood that, and I am very happy. I do not have a question. I agree with everything you said, and I hope it all comes true. Your T-shirt reads ``Alarm clocks kill dreams.'' They kill all of mine.
The Chairman: Even though he did not ask you a question, you still have 90 seconds left, if you would like to have it.
Ms. Herriot: I also thought we should have more emphasis on counselling and have each and every person know how to counsel their fellow people in war. If you are in a war situation and someone is dead over there, and you have no idea how to react to that situation, you are going to get stressed out and not be able to do anything. Like, what is going on? I think there should be more emphasis on counselling and more emphasis on evaluating personnel every year if they have been in a war situation. I think that is very, very important. We should not have any problems related to stress events in a war situation.
Honorary Captain (N) Cedric Steele, as an individual: I am honorary naval captain at CFB Esquimalt. Honourable senators, admiral, thank you so much for allowing me to appear this evening. I have just a few words to say, if I may.
I have been very involved in the business community of Victoria. I was a former president of the Chamber of Commerce, involved with school boards, hospital boards and so on, so I am very involved in this community. I wish to speak today on the issue of Canada's prosperity and its dependence on the Canadian navy. Please bear with me as I outline how important I believe our navy is to Canada.
Safeguarding the sovereignty of our waters has always been a top priority for our navy, and any condition that would prevent the freedom of movement on the sea is a threat to Canada. Every Canadian is dependent upon the ocean for their economic well-being, as exports account for over 40 per cent of Canada's $977 billion gross domestic product, and ships carry 20 per cent of Canada's trade with the United States, our major trading partner.
Canada's ocean fishery generates over $4 billion of export income annually and requires the protection of our navy. It is estimated that 50 per cent of Canada's frontier oil reserves lie in Canada's offshore. The Hibernia oil field alone holds 750 million barrels of recoverable oil and 3.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. They need our navy. Ninety-seven per cent of Canadian overseas exports and 70 per cent of our imports are shipped by sea, and Canada's 546 ports handle over 390 million tonnes of cargo each year and are Canada's gateway to more than 100 economies around the world.
The defence of North America is a primary duty of the Canadian Forces. Since 1940, Canada and the United States have built the closest defence and security relationship of any two countries in the world. In addition to maintaining a watch on our ocean approaches, the navy has tightened security at the Esquimalt and Halifax naval bases and other facilities by implementing and enforcing controlled access to protect our ships and support facilities.
Even though the United States is our close ally, neighbour and friend, I am concerned that the competitive manner in which some of the industries in the United States deal with Canada makes it quite clear that if we do not protect our ports, they will tell people who are importing goods from other countries that the ports of Boston and Seattle will be safer than those of Vancouver and Halifax. I want us to ensure that we have submarines in the water, airplanes in the sky and ships on the ocean to protect the prosperity of Canada.
Senator Day: We appreciate you being here and your comments. I would like to ask your view with respect to the protection of our coastlines. Canadian policy-makers have been struggling with the role of the Coast Guard in the mix in terms of protecting. We agree with you in terms of the air and the other sources that you indicated, but in terms of floating vessels, the role of the Coast Guard is security, coastal defence, and also the role of the naval reserve. We understand that the coastal defence vessels are primarily staffed by reservists. Do you see that as something that could be expanded?
Mr. Steele: Yes, I think that is very important. For example, on our six maritime coastal defence vessels, which I believe you saw today, out of the complement of 32 people, 30 people would be naval reserves. There is definitely a role for them.
Earlier, I heard Bob Cross mention our visiting ships. There are a tremendous number of Coast Guard ships from the United States that come into Victoria on a regular basis. They are very, very active protecting the coasts. The question is whether we need a larger Coast Guard or if we need to spend more money on our Canadian navy as it is. That, unfortunately, is a bit beyond my knowledge, and I cannot afford an opinion on that, but I must say, having experienced what the marine coastal defence vessels (MCDV) can do, I am incredibly impressed with the ability of the reserves and the regular force members who are on board who could probably take on a greater role.
As I mentioned, I believe that it is absolutely critical for the future prosperity of our children and for Canadians to ensure that our American friends cannot use the concept of their ports being safer than ours. On February 7 you heard the presentation regarding containers. If those containers are diverted from Halifax and Vancouver to Seattle and Boston, I think it will be a negative thing for all of us.
The Chairman: Thank you, sir.
Vice-Admiral (Ret'd) Charles Thomas, as an individual: Senators, I spent some considerable time in the navy. When I resigned from the Armed Forces, I was the vice-chief of defence staff.
It is always interesting to me to come to one of these forums and hear well-meaning Canadians talk about what we ought to do. It reminds me of a movie that was around not long ago where the protagonist who went out on the field and did the heavy lifting was surrounded by people who could spin words and develop nice policies. The guy who had to do the heavy lifting only had one answer. He said, ``Show me the money.'' That is the issue that we have to deal with. All the things that have been said here tonight — and many of them are very worthwhile — cannot be funded the way the Armed Forces are being funded by the government. It has been starved for 10 years to the point where it is in disrepair, and I have written you extensively on the subject.
The new budget that just came down is a day late and many dollars short. Any competent economist who took the money that has been taken away from the Armed Forces capital account over the last 12 years and did some present and future valuing of money could demonstrate to you that the money that has been put back in — the largest single insertion of money into defence in 20 years — does not cover what has been taken away. The consequence is that we are going to send our children and our grandchildren to ugly places in the world where the bad guys have better guns. We are going to put them at risk, and they are going to come home in body bags. It is not right. It is a moral imperative to deal with this issue. We have a choice. If we do not want to pay the bill, do not go. Give up our seat at the Council of 7, or the Council of 21, and do not talk so much at the UN. If we are not going to pay up, we should shut up, but do not send our grandchildren to do a job for which we are not prepared to give them the tools.
The only council in the country that I know has addressed this issue is yours, and you are to be complimented, but it is the government that has the responsibility for defence. It will never be popular enough to rate in the opinion polls, and you cannot make policy by sound bite. Support that does not have money is not support. Appearing on television, weepy and teary-eyed as you recite your conversation with the widow of some military member, is not support either. It is morally wrong, and we are at a point where we either put up or we should get out of the business, because we are putting our young people at risk that is intolerable. Thank you.
Senator Nolin: Mr. Thomas, I dearly appreciate everything you have said, but we need to be very persuasive with the population. As many witnesses and some colleagues have said, if it is down to the last dollar, if we have to choose between the military or hospitals or education, guess who will lose? We can work on that problem if we have the proper communication tools. Given all your experience, what are the tools you would have liked to have when you were in charge?
Mr. Thomas: I would have liked to have seen a law in Canada where military serving personnel, who know the reality, appear under oath to answer questions from parliamentarians and where they do not appear in right of the minister where they may not say anything that does not agree with the announced position of the government, lest they be court-martialled. That is the situation in the United States. We just wrap everything up in words. So long as it sounds good, it does not matter whether it is doable. This is not Kyoto. We are talking about people's lives here.
Second, I do not agree with you, I am sorry. I do not think we will ever have a popular opinion in support of defence vis-à-vis health care or any other major public requirement, but there is an obligation and a duty by government to do what is right in defence of Canada, Canadians and Canadian interests. It is just an obligation of government. If you are not prepared to govern, get out.
Senator Nolin: That is all good, but there is a population out there, and they need to be told and have it explained. You cannot just say, ``It is good for you, and I am going to do it.'' You have to explain it, and that is the kind of tool that I wanted you to talk about, but I think you gave us a good response.
Mr. Thomas: Well, when I was commanding the navy, I gave a speech every third night somewhere in this country for two years, to anybody who would ask me, and I never had an audience that said, ``You are wrong.'' Some people disagreed with me from time to time, but that happens in my own house. There was no audience in Canada that was not prepared to hear the message that they needed a navy. The issue we are talking about here is larger than the navy. I do not care whether the emphasis is navy, army or whatever it is, but whatever it is, give them the tools to do the job. If you do not, do not ask them to go and do it.
Mr. Thomas C. Heath, as an individual: I am a former Director General of Intelligence, former Assistant Chief of Staff Intelligence, and after I retired I took a masters degree in conflict analysis and management at Royal Roads with my colleagues here.
I am going to go on from what Admiral Thomas said about public opinion. Public opinion in this country with regard to military and military policy centres around the concept that peacekeeping is a concept that may be dated and passé. Chapter 6 Peacekeeping, which emerged during the Cold War, was a phenomenon of the Cold War. In the post Cold War reality, conflict is intra-state, predominantly, and we are going to go without the approval of all the belligerents present. Thus, as we took a look at recent history and recent conflicts we have been involved with in Somalia, Bosnia and Afghanistan, we were not there with the agreement of all the belligerents, as we have in the past. This is going to be the trend in the future. The manifestations of this type of conflict are extreme violence by the ordinary citizenry on their fellow, but different, neighbours and the creation of internal or external displaced persons. It is the distortion of the sense of the others, that the other represents a risk to individual group identity, that appears to be rationale for violence. Michael Ignatieff, writing on Bosnia-Herzegovina, depicts these conflicts in terms of narcissism.
International intervention in these conflicts has not been with the agreement, and it has resulted in these mandates being issued under chapter 7 of the UN Charter, with increasing Armed Forces capability and more robust rules of engagement. The early examples of these types of engagements, Bosnia and Somalia, were less than successful for the United Nations, believe me. I spent six years in the Balkans conflict. Unfortunately, the forces committed to United Nations peacekeeping or peacemaking missions are not uniform in capability, training and discipline, and the result achieved in the command structure is inconsistent. Ask Romeo Dallaire. The majority of current international concerns regarding the Middle East, the Sudan and the Balkans all represent these conditions of ethnic, religious or cultural identity issues engrained within them.
The threshold of public awareness is very weak. Last year, Canada sponsored the International Examination of Conflict, Human Rights. The report, The Responsibility to Protect, challenges the sanctity of national sovereignty as being conditional upon the state's ability to ensure human rights, that they are not trampled within their boundaries regardless of reason. The current Canadian government has supported that.
There are also proposals within the international community for Canada to specialize in peacekeeping, peacemaking or humanitarian roles, leaving the heavy lifting to the United States, France and Germany. This concept, while undoubtedly attractive to our government that sees no votes in defence, would be very averse to those who have to do the bleeding and dying.
Senator Stollery: You certainly brought up a lot of very pertinent and important information. I am actually with the Foreign Affairs Committee. We were very active when Bosnia was taking place, and I am quite aware of some of those issues. I think when you said chapter 7, you meant chapter 7 under NATO?
Mr. Heath: The United Nations Protection Force, UNPROFOR, for two years was under UN chapter 7 and was an abject failure. It was only NATO's intervention in December of 1995, when the bombing campaigns disrupted the Serbs' command and control, that forced them back to the tables to negotiate.
Senator Stollery: No one seems to know why the Serbs actually withdrew, except that I guess many would say that the Russians got hold of them and told them they had better withdraw.
Are you saying, then, that we should go in without UN authorization? Should we wait for the UN? Should we be part of the UN system, or are you saying that we should be part of what has become the coalition of the willing?
Mr. Heath: I will say there is more than one answer to that. First of all, what I am saying is that lightly equipped, lightly trained forces involved in modern peacemaking or peacekeeping operations will not be able to respond to rapidly increasing levels of violence that may occur. The only type of preventive actions light forces can get into, which the lady talked about, are almost impossible to achieve within the international community because of the difficulty of getting public opinion in advance of an incident for a political decision, so you are not going to get into preventive actions very often.
The reality is that Mr. Martin and others are supporting the responsibility to protect, interventionist policies and are looking for changes in the United Nations Charter Security Council but will have a great deal of difficulty getting past article 1, the sanctity of sovereignty of nation states.
Now, that being said, I will see increasing emergence of unilateral or collisions of interest taking part in these things, because that is the only way it is going to happen.
Rear-Admiral (Ret'd) Russell Moore, as an individual: I am a retired naval rear admiral. My last job was Commander of Maritime Forces Pacific, where you were today. I left in 1998.
You could also say my career has been steeped in the Canada-U.S. relationship. I served as a member of the Permanent Joint Board on Defence. I have held senior appointments in NATO, in Virginia, and was chief of staff operations responsible for NATO operations in the North Atlantic. I have, in my senior positions, been present in the Persian Gulf as Canada participated along with the U.S. and other allies.
I have come to the microphone to register my concern over the recent decision to abandon the proposal for the missile defence of North America and to urge this committee to look into the implications of that decision, for implications there will be.
I will touch on a couple of the areas from my career that I can see from that decision. You are now seeing how that decision is being viewed by leading media in the United States and indeed our own media, which could extend over into areas such as our intelligence-sharing agreements, the future of NORAD — not the short-term, that has been decided, but in the longer term — and the possibility for extending NORAD into our maritime areas; the logistics and technical support of Canadian Forces operations nationally and worldwide; access to senior positions on staffs, whether key planning staffs or defence, not only in North America, but elsewhere; or operations. This list is not complete; however, there are many implications to the direction that this most recent decision seems to be taking us, and I would very much encourage this committee to examine, at some point, those implications. Thank you.
Senator Forrestall: I appreciate very much, admiral, your comments about missile defence. I agree with them, of course. Could you comment with respect to a frequently used argument, which is used many different ways? It had been said that we were part of missile defence 34 years ago when we first had the capacity to monitor space and that, one way or another, through NORAD principally, we have been active participants in this particular endeavour. I am one of those who, with my experience perhaps somewhat parallel to yours, sir, as we are both getting a little long in the tooth, would see merit in our concern about it. Could you comment on that? Because we were there, because NORAD was there, we are already involved.
Mr. Moore: Certainly we have been involved, but in this particular initiative, our ally to the south is embarking on a new level of defence against the emerging threats and threats that are yet unforeseen. What role will Canada have in the future in NORAD? I suggest that NORAD, as it is presently configured, will be changed fairly dramatically over time, and the short time. Will Canadians still have access to the senior staffs, the operational staffs within NORAD? I do not know the answer to that, sir, but with Canada being a non-participant in missile defence of our continent, it is very unlikely that the current arrangements —
Senator Forrestall: I was asking, admiral, if you think that we are already involved with the Americans to some degree in missile defence.
Mr. Moore: Absolutely. We have been through the current NORAD agreement and aerospace surveillance.
Mr. Mike Moran, as an individual: My basic background is infantry and marine engineering. I am now working in the film industry as a grip and a gaffer. We have a gigantic film presence not just in Vancouver but in L.A., where Canadians are working and writing, but the Canadian military does not have much of a presence in our culture. We seem to have diminished the observing of the Canadian military in our culture. We hear about things like Somalia ad nauseam for months, literally for years.
I would put the question to the committee that we should not just work on the defence budget and internal security. We should bring up — through writing, television, radio, any means that we can — the very positive effect our military has and the substantial respect they have in the world. There are lots of pro-military things on television, but you cannot find any ongoing example of that on Canadian television, or American television for that matter. You cannot find our military referenced anywhere. We should build a positive base. We have been at this since September 1939, at the high point. We have done a magnificent job in two world wars and the Cold War. We invented peacekeeping. We are imbedded in the world here, in a military sense.
We need to have a television program or something to build a consciousness in the Canadian people. Yes, defence is good. It is absolutely necessary. We are a positive force everywhere. If we could go to the CBC or CTV and get a program started, or get more newsworthy things flowing about what Canada is doing 24/7 in this world, the arguments about defence would start to go away. They would say ``Yes, we want new trucks for these guys. We do not want jalopy helicopters,'' because they could see what we are up to in the world. We do not want our guys dying in all these oddball places.
I travel the world quite a bit. The American military has a professional respect for us. In Ottawa, it seems we always lose out at the budget level. We have junk equipment and great people. We all know that. The sociology of budgeting here is that the Canadian military never gets the PR it needs, so they never get the money they need. This must be an ongoing thing.
I would pose a question to the committee to think about very deeply: Make contact with our substantial media people in this world, and tell them and show them what an example we are in the world and to popularize that. We could get a few television programs or much more positive things in the news.
People harp on Somalia, but why do they not harp on all the other positive things we have done for decades? If we could win that battle — never mind talking about the technology of this, or the trucks of that. If you can popularize Canadian military culture, which does exist and is respected in the world, if it can get back on television and get back in the news in a positive way, the budgetary arguments and the starvation levels for equipment would start to go away.
Mr. Summers: Thank you. You have made an excellent point.
Senator Banks: You are right. Show business can do anything.
Mr. Moran: I am not being flippant here. You can make light of this.
Senator Banks: I made my living in that business for years. I am not being flippant.
The Chairman: You have to understand that Senator Banks is a Juno award-winning pianist.
Mr. Moran: I get a lot of people blowing us off. We have a lot of money for multiculturalism.
Senator Banks: However, the answer to your question is, it is not in our nature in this country.
Mr. Moran: I do not care. Let's make it so.
The Chairman: Senator Banks, we are getting this backwards. The gentleman has made a statement. You have an opportunity to ask him a question. You ask the question, and he will give the answer.
Senator Banks: The gentleman asked a question.
The Chairman: He did, sir.
Senator Banks: I answered it.
The Chairman: It is your turn to ask a question. It is like Jeopardy. Turn it around.
Senator Banks: It is a very bad idea to use World War I and World War II as examples of preparedness, because if you look at the state of this country immediately before either of those wars —
Mr. Moran: Are you asking a question or making a statement?
Senator Banks: I am coming to it — they are the best possible example of a country that was utterly unprepared in every conceivable sense to go to war.
You have partly answered the question, but if you are in the film business, you know you have to get funding. Where should the funding come from to aggrandize the idea of militarism in Canada?
Mr. Moran: Explaining ourselves to our own population is not aggrandizing militarism. This is the sociological tangent from which I was hoping to keep away. An actor by the name of David James Elliott makes a fabulous deal about working in a program called JAG. He is a Canadian. What would it hurt for somebody to commercialize this idea? What would it hurt to say ``Hey, we are people. We have a culture. We have a history. Our people are standing on guard all over the country and all over the world.''
When the firestorm hit Kelowna, we did not have enough people to send there to help them with trucks or helicopters or radios or anything. We starve ourselves internally to put it on the line externally. That is a good thing. That is the depth of our commitment.
If we could get somebody in the news business, we would not have to put up millions of bucks. The way these things are funded, once you popularize them, money starts to flow automatically.
It is good to be socially glib about pricking away at Canada and the genuine people like my dad, me or my brothers who were in this business. We have a big, positive story to tell. We are not the most perfect people in the world, but we have a big, positive story to tell, starting with Lester Pearson, starting with peacekeeping. You can put your foot down anywhere along the line. We do not have to go back to find some bad thing about 1914 or go off on a tangent so that if we say something positive about ourselves, we are aggrandizing. That is all sociological contempt. Let us challenge those people who go off on those tangents. Let us put them down and put our foot forward. When they put their point forward, let us put our positive foot forward. Let us go to the media and say, ``Can you think up a few stories here about positive, active things, whether it is the Golan Heights or the Canadians in Serbia or Cyprus or anywhere?'' What are we doing now? What did they do in the dark in the latest tsunami? Let us get away from the social contempt for Canada and the Canadian military.
Commodore (Ret'd) Jan Drent, as an individual: I enjoyed my career in the Canadian Navy and retired with the rank of commodore. I found this evening very interesting. It is interesting that many people made remarks connected with our possible role abroad, and most people in this room probably share the view that we want Canada to play a responsible world role, and that this includes having appropriate, robust military forces in order to do that.
I would like to underline an aspect of defence that has not really been discussed this evening in detail, and that is maintaining sovereignty and specifically the role of our submarines. I know this is a subject which is not well understood in the public domain. There is a good deal of scepticism, shading into hostility, but it is important to underline that sovereignty means an ability to monitor what is going on and an ability to respond. Because we are a country with an enormous coastline and we are adjacent to the only superpower, we have responsibilities in our offshore. At present and in the foreseeable future, the best way to carry out surveillance and exercise an ability to respond includes, and largely depends on, submarines.
I should mention, of course, it is not ``submarines or nothing.'' They operate in conjunction with other elements, but they really are a key ingredient.
Senator Day: There are those who feel that the submarines were purchased probably because they were such a good deal, and that the government, after thinking about it for a long, long time, decided to make this purchase as opposed to having a policy that said we need submarines instead of surface wave radar to keep an eye on our coastline, instead of satellite surveillance or instead of unmanned aerial vehicles in the future. I would like you to comment on that. If you had your druthers, and if you had all the money that you needed, would you go to submarines, or would you go for some of the other technologies that I mentioned?
Mr. Drent: That is an impossible question to answer, is it not? Of course it is a case of priorities, but I would argue that you are right. Perhaps the strategic rationale has not been all that well laid out, but for a country with our geographical position and our defence requirements, we need to have an underwater capability. It is not a case of having that at the expense of surveillance radar or unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs; we have to look at the total picture and say, ``We need to have an underwater capability. How much of that can we afford, and how much do we allocate to the other things?'' It is not an either/or equation.
Mr. Ross: I addressed the committee earlier. I would like to place a caveat to the answer I gave Senator Nolin regarding whether the reserves and regular force should have the same recruiting standard. I believe they should, except the regular force officer requires a university degree. A great number of the reserve officers are, in fact, university students working toward degrees, and in the primary reserve units, the officer corps would be very much disrupted if the officers were required to have a degree as opposed to simply working toward a degree. We could make that separation for the reservists; other than that, the same standards would be sufficient.
Senator Nolin: The thing to keep in mind is that your real objective is to shorten the response mechanism for those who are requesting or offering to be in the reserve. That is your main point.
Mr. Ross: Yes, sir, that was my concern when you asked me about recruiting standards.
Senator Day: Mr. Chairman, I was beginning to think that all the officers here in Victoria had to go to Royal Roads University for a master's degree.
The Chairman: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much. It is very gratifying to the committee to have so many people come and share their views with us and give us their thoughts on where we should be going on the defence review. We appreciate it very much. We know you have taken time to come down here, and you have taken time out of your busy day.
We have listened carefully. We are interested in what you have said. We will try to work it into the testimony we have been receiving and take it in context with the other town hall meetings we are having. We have had a number in the Maritimes so far. Tomorrow during the day we will be having hearings in Vancouver, and we will have a town hall meeting tomorrow night in Vancouver. Next week we will be having the same sort of program: Edmonton on Monday; Calgary on Tuesday; Regina on Wednesday; Winnipeg on Thursday.
We are anxious to hear what everybody feels is important to them. We will do our very best to come back with a report sometime toward the end of the summer that we hope reflects the views that we have heard from you and that serves the best interests of Canadians.
On that note, I would like to thank you all for assisting us with our work and for coming out this evening. I would like to say thank you very much, Admiral Summers, for not only appearing earlier today, but for acting as moderator this evening. We are most grateful to you for your assistance.
The committee adjourned.